I first tasted country style biscuits when Vernon took me down to meet his family in Maryland. His mom, Beth, made the BEST! She didn’t measure either; she’d take a handful of this and a pinch of that and a bit of something else and they came out light and fluffy and scrumptious. I apparently embarrassed myself with how many I ate; I heard many years later that Beth had commented after breakfast that day, ‘Well, I swear that poor little ole bitty Kitty shore can eat!’
At any rate, I decided that Bisquick mix just wasn’t cutting it for me. I figured if Beth could do it so could I. I broke out my Joy of Cooking (this was pre-Google and you had to use a book back then) and started mixing. The recipe claimed to make 20 biscuits; since I was cooking for just Vernon and me, I figured I would cut the measurements in half. Since I had eaten 7 of Beth’s, 5 each seemed a reasonable number to consume.
I halved the amount of flour required by the recipe and dumped it in the bowl. I actually had baking powder, salt, and the other ingredients on hand so measured and dumped them in. When I got to the milk, I realized I was out of real cow’s milk so decided to use powdered milk. I figured out how much powdered milk and how much water to use make a cup, BUT, forgot that I had to halve it for the amount of flour I had in the bowl. Before realizing this oversight, I dumped the milk into the bowl and created the gooiest, slimiest mess you ever saw!
By now, I had flour up to my elbows and gooey batter all over my hands. I hollered for Vernon to come dump some more flour into the bowl. I got it thick enough to form into balls and plopped them onto the baking sheet and slapped it into the oven. Only after slamming the oven door shut did I realize I had only formed 5 biscuits out of a recipe for 20. They were HUGE! They were also rock hard. I managed to eat one but a single bite was enough to convince Vernon he didn’t want any more. Needless to say I have never again presumed that I had the culinary skills to make biscuits like Beth did!