p.s.

perfect southern biscuits

2C self-rise flour, martha white or white lily
(OR 2C plain flour with 1 T b.p. and 1 t salt)
6 T cold lard
3/4 - 1 C full-fat buttermilk

flour in bowl. add lard. mix the lard very quickly with your fingers until the mixture looks like coarse meal. your goal in working quickly is to leave behind small bits of lard, which will melt during baking and leave light "flakes." if you don't work quickly and with a light hand, you will melt the lard. add smaller amount of buttermilk and mix with hands, lightly. do NOT knead. handle the dough, all through, lightly, keeping those little bits of lard intact. if you need more buttermilk, add.

turn out onto a floured surface. shape lightly into a circle about 1 inch thick. cut with a floured biscuit cutter. a drinking glass of the size you want, with the rim floured, works, too. put cut biscuits on buttered sheet and bake in the middle of the oven at 500 for about ten minutes. if you're like me and your oven smokes at 500, 450 for 15 minutes works just as well.

biscuits should be lightly golden. if you wish, brush with butter when they're hot. cut open and spread with more butter. in fact, when the biscuits are gone, eat the butter plain! rub the butter all over your.......sorry, i got carried away. i do like butter.

lardy, lardy, darothy, aren't we farchanate to be marmans!

i've never claimed that my parents were especially well brought up or well-educated. but one thing i know for sure is that somewhere in the lessons of childhood they failed to learn the appropriate definition of the word, "lard." somewhere in their lives, they came up with the idea that the word "lard" and the word "buttocks" could be used interchangably. for example, "move your lard and let me sit down." "get your lard out of the way: i can't see the tv." "will you get me some ice cream? sure, lardo."

i never realized that lard was a real product, prized for many good reasons by the southern cook.



i moved to north carolina about 33 years ago. at first, i enjoyed having an attitude which i have come to call the "california" attitude, i.e. making fun of everything and everybody, more or less without pausing. once i was asked to give a farewell for a family that was leaving here, and i gave them a gift so that they could have good southern cooking after they moved. it was the item pictured above. i just told them to add it to everything, and they would never miss the south.

now, that was in my snarky years. (aren't you glad those years are over?) now that i've lived here awhile and gained a deep and honest respect and admiration for southern people, i have learned to love southern cooking and lard. but now i know the more subtle flavors of the south. for example, you never put lard in green beans. are you kidding? only fat back, bacon, ham or other smoked pig fat will do.

now you may have a moral and physical (or even emotional or spiritual) repugnance for lard, and i, like everyone else, am trying to eat more healthy food. but you will never make a good southern biscuit unless you use lard. or pie crust. or perfect fried chicken. you can make a very good imperfect chicken without frying it in lard, but why risk it? once or twice a year for perfect biscuits, once a year for perfect pie, and once a year for perfect fried chicken, is not going to kill anyone.




summary: repeat five times out loud: pig fat is our friend.

christy wins!!!!

christy won my contest for the best fibonacci poem. she wrote a great poem and deserves the prize. yes, okay, she WAS the only one who wrote one, but i had already decided that my readers are a somewhat rebellious group that doesn't take to challenges or suggestions very well. so that's not exactly my fault, is it?

so if christy will contact me, i will make arrangement to award her fabulous prize, a $5 Michael's card. yeah, you wished you'd written something now, don't you? tough.










oh, yes, and happy birthday to the first of three july birthdays in our family: my son-in-law, christian plautz.

no comment needed

what more do i need to say?

voila

how do you like my new look? my daughter is a talented webpage designer, (my unbiased opinion), and i think some of you have her work on your blogs, too. i couldn't resist the apple blossoms. if you're interested in her doing some work for you, you can reach her at maryslastchance.blogspot.com.

do you ever think about bugs? i was thinking about bugs today as i was pulling bushels and bushels of weeds from my flower and herb garden. one reason i was thinking about them was that i had stood in fire ants and had to run for the hose to put out the fire, i was stung by a bumble bee that i accidentally tried to pick up (it was in a flower), and when my hands were totally covered in dirt, i was bitten/stung in two places by things i couldn't even see, but which left little marks on me. (this isn't really a good introduction to what i was going to say about bugs.)

