At a particular height of poverty during college, and at a nearly-finished, too-long part-time job holder point, I began to feel quite drop-kicked and battered, myself. Just before moving back in with Mom and Dad (where the groceries are plentiful and the house is always clean), I realized that canned biscuits were even looking a little pricey for my budget. I remembered hearing stories of my sister’s poor days and how she’d come up with so many different dishes with potatoes. Yes, she’d understand.

I called Kris, and explained my situation.

“I have flour—can’t you make biscuits out of that?”

I know it sounds pathetic, but I’d never seen biscuits made from scratch. My parents started Bowden Electric in 1973, so by the time I came around in 1984, there wasn’t much time for from-scratch anything. Sure, we still had fried pork chops for dinner, but with a side of canned green beans, boxed mashed potatoes…and certainly no gravy without an envelope.

Kris shed some rays of hope into the phone as she passed down her knowledge of poor man’s biscuits. I was pleasantly surprised when she mentioned that they were drop biscuits, and that I wouldn’t have to locate some sort of make-shift rolling pin.

I’d need 2 cups of flour, 1 cup of milk and a stick of butter. Completely do-able.

I followed her instructions precisely and was ecstatic as my biscuits sent a warm aroma throughout my tiny kitchen. Upon removing them from the oven, I noticed that they were no beautiful subject, as the “dropped” nature left a rough, uneven surface, but the taste was absolutely incredible and the price couldn’t be beat. Even I could afford flour, milk and butter. Ha!

The next attempt at making Kris’ low-budget, delicious drop biscuits, had a slightly different outcome, I must admit. I think somewhere in the jumble I called a brain (quite the norm for a Master’s-classes, thesis-writing, walking confusion) I misremembered Kris’ biscuit recipe, mixed with Mom’s cobbler recipe. Of course, I’d written it down on and placed it in a pocket of my cookbook, but in my early 20s, I hadn’t yet, so discounted my memory.

Not to mention, Mom’s typical, Southern cobbler recipe was an easy one to form a sticky-note status in the forefront of the mind. “Cup of butter, cup of flour, cup of milk…”

Same as the real biscuit recipe, you melted butter in the oven to moisten the pan, then add the mixture. Of course, the milk and flour mixture was missing the other cup of flour, so as I spooned the biscuits into the pan, the drop was quite simplified by the more-liquid, less-sticky nature of the dough. Since I’d only made it once before, I didn’t really recall the consistency of the dough, so I blindly popped the biscuits into the oven and eagerly awaited shrill beeps from the timer.

Of course, when I did pull the biscuits from the oven, they were rather thin and flat. More like a chicken pot pie with no filling. They had run together instead of keeping their shapely circles and were more dense-crunchy than light-airy.

I marched over to the recipe book to find what I’d done wrong. Sure enough, the flour measurement stared blatantly out from the page as I began to recall the previous, -use-another-spoon-to-pry-the-dough-off-the-dropper dilemma. Not liquidy. Quite sticky, indeed.

But the beauty of this accident—I could afford to make another batch! Here’s to sticky spoons and less abused, drop biscuits!

Recipe:

2 c. all-purpose flour

1 c. milk

1 stick butter

Melt half a stick of butter in a cast-iron skillet or baking dish as the oven preheats to 400 F. Melt the remaining half stick of butter in the microwave and set aside. Stir flour and milk in a large bowl with a spoon until moistened. DO NOT use a whisk. Once dough has become sticky, remove the pan from the oven and drop tablespoon-sized amounts about 2 inches apart. Brush the tops with remaining butter and bake for 12-15 minutes.