Family Biscuit Lore

I made my usual sourdough biscuits when Gommie and Pop were here and I swear I recall Gommie asking if they were her mom's (Bammie's) recipe for biscuits.  I didn't know there was a Bammie biscuit recipe--I love her bread, so this excited me--so I wrote to the person in the family who would know:  my Aunt Quilter (aka Aunt T.)

And today I got a reply, which I include here.  Not what I expected, but I'll try them soon.

     Well, your grandmother could not make a decent biscuit if her life depended on it.  They were like hockey pucks.  Her pie crust was not far behind.  She only made a decent pie crust when the oil and milk recipe came out.  That is the one I use today for pies and cobbler. She never did make biscuits.  I could not either until I met W.C. in E.C. and he taught me how.   These seem to turn out OK.  I have no idea if this is his original recipe or from some book.  It is probably very similar to yours.

Old Time Buttermilk Biscuits

2 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 teaspoons baking powder ( I must admit I use 6)

1/4 teaspoon soda

5 Tablespoons shortening

1 cup buttermilk

Blend shortening and dry ingredients until crumbly. Add buttermilk all at once.  Mix until pulls away from bowl. Turn onto floured board and knead about 1/2 minute. Cut and put on ungreased sheet.  Brush tops with melted butter.  Bake in 450 degree over for 12 to 15 minutes.  Makes about 14 or 16 biscuits.

Pie Crust(actually for 2 pies or 1 crust and 1 top. I, however, use it for one large pie crust, like 10" or 11")

2 cups flour

1 1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup oil

1/4 cup milk

One Pie Curst

1 1/3 cup flour

1 teaspoon salt

1/3 oil

3 Tablespoons cold milk

Both of these are rolled out between sheets of waxed paper.

Favorite Family Stories

Having seen the post on FB, I just read an article about telling family stories to kids alongside books and imaginary tales and I got to thinking that we don't tell that many family stories.  But the kids do ask, most often about Aunt Banana stories (her funny Ramona-like antics--sorry, Banana!)

So why don't we tell more family stories?  I suppose in a way this blog is one long, detailed, rambling story of our everydays.  Sometimes, family stories just don't have much in the way of narrative arc or deeper meaning, and I often misremember or even make up details, but I can see that they still have value in creating a sense of belonging and connection and shared values.  So I've been thinking on the stories we already tell and the ones I probably should tell.

We do retell (and this is most but definitely not all):

• Aunt Banana stories:  the time she hung upside down in the coat closet; the time she tried to go to school in nothing but a plastic rain coat; about sleepin in her backyard fort
• Pop:  wanting a bicycle but his siblings told him he was getting a hand-trained parrakeet; riding the city bus to school; his mom taking him to the circus in a real circus tent; Aunt Sis taking him to see Sophia Loren in a movie; (we don't not talk about him and the Wildwood boys being mean to cats);
• Mommy:  planting my feet in the mud and saying I would grow; how I met Mama at the university library; catching a fish with no bait; insisting as a child on baking the exact same number of snowmen, gingerbread men, etc; being a Brownie and later working at Girl Scout camp for children with special needs; learning how to juggle; trying so hard to learn to crochet; 
• Mama:  drawing with her grandmother;
• Goo:  practicing for years to play piano;
• Sis:  "The Empress;" Shirt and Amy; in utero, she hit him during an ultrasound; she liked to pet and follow Morgan the cat; she would resist falling asleep in the car by twirling her hair and kicking her foot; how Sis scooted across the top of the snow after the blizzard
• Bud:  "Waving Bud;" (we don't tell about his stitches in his finger from the deer feeder or the staple in his head from the playground); loveys; in utero he would kick when I ate pineapple; he would fall asleep in the car with his arms tucked behind his head; 
• Sis and Bud together:  how they would roll over on each other and not be able to roll back; how they both liked to empty the contents of boxes; how I switched them at the hospital and didn't know I had til I changed the diaper!

Wow, that's not a lot.