c.s. lewis asked why we should quarrel with a creature just because it has more eyes or legs than we do. he said that he had been reading by a window and a leaf blew in onto his book. the color and shape made him think it was some sort of a hideous insect. when he saw that it was a leaf, the same colors and shapes that had been abhorrent before, now added to his delight in his admiration of the leaf.

i will be so proud of you if you don't scream like a little girl and run away every time you see a bug.

oh. and i killed a brown recluse spider today.

so where are my fibonacci poems?

it's
not
that hard,
my readers
and friends. if i can
do it, surely you can. amen.

how to stay married for 39 years, the monarch shortage, and the fibonacci sequence (something for everyone!)

this is a charming, happy picture of me and my 39-year partner in life looking charming and happy. and it's not a lie; we ARE sometimes charming and happy.

THE SECRET TO STAYING TOGETHER FOR 39 YEARS:

don't leave.



WHY I HAVEN'T HAD ANY COMMENTS, PICTURES, ETC., ABOUT BUTTERFLIES LATELY:

i saw a monarch butterfly in april. that was the last time. my milkweed and asclepias tuberosa are both growing and blooming beautifully, but no monarch has been by to lay her egges. i should know, i check every blooming day. no pun intended. there is nothing to say about butterflies right now. i do have lots of tiger swallowtails because i planted fennel and dill, which they love, and i have seen their eggs and their very beautiful caterpillars on it. but i don't bring them in the house and watch them grow and turn into butterflies, because every time i have tried they die.

THE FIBONACCI SEQUENCE:

my good friend lois, who is a writer, is in a writers' group. for one of their projects, they wrote poems based on the fibonacci sequence. for those of you who are not properly educated (i.e. haven't seen the da vinci code or looked up fibonacci on wikipedia), here is some information on the fibonacci sequence. leonardo of pisa, who for some reason was called signor fibonacci, in the 1200s, described a sequence of numbers beginning with 0, 1, in which each additional number in the sequence is the sum of the two previous numbers. therefore: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13....... (you would all KNOW this if you saw the right movies and didn't always depend on ME!)

the writers wrote poems in which the first line had one syllable, the second had one, the third had two, etc. (i guess the real first line of the poem had zero and was left blank.) here is her poem, which i think is lovely.

White
Blooms
Sprinkle
Glossy green
Towers of cool shade---
My Mississippi magnolia.
--Lois Bartholomew

here is my attempt:

Burp!
Oops.
'Scuse me
Pass the pig,
Hushpuppies, slaw, beans.
My barbecue joint. Again, burp!

you can see, she not only is a better poet than me, she also has higher and more beautiful thoughts.

send me your fibonacci poem, and if yours is the best you will be rewarded with a fabulous prize.

lisa, for your eyes only

here is the video i promised to lisa, who was the only one who was curious about the squirrel in the toilet. here is a full explanation given by my son-in-law, christian, and his roommate, jeremy. sorry to blame wade for this. sorry, wade.

okay, okay, i suppose you could all watch it.




so so there you have it.

tune in tomorrow for the secret of staying together for 39 years. also, why i have had no thoughts about butterflies recently, AND the latest workings of the fibonacci sequence! don't miss it.

i'm baa-aack

for those of you who didn't know i've been gone for a few weeks, poop to you. for the rest of you, you'll be glad to know that i am the proud owner of a new monitor for my computer and i'm back online.

only lisa had any questions about the fur in the toilet, so only she gets to watch the amazing video which explains the phenomenon and which i will post tomorrow when my IT guy gets back from vacation.

here is a mystery: my ducks' eggs were disappearing from the nest. you know, the fertilized eggs that they were setting on. also, my chickens had quit laying. there has not been a fresh egg on the place for two weeks.

here is the solution: my husband found a five-foot long black snake actually curled up in the ducks' nest. it was growing sleek and fat on MY BABY DUCKS and my eggs. crapezoid! i was just grateful that he ran for the shovel this time instead of my good serrated bread knife, which is what he attacked the beast with last time, about three or four months ago.



by the way, that man and i have been married 39 years, today.