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Thank God For Shiny, Sleepless, Hot Nights

12 August 2008 - 6:57pm — Harl Delos


I remember Mama saying that one of my older brothers, Wilbur, was in trouble with teachers all the time because he had this snear on his face. Teachers would know somebody did something wrong, and when they saw his snear, they just naturally assumed that he was guilty.

I guess he had her fooled. My younger brother and I knew why he always had that snear on his face: it was because he was always guilty of having just done something.

You always wonder what ever happens to the Eddie Haskells of the world. You'd think they grow up to be lawyers, or something like that. Wilbur had no such small ambitions. He decided to become James Bond instead. Last I knew, he overthrew a couple of latin american countries, and traded them to United Fruit for a dozen softball bats and a player to be named later.

I thought of Wilbur as I was eating supper. God probably has a smug look on his puss when he thinks about the fact that he invented late August and early September. The difference, of course, is that God rightly deserves to be smug. It's the greatest time of year.

If I were so rude as to put music on this blog that you couldn't turn off, meaning that your boss would come waltzing into your cubicle and fire you for surfing on company time, it'd be "Up on the Roof". This is the season for really hot weather, the kind where you're sleeping on sheets sodden with brine from your pores, and you toss and turn because you can't sleep, and you reach for your wife, because she can't sleep, either, and it's too hot to do anything, but you do anyhow, but you're each too slippery, and you can't get a grip, and you collapse in laughter.

And maybe that's better than sex, anyhow. Nerve endings are nerve endings, and stimulation of nerve endings is where it's at, but most of the nerve endings are between your ears. The brain is the center of your sexuality, and next winter, you'll be reading some cheap trashy novel about love on tobacco road, and you'll remember back to these shiny hot nights, and savor the memories. Life is good.

Jerry Baker wrote a book a few decades ago, called "Plants Are Like People", in which he explains that people think of spring as planting season, but God thinks August is really planting season, because that's when he plants most of his seeds.

And if you head out to the bramble patch, you'll understand what he's talking about. Of all raspberries, it's the black ones that are the sweetest, the richest, the raspberriest flavored of them all, and they're the ones with the most, the sharpest, the cruelest thorns. Reach in and pick a pint of black raspberries, and you'll spend the next three minutes sucking on the wounds on your fingers, but if you're alert, you'll notice that for every two raspberries you pick, you'll end up knocking a third raspberry to the ground. Leave it. Next year, you'll have an even lusher harvest to pick.

Blondie brought in four tomatoes for supper. Not bought tomatoes, but home-grown, vine-ripened tomatoes. If you buy them in a store, they're shipped in from another state, which means they are picked just about the time they break from solid green to a lighter color, and then they are riped up with ethylene gas before you buy them. They're solid, and they ship well, but they don't really taste like tomatoes.

If you buy them along the road, right next to a field of tomatoes, they are picked when they are almost ripe. A hamper is about 18" or 20" tall, and if you pick them really ripe, the ones on the bottom get all squooshed. And customers don't like to buy dead-ripe tomatoes, because they will wan to use the tomatoes over the next week. There'll be obvious rot after 3-4 days if they are purchased dead ripe.

If you're carrying 3 or 4 of them from the patch to the kitchen, though, you can eat that many tomatoes in one day, perhaps even in one meal. There's no reason not to leave them on the vine until they're dead ripe, perhaps even overripe.

Blondie, being a Philadelphia girl picked these with a day or two before dead ripe. They aren't as good as they might be, but still, they were darned good. We had tomato burgers for an early supper. Blondie hadn't eaten breakfast or lunch, because she overslept, and she had an important appointment this morning, so this was the first she'd eaten in almost 24 hours. "The greatest hamburger I've had in my entire life," she declared, and she claimed it was because it was so long since she had eaten.

She was wrong about that. She used to cook hamburgers 3/4" thick on a hot skillet to get raw insides, claiming that dry burgers make her choke. I've taught her to cook low and slow for better flavor. I buy food-service quarter-pound hamburgers at Costco, which are about 3/8" thick, and 20%-22% fat. Fry them in a cast-iron skillet, on medium low heat, and the blood slowly oozes out, boils dry, and you get a juicy burger with wonderful flavor. It's called the Maillard Reaction, if you want to look up the science behind it.