Some I could tell:

• scary stories with silver linings:  hiding in the basement during the microburst when the tree hit the house and van; the blizzard with 3' of snow and higher drifts; being without electricity during Hurricane Irene; about Gommie and Pop's fire; also about the burglary when I was young; Ma and Gong in Hurricane Sandy; Mama and I living in NYC on September 11;  we already talk about Newtown.
• adventures:  my archaeological dig in Carthage, Tunisia; Mama climbing the rocks near the lighthouse in Maine; Mama and her family seeing the sunset over the mountains and driving fast to catch it over the ocean; Mama going skiing with Ma and Gong;  
• inspiring:  my cousin who found his calling as a Catholic monk in France; Goo working so hard to be a doctor; Ma and Gong immigrating to a foreign country (and their parents doing it before them!); my "life in a bed" and getting better; 
• funny or embarrassing:  my speaking to 1000 teachers only to discover later that my shirt was on inside-out!  Mama almost fainting when we found out we were having twins!  Gommie, who was in a cast with a broken foot, then getting gum in her hat's veil while shopping "in the big city."
• family history:  my ancestors fighting the Civil War; Mama's grandfather leaving China for Bangkok; Gong as a Buddhist monk; Gommie's dad fighting in WWII; the KKK running Gommie's grandad out of town because he was Catholic; (later) Gommie's mom being saved from an abusive husband by her brother; Pop's grandmother running a boarding house at the turn-of-the-20th century; Pop's mom going all the way to Berkleey in the twenties and earning her MA in History with a thesis on the Colfax riots; my great grandmother working at Camp Hulen during WWII and meeting her husband there;
• trips to Disneyworld and Disneyland (both Mama and I as kids separately, as adults together, and now with the kids); Nashville, Austin, San Antonio, Houston, "the bay," New Orleans twice (once during a tropical storm, no less), Chicago, Washington DC, Arkansas, Georgia, Philly, Boston, and NYC plus Greece, Italy, Turkey, Tunisia, England, France, Japan, Korea, and Thailand.

But there have to be others.  

For those of you who know me IRL (in real life) as they say, what would you add?  I'm going to work on remembering and valuing them as stories to pass along.

As a friend commented to me, when I said I couldn't remember many good stories:

Maybe there are no good ones. There are explanations of how things came to be, how you learned to do or not do things, things that remind you of other things. I think you just observe and talk - and observe and listen to your children, because they have stories too. Everyone should have the experience of being heard and considered.

More Family Food Fad Fines

I had the wonderful opportunity to sit and talk about family recipes with Gommie's older sister, Aunt Quilt, inspired by my recent reading of Fashionable Food.  Here are some of the recipes I photographed, more for posterity than for reading off the blog (I have copies of the originals):

Red Velvet Cake--I think this is Bammie's recipe (Gommie and Aunt Quilt's mother) in Gommie's writing

"The Green Stuff"--A favorite in Aunt Quilt's family

Turtle Cake

Carrot Cake, the one Aunt Quilt made for Gommie's 60th, I believe

Part 2 of Carrot Cake

The famed cheesecake of Mrs. Korm

THE custard pie recipe Aunt Quilt uses, this time chocolate.  She made Coconut Custard for Gommie's birthday,  just omit cocoa and add 2 handfuls of coconut to the custard and then sprinkle more on top of the meringue (which is just 3 whites and 6 T sugar whipped)

Mmmm, I remember buttery-pepper Pasca Manale's shrimp from childhood.

I think I remember sour cream shrimp, too.

We did Bana Caulda at Aunt Quilt's house at least once.  You simmer the above in  an electric skillet then  cook beef, shrimp, fish, and vegetables in it.

Not the family's Shrimp Remoulade but one from the local department store.

Aunt Quilt is a great baker.  Here, Sally Lunn bread.

And biscuits.

Hmmm, I didn't know there was more than cheese in cheese grits.

Watergate Salad--with Cool Whip AND mini-marshmallows!

Aunt Quilt really likes this Milk Chocolate Bar Cake.

