Chicken and Biscuits

Just thinking about my grandmothers makes me smile. So much love from them and so much love for them. I miss them everyday.  Both were fantastic cooks, mamas and grandmothers.

My paternal grandmother, Nana, taught me a lot about cooking during our summers together. One thing that I held onto was how to fry chicken and make corn bread. My corn bread never tastes exactly like the batches we made but my chicken, seems to be right up there with hers. I fry  chicken for my dad every year on his birthday (in Crisco) and he says it tastes like Nana's. Although she has been gone for 16 years, it's like having her right there with me when I pull out the Crisco once or twice a year and make her chicken.

My maternal grandmother, Granny, made the best biscuits among other things. I loved hers because they didn't have all the fluffy middle stuff, which I know most people like. I on the other hand usually pull that fluff out when I get a biscuit from just about anywhere. I like the crispy outside part. Granny's biscuits were thin and square. She didn't cut them, just pinched the dough off and pressed it in the pan. All were always the same size and the pan was always full (that's why they were square-all pressed against each other in a cookie sheet type pan). These delightful little things I have not mastered. I have tried to make biscuits over the years and they were always OK. So I tried to make Granny Biscuits yesterday. They were flat-yay! They were not square- :(.  They were not good-:(  They looked (and felt ) more like a hockey puck!  But I will NOT give up! When I finally get something  close to what resembles a Granny biscuit, I will sit with a cup of coffee (in my cup that looks similar to hers) in her rocking chair and revel in what I have accomplished. I haven't had one of these biscuits in 26 years, that's how long she's been gone.

Tonight, I am thankful for the love and knowledge that my grandmothers passed on. Even though I wish I had had one more day with each of them to learn more, to write down recipes (if they had used any), to hug them once more but, I know that one day I will be sitting with them talking and laughing, and eating the best chicken and biscuits in Heaven.