Sometimes I feel like baking and cooking is a lost art. There’s nothing wrong with grabbing a meal on the go, but don’t forget to purposefully take time to make your family the meals they love. Those dinners when there is time to linger around the table are priceless. Thankfully we are still in the season of life that we do sit down for dinner and everyone is home. 
Annabelle is 11 and she is wanting to learn how to make our favorite family recipes. Do you have a recipe box? I have neglected mine since Pinterest happened, but Annabelle has been picking through those index cards and we’ve been making old recipes I forgot about.
This past week we made angel biscuits. I have fond childhood memories of eating a minimum of six of these at a meal. They are best fresh and warm from the bread basket served with butter and honey.
I think I’m on a mission lately to preserve the things from the past that can be handed down to my children. Recipes and cooking together being a very important thing I want to pass on to the kids. I refuse to let our day to day life get too busy for the good old fashioned fun things like baking and even writing out a recipe card. I love seeing the handwriting of my mom, aunts, and grandma’s on those 3×5 cards.
Heloise’s Angel Biscuits is the recipe we like best. She was a blogger before her time with recipes and tips for the newspaper. She’s an interesting lady if you want to read more about this columnist HERE. I almost want to get a physical newspaper again. Her daughter has taken over her writing.
Ingredients
1 package dry yeast
¼ cup warm water
2 ½ cups flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
½ cup shortening
1 cup buttermilk
Directions
Dissolve the yeast in the warm water; set aside. Mix the dry ingredients in the order given, cutting in the shortening as you normally do for biscuits or pie dough. Stir in the buttermilk and yeast mixture, and mix thoroughly. The dough is ready to refrigerate.
When it’s time to make the biscuits, turn the dough out onto a floured board and knead lightly. Roll out and cut with a biscuit cutter, placing them in a greased pan. Let the dough rise slightly before baking in a 400-degree oven for about 12 to 15 minutes.
Now that you’ve made biscuits from scratch, I’ll give you a tip on an EASY main dish. Grab a bag of frozen Italian meatballs and dump them in a crockpot with a bottle of BBQ sauce. This dinner features the Kirkland Italian meatballs and Costco’s frozen mixed veggie blend. The star of the plate is those biscuits, but the meatballs are satisfying too. Vegetables are just the responsible thing to have with the meal.
BBQ Meatballs
Ingredients
Desired number of frozen Italian Meatballs (Kirkland brand is our preference)
1 bottle of BBQ sauce
Directions
Heat meatballs in a sauce pan with BBQ sauce or throw in a crockpot. It’s that easy! Voila
Don’t let meal planning, cooking, or baking intimidate you. We put our biggest effort into the biscuits and made the rest of the meal an easy one. We aren’t all Susie Homemakers that have the time to do much more then this. Even more special then the biscuits was the time spent with my daughter. It gives us a comfortable moment to chat about the day and learn tips on manning a rolling pin.
I plan our meals out a few days at a time and make sure I have what we need to bake and enjoy one another’s company. I feel very strongly that our kids need our full attention, we all need less screens, and homemade biscuits have to be healthy. Okay, maybe not, but baking them is satisfying and we all need good mental health!
