Honey Butter Biscuits for a Saturday Morning

The kid and I needed a slow Saturday morning with a big sitdown breakfast of eggs, bacon, and homemade biscuits. The last few weeks, with the exception of my daughter's beautiful wedding, have been rough. It seems like there has been one challenge after another since mid-February. But spring is here and the garden is starting to fill out. South Texas is blanketed with wildflowers. The days are longer. There is much to be grateful for.

Sleeping in is hard around here. If it's not the dogs demanding to be let outside, the cat wants his breakfast or the chickens are cackling to be let out. So I was up by 7:30, which technically is sleeping in for a whole hour by weekday standards. I let the dogs out, fill the kettle so I can make coffee, dish out the dog food and cat food, and slip on some shoes to head out to the coop to let the chickens out for the day. By the time I head back in the house, I'm making coffee in my coffee press and starting breakfast.

We have eggs just about every day in some form or another, especially with the girls laying pretty frequently now, but I rarely make biscuits. This particular recipe was shared by my friend Bryan. We both enjoyed cooking together while he lived with us. He was in charge of the biscuit making while I made soup or something to go along with the biscuits. Ben calls them Bryscuits, so forever more they will be known in our household by that name.

A note about biscuit making. We were having some trouble getting the biscuits to rise nice and fluffy and after some investigation, I think I may have solved the issue. Apparently, according to the King Arthur Flour blog Flourish, when cutting biscuits it is important to use a sharp biscuit cutter or knife otherwise the dough pinches, preventing the biscuits from rising. Clean edges equal high rising biscuits.

Bryscuits (Honey Butter Biscuits)

• 2 Cups plain flour
• 3 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cream of tartar
• 1 Tbsp honey
• 1/2 cup cold butter, cut into small cubes
• 2/3 cup milk

Preheat oven to 425F. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. Add cold butter and using hands, work into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Alternatively, you may use a food processor. 

Add honey and milk, mixing in with a wooden spoon or spatula. Gently knead dough and roll out to about 3/4" thick onto a lightly floured surface. 

Using a sharp knife or a biscuit cutter to cut biscuits into the desired shape. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until brown.

Serve warm with butter and plenty more honey (or your favorite jam). 

My Little Urban Farmstead: Raising Chickens and Gardening in the City

I would like to show you around my little backyard homestead.

Growing up in Ohio I was always used to putting in the garden around early April and almost ignoring it while still getting a good crop of vegetables. I've struggled with having a productive garden here in Texas for the last couple of years and I think it's mainly because I start my garden too late in the season. The plants don't have a good start before the heat sets in. This is the earliest I've ever planted a garden. It's in the spot where my original chicken coop used to be for the last few years so it's quite fertile. I'm feeling hopeful that this year I'll be able to harvest plenty to feed my son and me, and maybe even a little extra to share.

I planted tomatoes, romanesco (if you don't know what this is, Google it. It is beautiful), lettuce, carrots, zucchini, cucumbers, dill, basil, spinach, thyme, and beets. I always plant marigolds to repel pests. The dill usually gets sacrificed to caterpillars. Five days from now I should have little sprouts coming up from the seeds I planted. I never cease feeling excitement and wonder at the little sprouts pushing up towards the sky. Life renewed.

My old coop was a disaster and I worried nightly about predators getting in. One night a young opossum did get in and cornered one of my hens. Luckily I woke up to hear the screams my poor frightened girl was making. If you ever hear a chicken scream in fright you will never forget it. I ran out barefoot, scooped her up, and herded everyone into the kitchen where they spent the night. Everyone has kept chickens in their kitchen, right?

The new coop is much nicer, but it was quite the challenge...

I was excited to be the first in line when this coop came up as a freebie on a chicken group I'm in. The catch was I had to move it. The original person who was supposed to move it for me had a nice trailer and all of the equipment to properly move a building this size but he backed out last minute. I posted on Craigslist and found someone else who promised he could move the coop on the back of his truck. Moving day came and he was late meeting me at the site to pick it up. When he finally showed up he's driving an older pickup with a small bed. I had a bad feeling.

I wish I'd saved the photo of the coop loaded onto his truck. It looked like Beverly Hillbillies moving into town. It was a disaster waiting to happen, but he and his partner insisted that they didn't need to take it apart to move it. It didn't sit properly on the bed of the truck and it towered over the road. We didn't even get a half mile down the road when the wind caught the door and whipped it off, sending it flying directly at me and my son who were following in my Jeep. By sheer luck, it didn't hit us or anyone else and instead shattered all over the road. They had failed to properly tie down the door. I was a nervous mess the rest of the way home. 

Somehow we made it the 30-minute drive to my house. We passed a police officer and it was with great relief he didn't pull them over for having an improper load. I explain to them where I want it to go. They unloaded it at the side of the house but insisted they couldn't get it to the back yard because of a low hanging tree. By this time I was done with them, so I told them to just go and I'd figure out something on my own. I might have muttered a few curse words under my breath as they left. 

The coop sat there with the roof off and no door, totally useless to me, for four months. I had to stare at its behemoth teal form every time I stood at the kitchen sink. It was with the gracious help of a friend that it was moved in to place and the door another friend gifted me installed. If it wasn't for his help I'd probably still be staring at the darn thing out my window. Now that it is all set up where it is supposed to be and my chickens are all settled in, this hippy girl is happy. I have four hens contently roosting in the coop and now that the days are longer all four are gifting me daily eggs. 

As I told my friend, I'm quite content being the neighborhood crazy chicken lady.