For dessert, I cut into a locally-grown watermelon. I'm still a little confused by the melon. It had to be immature; there were white seeds but not black ones. On the other hand, the red went almost all the way to the rind, with very little white. The smell alone, when I cut open the melon, was worth the price of admission. Of course, a big part of that was that it was the first fresh melon of the year. The chinese buffets always seem to have melon on their tables, year-around, but that would be shipped-in melon, and although it's good, it's just not the same.

When explorers brought the first platypus duckbills back to England, everybody thought it was a scam, that there couldn't possibly be an animal with claws, with fur, with a duck bill. Preposterous! And yet, if you think about it, if food scientists came up a food that was so crisp and crunchy, and yet so airy and watery, so sweet and yet so palate-cleansing, they'd be hailed as geniuses; there's no possible way to come up with such a food.

Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee!. Sing a hymn of praise unto the lord, in thanks for the bounty of the season. It's silly to hold Thanksgiving in November. Now is the time, when there's still some sweet corn available, when the tomatoes are just coming on strong, when the watermelon and muskmelon are fresh and flavorful, and when the nights are so shiny and sweaty and wonderful.

The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God's heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.

Sunburns are part of it all, too. In the early 1960s, when James Bond was still imprisoned between the pasteboard covers of a paperback novel, he and his women were sunburnt, and the windows were open at night, but the air wasn't moving, and through the window, you could see the partially-burned out sign flashing, saying "Summer hell Is Here", along with the neon outline of a shell.

Jerry Baker was right. Spring is overrated. This is planting season, for plant and animal alike. God wouldn't give us weather that kept us up all night, if he hadn't given us something better to do than to sleep.

I heard it in the wind last night
It sounded like applause
Chilly now
End of summer
No more shiny hot nights
It was just the arbutus rustling
And the bumping of the logs
And the moon swept down black water
Like an empty spotlight

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
black raspberries - Eddie Haskell - hamburger - James Bond - Jerry Baker - platypus duckbill - snear - thanksgiving - tomatoes - watermelon

Comments

16 August 2008 - 9:06pm — solarfarmmom

Your first watermelon

Appears to be of the seedless variety. I do not think they are genetically modified, but rather selected to have mature flesh with immature seeds. I could be wrong though. They really are a delight to eat without all those seeds. Then again, a good seed spitting contest is fun!

Oh, black raspberries are so good. Have you tried the yellow ones. They are quite possibly sweeter. I used to be able to get them at the local Mennonite farm market...not anymore. We did try planting raspberries in the spring of last year. Then we had that terrible drought and lost all but the red ones. Those are struggling. We'll move them closer to the house, I think, and give them some better soil. Now that we have our Gravely Rotary Plow to dig the trench!! Still, we need rain even to use that. The effects of the drought still linger.

Now tell me, you are getting local watermelon, fresh local milk, and homegrown tomatoes, why are you buying meat at Costco? Certainly you can find a good local source for grass fed beef! Chicken, lamb, and pork too. O.k. I'm hungry now. A great cookbook that has 100% winning recipes is title The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook by Shannon Hayes. You can get it through Amazon but the author is trying to stay on the farm and raise her kids there so I suggest getting it directly from her at www.grassfedcooking.com. I have a good 40 or 50 cookbooks. My eyes glaze over when someone mentions another one. Such was the case with this book...until I was offered it in trade for an extra Nourishing Traditions I had lying around. Really, this is my favorite cook book. Every recipe is a winner. There's Honey Glazed Chicken, Chili Brew Beef Stew, Slow Roasted Beef, Leg of Lamb (that tastes like prime rib!! Really!), Pepper Soup, Orange Pork Roast....O.k. I'm really hungry now.

You might find a local grass fed meat source at www.localharvest.org or www.eatwild.com. Be sure and get beef soup bones and stewing hens too as they really do make the best stocks and are loaded with all sorts of good nutrients....but I suspect you know this already!

