Food Revolution Day: Biscuits Delivered

The hard part was over. I'd figured out what to make for Food Revolution Day, Jamie Oliver's  global day of action to help keep cooking skills alive. I'd made the biscuits - a life skill if there ever was one, passed down by hand through the generations.

Now, where to take the biscuits? My friend Betty would be an excellent prospect. She's the tallest member of a group of women I call "The Beautifuls." Each week they pull on their tap shoes and dance together in a small studio. They're perfectly coiffed, smartly dressed and always accessorize - the rest of us are ragamuffins in comparison. Did I mention they're from The Greatest Generation? Some of their early dance steps were beside visiting soldiers during World War II. They know how to live. They cherish the moments that bloom as memories.

Betty had missed a few classes, so what better excuse than to ring her doorbell, hand over the biscuits and check on her? Remember my goal to "think small" in the previous post? Baking for just one person has a power all its own. Very strong magic.

Hoping to amuse Betty, I dressed like a mom from the 1950s, baked Dorie Greenspan's Saint-Germain-des-Pres Onion Biscuits from her cookbook "Around My French Table" (and in case she needed some chocolate, also the Korova cookies from Greenspan's book "Paris Sweets."). I had lemon curd on hand, I had strawberry rhubarb jam, so those went into a basket, too. Once I got going, I just wanted to share it all. And that was the point of Food Revolution Day: Cook it, share it, live it.

To my delight, Betty and her husband, Bill, were at home. They placed the Korova cookie on a stunning china saucer, which sat on a silver tray, covered with white linen.

They poured out tea and with it, their stories.

I've never felt so regal, so rewarded.

Food Revolution Day: A Beautiful Biscuit

A lifelong passion for a well-rounded biscuit

Think small.

Getting involved in Food Revolution Day is as easy as a biscuit and as significant as salt of the Earth. British chef and media personality Jamie Oliver started the food initiative in 2012 as a global day of action to help keep good cooking skills alive. This year's theme is to choose a food, cook it and share it. That can be as simple as handing a dish to a neighbor or teaching a class on how to make it.

Award-winning cookbook author and Beurre & Sel creator Dorie Greenspan tweeted Oliver's idea and encouraged her "French Fridays With Dorie" group to get involved. If they needed a starting point (and don't we all), they could choose a recipe from her cookbook "Around My French Table," and go from there. That's where I jumped in. It took some noodling and stirring about in my own head, but I managed to think small and remember her onion biscuits.

(When we think too big, we talk ourselves out of action, concocting a million excuses why we don't have the time, resources and French finishing salt to get the job done. Thinking small is the key to hopping forward, a way to participate that feels doable.)

Biscuits are a natural for me; I was raised on them. Once my mother found out we learned biscuits in home ec, I had to make them every Sunday. My first efforts were flat, lifeless disks and often shaped like the bell or star cookie cutters we had. She persisted, and I handled the dough enough times (and used a champagne glass to cut the shapes) so that we got to know each other better - the biscuits and me, that is.

Mom was adamant on sticking with it: If you could make a good biscuit, you could get a husband, she said. We'll discuss that later.

Roll forward to these days. Well, a year ago. While prowling the bookshelf of my friend Jeanne Ambrose (she is editor of Taste of Home magazine and the author of Heartbreak Recovery Kitchen), I found Greenspan's cookbook and her recipe for Saint-Germain-des-Pres Onion Biscuits. I scribbled the recipe on the back of a ukulele song sheet (the only paper at hand) and vowed to try the biscuits. Once I did, I forever turned my back on the old buttermilks. I've stirred many versions over the years - from angel biscuits leavened with yeast to Southern style rounds dipped in bacon fat - even topped biscuits with red beets for Better Homes and Gardens. There is something about Greenspan's onion version - sweet, salty, softly oniony, fluffy - that hits all the marks of a comforting experience. And then there is the ease of it.

Food Revolution Day gives me a great excuse to make biscuits, but whom to share the biscuit with?

The story continues today, the actual Food Revolution Day, but for now . . . go stir things up.

You have time.