Need to have it

Biscuit Method

Last week, as I was driving to work, I was halted by a large line of cars blocking traffic. This was a major intersection in Raleigh, so I didn't think much of it. The light was red on my side, so I got a chance to look around. It was Friday, payday, and there was a bank on the corner. This is not what the line was leading to. People weren't lining up to invest their money in interest bearing accounts. They were lined up for the drive through window of Hardee's. From the signs in the window I saw that they were releasing a new breakfast item: Biscuit Holes, ladies and gentlemen. Biscuit Holes, for those who didn't jump onto Hardee's (Carl's Jr., for those of you more Westward thinking) website to investigate, are small, cinnamon/sugar coated balls of dough shaped like doughnut holes. They are served with icing. Thanks Hardee's.

"Holes" has never been the most appropriate word to include in the names of food. But doughnut holes are made from the holes that are cut out of doughnuts. One must question whether those balls of dough should be called doughnuts, and the actual rings the doughnut holes since they do include a hole. But, it's cute and people like it, and they've been buying them for years.

Biscuit holes, though? I don't know how many culinarily inclined people will read this (I talk like thousands of people from all walks of life have this blog saved to their favorite places, when I know that two people that read this do cook and they do it well) but if you've made biscuits, there is no method to creating them that involves hole cutting. Biscuits, news flash, are not rings. They exist as a whole, flaky in texture and buttery, thick and warm. The only hole is the hole in my heart when there aren't any more biscuits. In baking there is a biscuit method, but that is a mixing process and has nothing to do with the biscuit itself. It's basically combining the liquid and dry ingredients separately and cutting fat into the dry. The biscuit method is used for pie crusts as well, and still, no holes.

Really, if you were walking down the street and someone with a scowl (or even a smile, it wouldn't matter) approached you and called you a name that included a noun followed by the word "hole" you wouldn't treat that as a compliment, let alone, breakfast. How easy would it have been to call these Biscuit Bites? It uses alliteration and sounds cute. How did that fail the test groups? How did it not make it out of a board meeting? How is Hardee's selling something that, by all logic and baking wisdom, shouldn't exist? I guess what's important is that they'll sell millions, I'll keep buying cinnamon raisin biscuits, and the rest of America can keep paying for what they don't use. Yes, you can buy my Biscuit Waste.

hobo signs

These old ghosts won't come out in sunshine like this. They hide in the closets and behind taped off doors with old, hard locks and long gone skeleton keys; easy enough to get open, but damn near impossible to pick. It'd take a spear of hard steel and years, which we don't have. The garages smell of old magazines and bygone summer days. The old golf clubs and shovels hang on the walls, and the sun can't stream through these windows. Dust won't live here. How can anything else? The Packard with the white top and chrome side rails still chugs its way along the sand roads. They haven't paved anything within forty miles. Nothing worth seeing anyway. The jail's way over that way, and the doctor's house is on the way. So's his misses. Kindly women with educated husbands will always make an extra space at the table. Especially kindly women who can't bear children of their own. With travel-weary eyes those two shovels that've been painted over on the front fence post a dozen times become stunningly clear. Why, there's only so much day left after the late afternoon train has gone through, so when you say, "Ma'am, I can dig a garden all the day long" you're damn well more likely to succeed when the sun's this far gone. Drifts of fried chicken with gravy and snap peas and smashed apples with cinnamon will almost double you over in that soil. Shouldn't even be called soil. Not like up north where the dirt under your fingernails almost smells as good as anything you're gonna get for puttin' it there. Here, it stains your nails and heats the skin. Only thing it's good for, people tell me, is rich folks layin' on it what need some rest and relaxation from their taxing vocations. In the study are the tin types of their parents up on the mantle. Their parents knew war, and their boys know it, but these kind souls don't know how to fight. They'll hum the songs, but they know none of the words. They found their trade and they worked it. A plow? That's for the negroes what carry their bags, or maybe their grandfolks. You work the folks around you and what doesn't drop off prospers, and these men prospered. Hotels and crystal glasses. They'll never put wood on their own fire. Never feel those splinters trying to get under their skin. Oh, we'll eat, boys. Tonight, we'll eat.