Enjoy your fresh tomatoes!

Kristin

17 August 2008 - 12:23am — Harl Delos

Watermelons are an annual.

Watermelons are an annual. If you developed a seedless cultivar, how would you plant the next year's crop? They must develop seeds very late in the season, I suppose. Seed-spitting contests can be fun, but the danger is that you might swallow a seed accidently; I've had women tell me that they'd done that, and it looked uncomfortable.

When I lived in Indiana in the 1980s, I used to live down the road from a large-scale farmer. He used to complain that all he ever got to eat was "broken meat", because if a steer or a pig was injured, he couldn't sell the meat; all he could do would be to butcher it and eat it himself. When I was unemployed and my wife was dying of an incurable disease, he gave us a box of about 20 pounds of beef - you are allowed to give it away - but when we got back on our feet, we tried to buy some from him, and he declined.

The federal government changed the law in the 1960s. Farmers can't butcher a beef and sell off some to their neighbors. It must be slaughtered at a licensed, USDA-inspected abbatoir, and that changes things quite a bit. We used to buy or sell a side to a neighbor, then break down the meat on the kitchen table, wrap it, and freeze it. We had a big grinder for hamburger (or for sausage, when we slaughtered a hog), Mom would render the lard, Dad would slice steaks in the shop on the bandsaw, and we'd have lots of specialty meats for the next week or so. When the "black is beautiful" thing hit, the farm kids all knew what chitlin's was, and the black kids didn't have a clue. Brain sandwiches were good, and Mom made some wonderful tripe soup.

Say "tripe soup" and most people think menudo. This was different, and it wasn't flaczki, either. It was more like saure kutteln or valley forge pepper pot, with lots of potatoes, Great Northern beans, canned tomatoes, and whatever leftovers were in the refrigerator, but no pasta.

I took a look at the eatwild site, and they list Breakaway Farms in Manheim. Their site mentions having Devon cattle (which are a milk chocolate color) but the pictures they display are of Herefords (which are the kind that looks like a Gateway Computer box.) That makes me question what they are actually selling. They offer a price list, except when you click, it says "coming soon" on a page that was last modified Thursday, January 24, 2008 5:46:07 AM. I'd be glad to do business with a local farmer I can trust. That place doesn't fill the bill, but I keep my eyes open, all the time.

I first noticed yellow raspberries in the nursery catalogs about 20-25 years ago. They're a mutation of red raspberries, so it doesn't surprise me that they're awfully sweet. It's important to know whether a raspberry is "red" or "black", because you prune differently, but that's pretty easy to tell: the ones with thorns are black.

Black raspberries aren't as sweet as red raspberries, but they're intensely flavorful. Yoder's, of Delphos, Ohio, sell frozen black raspberry pie in supermarkets, but I don't think they're available anywhere outside of NW Ohio, and I don't know of anybody else making them. Smucker's offers black raspberry jelly, and I think they're the only national brand that does. Black raspberries seem to be a lot more popular in Ohio than here in Pennsylvania.

As a rule, gardening experts say that most plants like alkaline soil, and they want you to apply lime. Raspberries prefer an acid soil, though. What the gardening experts don't say, though, is that if you have a really high humus content, your soil is going to tend acid because of the breakdown of organic matter, and the plants love it anyway. If you put grass clippings in a plastic garbage bag and leave it in the sun, the grass will rot in a matter of days, not months. Obviously, it will work with other organic matter as well, although if the matter is too dry - such as the leaves you've raked - you may need to add some water. So if you add a lot of organic matter to the soil, your raspberries should do well. They tend to be fairly spare the first year, and multiply like rabbits after that.

Back in Ohio, most of the chickens were raised for Campbells. Their plant in Archbold, Ohio, is the world's largest food processing plant, although from having worked there, I would argue that phrase ought to have "food" in quote marks. They were young leghorns, which weigh about 2 pounds, dressed, and they lay white eggs. The stores all carried white eggs and leghorn carcasses, too. Here in Pennsylvania, there are an awful lot of brown eggs for sale, and carcasses run 3 pounds. Still, all the stores seem to have are fryers. No stewing hens to be found.

