Buttermilk, Part 1: This is Real Life

Lest we all forget, in a blogosphere loaded with carefully composed scenes, expensive camera equipment (yes, you, with your "amateur" Canon/Nikon, it is expensive), and a whole lotta Photoshop, I give you my Kodak point-and-shoot masterpiece:

I call it, "Real Life." Because this is real, y'all.

I would've loved to shoot this meal with a nice camera and a nice lens next to some nice natural light. For obvious, starving-studenty reasons, the first two are totally out of the question, and, I'm sorry, but we just don't eat dinner before sunset in the winter.

Some days, this is just how we roll. Netflix. Big Gulp. A stained plastic spoon. Despite its humble appearance, this was a magnificent dinner. Mr. Lemon braised some short ribs before throwing them in a Dutch oven with some carrots, onion, celery, red cabbage, beef stock, and herbs. Comfort food at its finest.

We have a half-gallon of buttermilk hogging some valuable fridge space, so I whipped up a quick batch of buttermilk biscuits from the Land O' Lakes Treasury of Country Recipes. A personal favorite.

I have a sentimental attachment to this cookbook. When I was a kid, I played the piano. A lot. Competitively. By third or fourth grade I was practicing an hour a day, along with my sisters. At one point we owned five pianos.

Go big or go home, right?

Anyway, we had one piano in the basement in a closet that had been fashioned on a platform to protect valuables from flooding which struck several times a year. I sometimes practiced in that room, depending on which pianos were in use by other sisters. The closet also housed our vast (impressive, really) dress-up collection and a shelf full of random books that didn't make the cut upstairs. On the shelf was the Land O' Lakes cookbook. I'd read it for almost the entire practice time, if I could get away with it.

That closet was remarkably soundproof.

I found a copy of the cookbook at a used book store a few years ago. They had a fill-the-bag-for-$20 deal, so I snagged it and brought it home to my overflowing cookbook stash.

The kicker? The Land O' Lakes official recipe for buttermilk biscuits calls for shortening.

Really, Land O' Lakes? You're going to let that plug for your product get away from you?

Then again, every recipe that calls for butter also tags on the obligatory "or margarine." It was the 90s, what do you want?

Buttermilk Biscuits, adapted from the Land O' Lakes Treasury of Country Recipes

2 cups all-purpose flour (I like unbleached, personally)
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup butter
3/4 cup buttermilk

1. Heat oven to 425 degrees.
2. Combine dry ingredients.
3. Cut in butter (with two butter knives and then your fingers because you are too cheap to buy a pastry cutter).
4. Stir in buttermilk until moistened.
5. Knead for 1 minute on a lightly floured surface. Dough should be smooth.
6. Roll out dough to 3/4" thickness. Cut into rounds (with a cup because of the excuse found in step 3) and place on cookie sheet.
7. Bake for 10 to 14 minutes.