Buttermilk biscuits and my grandma (the other one)

Day 9

For the month of August, I’ve accepted David McIlroy’s 30 days of writing challenge ✍🏻

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The Inner Traveler is a digital cafe where chairs are pulled up, warm beverages are poured, gorgeous pastries are on the bar, and baskets of warm blankets tucked into corners. It’s a humble invitation into my inner world.

If you’d like to show your appreciation, buy me a croissant. It pairs wonderfully with coffee...and life in general.

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I’m in the process of breaking in my new little kitchen, visiting the the thrift store down the street multiple times a week, picking up bits and bobs. I finally got a hold of a proper bowl and thought, “it’s time”.

Because this week I had a hankering for buttermilk biscuits.

dough disks stacked, ready for the oven

I’m a home baker, have been since I was ten years old. I even attended culinary school in my twenties, working in hotels and kitchen, thinking I would become a famous pastry chef. Ultimately, I decided the chef life wasn’t for me, and let the dream go.

But pottering about in my warm, cozy, flour-dusted kitchen? A well-stocked pantry full of various flours, brown and white sugars, cocoa powder, and the best vanilla?

Yes to that life.

this kind of messy I want in my life.

Back to buttermilk biscuits.

Let’s talk about my grandma. No, not the grandma who always talked about Singapore, my other grandma.

My grandma was born in Tennessee in 1906. Her name was Jessica (Jessie). Jessie had the BIGGEST cheek dimples. You could stick your finger in them they were so deep. Growing up, everyone called her Dimples. And you know what she did?

She legally changed her name to Dymples.

My grandma spoke with a noticeable southern accent, to which she’d always proclaim “I don’t hayhve an ayksint”.

She smoked Kent cigarettes that she kept tucked inside a soft vertical eyeglass case, the kind that snapped at the top. Frequently I’d hear her ask, to no one in particular, “where ‘ma smokes?”.

I remember my mom and I visiting her and my great-aunt (her sister) Aunt Sara in hot and sticky Bradenton, Florida, where all grandmas and their siblings end up.

Aunt Sara (or in keeping with the accent, Aunt Say-ra) was born before the turn of the century (yes, THAT century). She complete nursing school around WW1, never had children, and according to my mom, had THE softest hands. My mom also recalled “Aunt Sara never got mad at you, she just became very disappointed”, which apparently was a thousand times worse.

I have sharp memories of my great-aunt and grandma sitting on their avocado green couch, or as my grandma called it, “the davenport”, watching Wheel of Fortune, cooing over Pat Sajak.

I didn’t really know my grandma all that well; she never visited us in San Diego, really. My mom was always sore about this. They fought a lot, always bickering. I didn’t like being around them, mostly because it was like watching my relationship with my mom play out in real time. Or seeing the future.

Since thinking about that is painful, and our lineage is fraught with mother-daughter wounds, this week I turned to biscuits.

always in a cast iron skillet

*Pro-tip: I always pop my cast iron skillet in the hot oven with a bit of oil drizzled on the bottom. When the dough disks are laid in the pan and bake up, the bottoms get a good caramelizing.

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