It's hard to imagine life without bread. It teases my tastebuds more than any other culinary delight. Loaf-bread, rolls, croissants, biscuits. The mere aroma of baking bread carries me back in time to Grandma's Blackburn's homemade buttermilk biscuits. Before dawn I could hear her lighting the kitchen wood-stove, the creak of the hinges, the clunk of the door. I'd snuggle deeper beneath the heavy crazy-quilt made of scraps from my uncles' work jeans. And I'd wait. I'd wait for that wonderful waft of fresh bread to permeate the air.
Grandma used fresh buttermilk, a big glob of lard, baking soda, powder, salt and flour. She put the kneaded dough in a big rectangle pan and sliced it into 3-inch squares. The quarter-inch thick brown crust on top protected the softest, fluffiest, biscuits I ever let melt in my mouth. When grandma pulled them from the oven, she'd lather them with gobs of fresh-churned butter. It seemed like magic to me.
It wasn't hard to get me out of bed--even on a cold winter morning. I'd wiggle out from beneath the covers and climb up on a kitchen stool to watch Grandma make her creamy Chocolate Gravy. My mouth watered as she added sugar to a pan of blackberries and stirred her fruit compost till it was boiling. The bacon was at least a quarter-inch thick. Grandma dipped it in seasoned flour before she dropped it into a lightly-greased iron skillet. Once the bacon was cripsy brown, she dumped in the seasoned flour, swirled it around till it browned in the bacon fat. Then she poured in fresh sweet-milk from an old yellow-ware pitcher, and stirred it till it thickened into milk gravy.
All the while I watched Grandma prepare her breakfast fare, my nose reminded me of those wonderful brown-crusted biscuits left covered with a calico feedsack, and warming above another pan which housed two-dozen scrambled eggs. Once the gravies thickened, Grandma poured them into ironstone bowls and placed them on the oil-cloth covered oak clawfoot table in the dining room.
About the time she got the entire feast upon the table-- complete with fresh-churned butter, and pitcher of sweet milk-- my uncles came in from outside and morning chores. Before daybreak, the cow was milked, the pigs were fed, the wood was split and stacked on the front porch for the day's heat. Often my brothers didn't get up and come in to eat until the chocolate gravy had congealed into a pudding. I liked mine more like the thickness of soup, warm and runny. Nothing has ever equaled Grandma's buttermilk wood-stove biscuits. I've had all kinds. But nothing can compare. I usually ate three. One smothered in butter and dripping with homemade strawberry jam. Another split and coated with milk gravy. I couldn't eat the last one which I loaded with chocolate gravy until I ate some eggs, bacon and a little bowl of fruit.
Just thinking about this, makes me wonder how a skinny little girl could hold so much food. It also stirs a hunger for those days so long ago. It reminds me of all those things which tempt me to break my healthy eating plan today. I know if Grandma was here, I'd succumb. The temptation brings to mind how hard it was for Jesus when tempted by Satan in the wilderness. After 40 days and 40 nights of fasting and praying, He rebuked Satan's tantalizing ideas to make stones into bread to prove He was the Son of God.
"But he [Jesus] answered, “It is written, “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Matthew 4:4 (Brackets mine.)
I don't know about you, but I just love this verse. "By every word that comes from the mouth of God." "Every word." "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John 1:1. The "word". From the mouth of God our earth was formed. Light separated the darkness with God's whisper. No...we cannot live by bread alone. And as great as my grandmother's biscuits were, I need more than bread alone to live in harmony with Him. I need His Word. Every day. All the time. selahV