These are from Gommie's dessert recipe files, to supplement the ones from Aunt Quilt.  On the second day of our visit, Gommie had found her great-grandmother Grammy's recipes, stashed in a 1915 cookbook put out by a baking soda company, but I totally forgot to copy those before I left.  :(  Next time.  Here are ones I did remember to copy on the last day we were in Texas.

My own typed Coca Cola cake recipe

Bammie's Christmas Lizzies

Bammie's lemon pie, apparent in Gommie's dad's handwriting

A famous "Peach Pie-Cake" recipe

A recipe card Gommie typed for her "hope chest," from Bammie's recipes

They say this is a great Poppy Seed Cake.

Grandma Hungry's sister-in-law's lemon chess pie!

Lemon Chess Pie part 2

"Sister's pralines," meaning those of Grandma Hungry's sister Blythe

Terrible name, apparently good cake--with baby food!

Gommie likes these, too!

Handwritten version, by Gommie, of Mrs. Korm's famous Cheese Cake.

Bammie's Divinity

Bammie's "Red Cake," aka Red Velvet Cake

Bammie's recipe

I think these are Great-Grandmother Hungry's Forgotten Cookies.

Great-Grandmother Hungry's Date Pinwheels

Cont.

The custard pie again.

Part 2

My Family Goes On!

My uncle just discovered that we're distantly related to Celine Dion via a relative in 17th-century France (Ploujean, Bretagne to be exact)!

The Family Tree

Gommie has long been very interested in our family history, gathering family photos and bits of lore, though leaving much of the archival work of birth, death, and marriage dates to my Uncle T and others.  Years ago, she gave me a binder full of her evidence as well as a chart of our family members.  I studied it then, mainly intrigued by the Confederate ancestor who reportedly fired the first shots at the battle of Vicksburg (and his son who penned his own memoirs as The Littlest Rebel), the Texas blockade runner during the Civil War, and such.  My Aunt Sis, on my dad's side, had always said we were Welsh and Scottish, but I only just found the proof in Gommie's notebook--but we're not Welsh (that it records), we're Irish!  My paternal grandmother has an ancestor, Alexander Mebane, who lived in Ireland from 1716 to 1793; eventually my Irish ancestors made it to Tennessee and then Louisiana.  I never knew we were a little bit Irish!  Now I'm doubly excited about St. Patrick's Day and soda bread, colcannon, and the like.  Turn on Riverdance!

My paternal grandfather's mother descended from Scottish stock, which I've known for a few years and we've celebrated at Scottish festivals and watching Brave.  Her relative, John Hay, was in Scotland, but in 1644 traveled to Virginia.  Family lore has long said we were related to a man executed for the murder of Mary, Queen of Scots's husband, Lord Darnley.  Lo! and behold, a John Hay was tried and executed with others for the plot.  A hundred or so years earlier than my ancestor traveled to the colonies.  Is our John Hay a descendant of the executed man?  I'm still looking into that as best I can.  But until I prove otherwise, I'm going to say yes!  I mean, who can pass up an ancestor who worked for Mary, Queen of Scots, and once was sent as an emissary to Queen Elizabeth I?  Coincidentally (and if I understand this correctly), before he was executed, John Hay was commendator (lay abbot) of Balmerino, a Cistercian monastery--and his descendant, my aunt's cousin, is even now a Trappist monk in France!

One last story has also recently come to us.  My maternal grandfather had a best friend with whom he fought side-by-side in WWII (through North Africa, up through Italy, and into Germany, I believe), Tom Brady, after whom my uncle was named.  Apparently, Tom Brady's descendants recently told us that my grandfather's unit is the one that captured and briefly held young Nazi Joseph Ratzinger, who was later released on the understanding that he had been forced to join.  Of course, that young man eventually became the current Pope Benedict XVI.

Two big mysteries remain:  are we Welsh?  and who are the ancestors of my paternal grandfather, about whose father (who abandoned his first wife and numerous kids to start a second family in the same town, leaving his never-divorced wife to start a boarding house in the early 20th century) we know absolutely nothing.

Thanks, Gommie, for keeping the family history!