The Repurposed Pot Lid

I'd missed it.

After hundreds of biscuits enjoyed at my mother-in-law's table, I never noticed the process.

There were either biscuits on the table or there weren't yet, but the “process” of baking biscuits didn't interest me. Then. “The process” is a hot topic in recent publications, with whole sections devoted to making biscuits. It is the newest old thing.

A biscuit is a simple thing if you leave it alone and let it be itself. If you add an egg and raisins you nearly have a scone, add yeast and it is a bun, have it with sausage gravy and it is heaven in a plate.

Her biscuits carried a reflection of pioneer women who made-do during a migration or while living in a sod house.

The Kansas Woman placed a straw basket on the table containing biscuits on a thin, round aluminum pan. A hole in the center revealed that it was not a pan but a repurposed pot lid.

The lid is ten inches in diameter and the KW said her mother used it for biscuits for as long as she could recall.

Her older brother arose first and had biscuits rising before the house was fully awake.

David baked them in the very hot oven of the wood-burning cook stove fueled by corn cobs.

The lid didn't surprise me since my parents were also children of the depression and repurposed things over and over until they were worn out.

My Phillips line was as dedicated to repurposing as they were to canned ham.

Long after the smoke house had sheltered the last cured ham, my family found the convenience of canned hams.

My grandmother repurposed the lid of the ham can as a biscuit pan.

I'm the third generation to use the thin metal canned ham lid as a biscuit pan and nothing else.

We've had a generation or two by now who have only known sheets of frozen biscuits, frozen patties of homogenized sausage and canned gravy. That's a shame.

There is an army of young cooks now who want to know how to do things even their grandmothers can't teach.

Motivated by fast food biscuits, they want hot fluffy biscuits coming out of their own ovens.

The ingredients are basic and you can venture off to bake cheese biscuits, Louisiana (hot) biscuits, apple biscuits, sweet potato biscuits, anything you can imagine.

Let's go play in the kitchen.

joenphillips@yahoo.com