buttermilk biscuits + half broke horses

1. I love biscuits.

2. I loved this book.

Those two points have absolutely nothing to do with each other, except that the book gets a body thinking about simplicity on a number of occasions -- what do we really need? How much do we really need? Does all this stuff have anything to do with what we really need? And this book made me remember -- the simpler, the better.

Biscuits are simple food. Flour. Salt. Leavener. Fat (mmm). Dairy. Heat. wha-bam.

The book, a "true-life novel," is narrated by a ranching mama, who is also the author's late grandmother. I loved this passage about simple food:

"I kept the cooking basic as well. I didn't make dishes the way fancy eastern housewives did -- souffles and sauces and garnished this and stuffed that. I made food. Beans were my specialty...My recipe was fairly simple: Boil beans, salt to taste...When we weren't having beans, we had steak. My recipe for steak was also fairly simple: Fry on both sides, salt to taste. With the steak came potatoes: Boil unpeeled, salt to taste...I liked to say that what my cooking lacked for in variety, it made up for in consistency. 'No surprises,' I'd tell the cowboys, 'but no disappointments, either.'"

I don't have a loyalty to any particular biscuit recipe. Cook's Illustrated can get their panties in a bunch about getting the perfect biscuit all they want, but it's pretty hard to bungle a biscuit recipe. The only thing I refuse to do is cut my biscuits into rounds. Totally inefficient (sheesh). We ain't got no purty biscuits 'round these parts.

But just in case you ever forget, here's a pistol-swingin' little reminder for wherever you hang your skillet. 

Because biscuits really do make everything better.

{click to download}