Making Biscuits with Nannie

When I was a little girl I have the best memories of my Nannie and PawPaw’s farm. It is in rural Georgia and while they never (to my knowledge) had animals beyond their sweet mutt, Pug, we always called it the farm (and still do).

My Nannie used to have a huge garden and grew the best tomatoes and spinach, among other things. She toasted pecans from her tree and made the tastiest pear preserves. When we stayed with her, she’d make biscuits for breakfast and I’d coat them with the sweet syrup from the mason jars, leaving the pears behind and using up all the syrup. 

Since then, it’s stuck in my head that I wanted Nannie to teach me to make her biscuits, but here at 37 and 87 years old, it still hadn’t happened yet. It’s funny how we can want to do things, but if you don’t pick and date and put it on the calendar, time just sort of slips by.

So a month ago we set a date to make it happen and Sunday the girls and I drove down to Mom’s house to drive to Nannie’s Monday morning.

We arrived mid-morning and Nannie had a craft table set up for the kids (Hailey, Kaitlyn, and their second cousin, Oly). She showed them how to make ornaments from old Christmas cards cut into circles.

The girls, especially Hailey, took right to it.

We lucked out with a day that felt like fall. It was a little misty and cloudy, so we decided to tromp through the field to help pick up pecans. I remember doing the same thing, quite possibly with the same old white bucket, when I was a kid. I taught Hailey how to use two pecans in one hand to crack them open. 

We walked back when our stomachs started grumbling. Nannie had pulled enough vegetable and beef soup out of the freezer to feed us all. The recipe I shared recently for beef and vegetable soup is based on Nannie’s iconic soup that never seems to be exactly the same, but is always delicious. That’s the beauty of soup- you can put almost anything into it!

While the soup warmed, we decided it was biscuit making time! I’ve tried enough biscuit recipes to resign to the fact that a good biscuit needs Crisco. And they are actually quite simple to make. Three ingredients: self-rising flour, Crisco, and buttermilk. 

Somehow these three simple ingredients transform into the best little biscuits. Nannie told me her mom used a juice glass to cut out her biscuits, but my memory will always be of Nannie’s metal biscuit cutter, which makes the perfect sized biscuits, about 5 kid-bites big.

15 minutes in the oven and they came out golden brown. With a little butter and pumpkin butter as topping options, we all made those 12 biscuits disappear in record time.

Another perfect biscuit topping for fall? Check out this sweet potato butter recipe!

The girls giggled loudly on the porch while we sat inside at the table, chatting and enjoying our biscuits. It was such a nice time; one of those days when time slows down and you lose track of it. One of those days that let’s you forget for a moment how chaotic and noisy the rest of the world is. One of those days that makes me think I actually belong living out in the country.

I’m so grateful we made that memory. Four generations, hanging out together, eating biscuits and picking up pecans. It really doesn’t get any better than that.

Is there a memory you want to make that hasn’t happened yet? 

Let me encourage you to pick a date and put it on the calendar. Family time and memories is what it’s all about. 💜

Other good Nannie memories include the first time I tried to make her pickles (I really need to do it again!) and of course, all our wonderful Thanksgiving memories from the farm.