“Praise the Lard and Pass the Biscuits”
Or so reads the opening to the section on biscuits and breads in Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock’s great gift to humanity The Gift of Southern Cooking. This book has done more for me to uphold my own Southern heritage than a lifetime of living in the south with a mother from Louisiana and generations of our family living below the Mason Dixon line since the 17oo’s. The point is, Scott Peacock could single-handedly bring Southerners to our roots and our senses purely and simply through our stomachs. This past week, the AJC published an article by Peacock on the fine and timeless art of biscuit preparation. Both my mother and my husband’s mother remember their mothers making biscuits without measuring, right there in the flour sack. Apparently Peacock has this same memory. Sadly, biscuit-making, even with measuring cups has become a dying art; replaced by exploding cans of dough-product. We are replacing our culture with a ready-made substitute. If this worries you, consider spending a Saturday morning without the cartoons or the newspaper and, as Peacock implores, make biscuits without fear.
