Biscuits!

If you know me, you might know how much I love biscuits. I've never found the perfect recipe, but this one just might be it. I actually did everything wrong because I didn't have enough flour and I halved everything except the liquid (whoops), but I added a random amount of extra flour and baking powder and turned them into drop biscuits instead, and they were still amazing! And that's without using any real measuring spoons, too. Just imagine if I had actually followed the recipe.

I got this recipe here, from allrecipes.com. Instead of shortening, I used all (real) butter. Many reviewers said that half shortening, half butter preserved the flakiness but added flavor. Your call, of course. All I know is that I loved the butter version.

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 3 teaspoons sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1 egg
• 2/3 cup milk

Directions

1. In a small bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. Cut in shortening until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Beat egg with milk; stir into dry ingredients just until moistened.
2. Turn onto a well-floured surface; knead 20 times. Roll to 3/4-in. thickness; cut with a floured 2-1/2-in. biscuit cutter. Place on a lightly greased baking sheet. Bake at 450 degrees F for 8-10 minutes or until golden brown. Serve warm.

Spicy Chickpeas & Rice

Prep time: 30 min.

This "recipe" is the result of not having anything to eat for lunch and rummaging around for something to keep us from going to the grocery store hungry. Here's what I found:

• half a jar of garbanzo beans (chickpeas)
• a tin full of spices
• basmati rice

I started off thinking "spicy" and ended up thinking "Indian." The result, as you might imagine, was both spicy and Indian. I used a heaping teaspoon of chili powder, which was definitely more than necessary. Our mouths were on fire throughout the meal. But it turned out well enough, so I'll try to give you the quantities I used so you can try something similar the next time you are out of food.

1 c. basmati rice

1½ c. chickpeas

½ t. chili powder

1 t. tumeric

1 t. cumin

1 t. curry powder

¾ c. plain yogurt

1 c. chicken broth

a little salt

Follow the instructions on the package for cooking your rice. (Or don't, since our package instructions called for a 3:1 water:rice ratio and we've found 2:1 to work better.) Put your chickpeas in a saucepan and salt the heck out of them until they taste like French fries. Add chicken broth. Stir in the other spices and yogurt.

I think it's best served in a bowl with the rice on the bottom and the other stuff on top. Note: go easy on the chili powder and taste it before you add too much. Sarah and I literally each drank an entire liter of water ourselves. It was really spicy.

One final note. I'm just kind of making up these quantities (and some of the ingredients). I don't know exactly how much of any of this stuff I actually used, since I didn't have a measuring spoon. Also, I think the yogurt I used was actually German quark and it might have been sweetened (not plain). And I'm sure this would be just fine with regular rice.

The moral of this recipe is: "There's probably something to eat somewhere in your house."