You will notice that I said “almost” any dish. To my great dismay, I cannot make the most simple of culinary dishes, homemade biscuits. You take your life in your hands when you attempt to consume one of my biscuit disasters.

 

I am a talented master of the needle arts; crochet, knitting, embroidery, tapestry, cross-stitch, and sewing. Well, you get the idea. The one needle art that I truly wanted to learn while I was growing up was tatting. Tatting is the art of making lace with a needle bobbin. It is very intricate and produces the most beautiful product. My great grandmother was a master of tatting.

 

After having my mother and both of my grandmothers attempt to teach me to make biscuits, MaMa made a deal with me, “If you learn to make biscuits, I will teach you to tat.” “Deal!” I exclaimed.

 

So every morning at 5:00 a.m., MaMa would wake me up and we would go to the kitchen for biscuit making lessons. On the third day of this debacle, PaPa, my great grandfather, came into the kitchen. “MaMa, don’t let that child make one more biscuit!” “But why PaPa?” MaMa asked, putting her hand on my shoulder. “Because the pigs won’t eat them, the chickens won’t eat them, and the neighbor boys are using them in their sling-shots.” That ended the biscuit lessons and any hope of MaMa teaching me to tat. I still don’t know how to tat.

 

My biscuits, well, those are still inedible.

 

When I was married, we first set up house in Port O’Conner, TX. We had very little money. My new husband was an Apprentice Seaman in the Coast Guard, stationed at the Port O’Conner station. This installation boasted one of the most beautiful and intelligent mascots I have ever seen, a gorgeous black and silver German Shepherd named Charlie.

 

My husband and I were living in a 74’ long 10’ wide mobile home, built the year I was born. It didn’t have any air conditioning, the front door was held open with a bungee cord to the rail of the front porch and closed at night with that same bungee cord fastened around the arm of the living room chair. We paid $74 a month rent.

 

Anyway, one afternoon about a week after we arrived, I made another attempt at making biscuits. My husband said, “How bad can they be?”  He valiantly ate half of one and said he was full. He went to work on his homework for the E-1 Seaman exam and I cleaned up the kitchen. Then I went and lay down on the bed under the fan next to my husband. We soon heard the clicking of claws padding down the hall to our bedroom. Charlie stood there looking at us. My husband petted him and said, “Let’s give him a biscuit and see what he does.” I agreed and we gave Charlie a biscuit. Charlie picked it up and dropped it, picked it up and dropped it. He picked it up one more time and trotted out the door. My husband grabbed up the car keys and we followed Charlie back to the station. We parked by the radio shack and ran around the corner of the boathouse just in time to see Charlie dropped my biscuit into the boat slip. He stood there and watched it sink out of sight before turning and trotting into the station. After that, I have never again attempted to make biscuits.

 

Although, the New Perry Hotel in Perry, GA, serves a little round hard ball and calls it a biscuit. I can make those, but you could use them in your muzzle-loading gun and kill someone with them.

 

I don’t bake biscuits because someone could get hurt dropping them on their toes or throwing them at someone in a food fight. I was contacted by the Department of Defense. They offered me a munitions contract. They wanted three humdred million of my biscuits to use in the next war!