We have friends arriving soon for a few days' visit. Thought that they might enjoy breakfast one morning with homemade biscuits and sausage gravy. It has been a few years since I have made biscuits so thought a test of the old recipe was in order. Bingo!
I have included that site above. I make 2% milk from morning coffee cream by adding a little cold water to fill up the 1/3 cup portion of the recipe. The self-rising flour was also over 2 years old, but still worked. Fresh flour will be used for guests.
My try with this batch was a little wet compared to the video. Adding some flour to the cutting board as I folded worked just fine. Do not over work the dough. I folded 7 times and cut 2 biscuits and also baked the leftover "play dough."
These biscuits were a real treat for us.
Give this a try if you want to be the biscuit king in your kingdom. Doubling or tripling the recipe works just fine.
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LAND CLEAN UP (FINALLY)
We had two dump trucks of brush, fallen and dead trees hauled out. The Kubota Skid Steer (above) is one of the most useful workhorses for this kind of job. The kid operating this was a surgeon with a very special skill set.
We now have a cleaned out trail I can drive the side-by-side on to maintain a big part of this small acreage. We also had some low hanging pine tree branches cut away from the house.
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FEBRUARY LAWN MOWING (PLANNED)
It was 81 degrees yesterday and I had plans for a second day of front lawn mowing/mulching. By end of day, that front yard project would have been completed, checked off the long list of outside chores.
But the wife yelled at me as I started down the driveway. A yell that stopped me dead and pissed me off. I was not expecting her to do anything like that. "Why yell at me" I thought. A flat left rear tire was why. I filled the tire with hand pump air and limped into the garage with the tire flat again.
The air compressor filled the tire instantly and I could hear the leak. Fairly large cut in the rear tire from something large and pokey.
I used a tire repair plug kit for the first time and it worked perfectly. Lawn mower tires, side-by-side tires and equipment such as this often requires a quick tire repair fix somewhere out in the fields or on the back roads. The repairs will last damn near forever. Anyone who runs any off-road equipment has several of these repair kits with them at all times.
I decided to check all of the other tires for air and found the left front also flat. Front wheel zero-turn tires are a major pain in the ******** for going flat. So much so that many folks go to the hard front tires that never goes flat.
The tire shop in town told me that they could not/do not repair tire tubes because inner tubes now are made with different materials on which the old inner tire repair methods do not work.
So, the new zero-turn is down and the work I wanted to do, well, you probably know the drill!
I will find an answer for this situation tomorrow when I go to the fellow I purchased the mower from. I have had too many flats with these front tires already and only have 30 hours on the machine. But I not want a rough ride from hard front rubber tires. What to do?
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JIBBER JABBER
From the story above, it is still rings true in my 80th year. Things always fail on the weekends when the availability to get repairs done is nearly impossible.
Thirty degrees colder today with rain in the forecast for the next few days. The bride and I did get some hand-trimming done of bushes and trees yesterday. Added tree fertilizer spikes to many of the small tree shrubs around the front yard.
I am noticing more and more that all of the hundreds of things I use to do with ease and without issue are no more. I am not liking aging and hate asking anyone for help or assistance. It is a man thing. BUT, I can still function well enough to get basic outside chores attended to. Right now, I believe I have one more good year in me with hopes for this to extend for a few more years. And we have good neighbors that will help.
As for worldly worries, I may be leaving more and more of these off the posting table here. Sitting in lawn chairs with my wife yesterday, surveying our kingdom, with a warm breezed blowing and two cats rolling at our feet was a simple slice of heaven. We both believe we can become experts at this behavior.
Appreciate the visit this week. Have a very good week. God Bless.