Running Blind Read online

  Snow Cream

  Milk

  Sugar

  Vanilla flavoring

  Snow

  Mix the first three together until you like the way it tastes. (Hint: try a fairly small batch at first, so maybe 1½ or 2 cups of milk, then sugar and flavoring to taste.) It takes more sugar than you’d expect. Then fold in the snow until it reaches an un-runny consistency. I don’t know if “un-runny” is a word, but it’s certainly a description.

  Eat.

  If you make too much, you can freeze it. The consistency is different after that, but the taste is still there. Are Southerners the only ones who make snow cream? Surely not, though I admit a lot of people make faces at the idea of eating snow. Of course, they’re from places where the snow is yellow, or gray, or any other unappetizing color. Here in the South, and out in the rural areas, the snow is as white as … well, you know what it’s as white as. And we eat it. —Linda Howard

  Biscuits

  2 cups White Lily self-rising flour

  ⅓ cup Crisco (yep, the solidified kind)

  ¼ teaspoon salt (I add salt because real Southern biscuits have a very faint salty taste)

  Buttermilk—just enough so the dough forms a ball, but 1 cup is about right. You might have to add another tablespoon or so. I don’t even measure it, I just keep stirring until that ball forms and there’s no dry flour in the bottom of the bowl.

  ½ stick (4 tablespoons) butter, melted

  Preheat oven to 425°F.

  Using your hand, squeeze together the flour, Crisco, and salt; it’s easier than it sounds, and a lot faster than using a pastry blender or fork. Stir in the buttermilk until the dough forms a ball in the bowl; I use nonfat buttermilk, and it works just fine.

  Grease a cookie sheet or biscuit pan, but a cookie sheet is about the right size. I use butter-flavored Pam to spray the pan. For that matter, I cover the baking pan with aluminum foil and spray the foil, because I hate washing baking pans! Anything to make cleaning up easier :-).

  Dump the dough onto a floured surface, and sift a very light covering of flour over the top of the ball. DO NOT KNEAD THE DOUGH AT ALL. If you do, it’ll make the biscuits tough. The tenderness of biscuits depends on the amount of oxygen in the dough, and kneading works the oxygen out. Use a rolling pin, the smallest, lightest one you can find, to very gently roll out the dough until it’s about ½ inch thick. Using a medium-sized biscuit cutter, cut out the biscuits and place them on the baking pan so they’re touching each other; this forces them to rise since they don’t have room to spread out. This should make about 8 biscuits.

  Don’t roll the leftover pieces together to try to make another biscuit or two. Just take the dough tidbits and arrange them on the baking pan with the biscuits. They’re odd sizes and shapes, of course, but you’d be surprised how this will turn out.

  Bake in the oven for 8 to 9 minutes. These biscuits won’t be brown on top; if you want a brown top crust, turn on the broiler for a minute, but watch them very closely. While the biscuits are baking, melt the half stick of butter, and as soon as you take the biscuits out of the oven brush the melted butter on top of them, including the odd biscuit tidbits. Tip: Even if you’re using salted butter, which I recommend, you may want to add a dash of salt to the melted butter anyway. The difference to the finished product is amazing. If you follow this recipe, guaranteed you’ll have fat, pretty, incredibly tender biscuits—and kids will love the biscuit tidbits. For that matter, a lot of the adults in my family prefer the tidbits over the actual biscuits. Go figure.

  If you have any biscuits left over from the meal, put them in a Ziploc bag. To reheat, wrap them in a damp paper towel and microwave 15 to 30 seconds, depending on how hot you want them. The damp paper towel restores the tenderness.

  I’ve made it my mission to teach as many people as possible to make biscuits, because it’s a dying art. The most important things to remember about biscuit-making are: don’t mess with the dough, and make sure the biscuits are touching each other in the pan. If you feel an awful urge to knead the dough, then use it to make something else, because the biscuits will be heavy and tough. —Linda Howard

  LJ’s Corn Bread

  3 boxes Jiffy corn muffin mix

  2 sticks of butter, soft

  16 ounces sour cream

  16-ounce can creamed corn

  16-ounce can whole-kernel corn, drained

  4 eggs

  Preheat oven to 350°F.

  Mix all the ingredients together, pour into an 11 × 15-inch pan, and bake for 45 minutes, until good and browned.

  This makes a HUGE amount. I’m sure it can be cut down by half, or even a third, but I don’t have those measurements. I can’t figure out how to come up with ⅓ or ⅔ of 4 eggs. Go ahead and make the whole batch, and forget the math. This is as good as any cake. —Linda Jones

  Never Fail White Cake

  2 cups sugar

  3 cups flour

  ⅔ cup shortening

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  2 teaspoons baking powder

  1 cup water

  4 egg whites

  1 teaspoon baking powder

  1 teaspoon vanilla

  Preheat oven to 375°F.

  Cream first six ingredients in a large bowl, about 2 minutes with an electric mixer. Beat egg whites until frothy. Add baking powder and beat until stiff. Fold the vanilla and beaten egg whites into flour mixture. Pour into greased and floured pans—two 9-inch pans or three 8-inch pans, depending on whether you want thin layers or thick. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes.

  I made this cake when I was seventeen and living at home. My sister broke a plastic fork in it, trying to cut a bite-sized piece. It failed miserably. I never figured out why. This gives a whole new meaning to “write what you know.” Proceed at your own risk. —Linda Jones

  Tuna Casserole

  2 cups cooked rice

  1 to 1½ cups vegetables of choice (mixed vegetables, corn, green beans—whatever strikes your fancy), drained

  1 can cream of mushroom soup

  2 cans tuna, drained

  ½ cup milk

  8 ounces shredded cheese (cheddar, pepper jack, or monterey jack)

  Salt and pepper to taste

  Preheat oven to 350°F.

  Mix together the rice, vegetables, mushroom soup, tuna, milk, half of the cheese, and salt and pepper to taste. Bake for 35 minutes, then sprinkle remaining cheese on top and return to oven until slightly browned.

  When Linda H. said I needed to provide a recipe for the tuna casserole, I was momentarily dumbfounded. A recipe? For tuna casserole? You put together what’s in the cupboard, cover it with cheese, cross your fingers, and bake. We had tuna casserole so often growing up, our mealtime prayer began “Give us this day our daily tuna.” You can use noodles instead of rice, cream of celery soup instead of mushroom, and if you have any other leftover veggies, throw them in. It doesn’t ever have to be the same meal twice! —Linda Jones

  On Thursday, April 21, 2011,

  we lost our best friend Beverly Beaver,

  who wrote as Beverly Barton.

  There hasn’t been a day since

  that we haven’t thought about her,

  heard her voice, her laughter,

  and realized anew that,

  though we have so many memories,

  there will never be enough of them.

  So this one’s for you, Beverly.

  Love you, miss you.

  Make them all behave, up there in Heaven,

  and mind their manners.

  BY LINDA HOWARD

  A Lady of the West

  Angel Creek

  The Touch of Fire

  Heart of Fire

  Dream Man

  After the Night

  Shades of Twilight

  Son of the Morning

  Kill and Tell

  Now You See Her

  All the Queen’s Men

  Mr. Perfect

  Open Season

  Dyin