I'm not looking for stewing hens because I made the mistake of telling my wife that the reason free-range chickens taste better is that they eat bugs and worms, while "factory" chickens eat mostly weed seed. Now she's grossed out at the idea of eating free-range chickens. If she ever learns how filthy chickens are, and that they are cannibalistic, I suspect she'll never eat another chicken in her life.

I got a five-pound box of hot italian sausage last time I was at the "used grocery" store, a box that was intended for restaurants (it's all one long coil) and it's all frozen solid. I don't care much for onions, garlic instantly gives me a headache, and I can't stand to eat highly-spiced foods, but I figure that I can thaw that sausage and use it to make one huge pot of chili. The beans will soak up a lot of the pepperiness, and I can end up with a bunch of chili that's fairly mild in flavor.

Different people mean different things when they say "beef soup bones". I mean "shank meat". Toss it in a large sauce pan and boil it to flinders, then add some kluski noodles (wide, fat egg noodles), then serve over mashed potatoes made from real potatoes, skin and all. Some people look at me weird when I talk about it, saying "starch with starch", but starch isn't a food group. Noodles are a grain, and potatoes are a vegetable.

You know the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, right? Shame on you, a married woman, trying to seduce a married man!

I'm in the process of writing my own cookbook. I must own a hundred of other folks' cookbooks. The one at my right elbow is the 1943 version of "Joy of Cooking" (the old versions of Joy have you use real food, not plastic food substitutes) and the one at my left elbow is the Pennsylvania Dutch Cookbook, published by the Culinary Arts Institute. I don't know how old it is, but it predates zip codes....

20 August 2008 - 9:05pm — solarfarmmom

Of watermelons and squeamish psychiatrists

On the watermelon, hey, I don't grow them, I just eat them and read about them in seed catalogs.

I am aware of the laws restricting the sale of meat in this country. What would Adams and Jefferson think? I believe this and the raw milk laws are what really killed family farms. That and all the subsidies to "Big Ag". But don't get me started. Just give me a free market. And you can purchase wholes, halves, and quarters directly from the farmer. The law works as if you are purchasing the animal. The farmer deliver the critter to a custom butcher and you pay the butcher. You can split the cow with "friends". The farmer can help you find those "friends". Then you're o.k. This is typically a very economical way to purchase beef or pork. Lamb is usually sold whole.

I can handle liver. I may have the butcher grind up the heart with the ground meat when we bring the lambs in next week. I always get the kidneys but have, as yet, not been brave enough to eat them. Tripe, sweet breads, and brains. I know they are very rich in minerals, etc. but I'm not that brave. Sad that people in the U.S. are so squeamish these days.

Thanks for the raspberry tips. Since acquiring the cows, we have MUCH compost. Did you know that leaves should not be composted with other items? Another Elliot Coleman gem. They are decomposed by molds, not by the same bacteria action of compost. So it is best to put them in a wire bin and keep them wet. Let them sit for a year or two. Alternately, till them into your garden in the fall. We try to let the animals do the mowing for us. Of course, now we have that Gravely!!

Now don't write off that local farm. Herefords are reddish brown with white faces. I can't remember what's on the Gateway box. I prefer Dell. But do understand, many of these farmers are strapped for time and cash. Often, a farm "fan" voluntarily puts up their website. So it may just have a stock photo or an old one from a time when they did raise Herefords. The farmers often have little time to work on the site (you remember the work from childhood!!) and so it may take them months to get prices up. So go visit them. And bring that trophy wife of yours. She needs to see a hen lay an egg. Does she know where it exits the hens body? Does she know that grocery store chickens soak in chillers teaming with fecal soup from the mechanical evisceration process? Hey, I used to be squeamish about handling meats. But I've gotten over it. This is a common problem among women these days. A result of the separation from the farm. I think you're wife needs to diagnose herself with "Real Food" phobia then write a book about it. A prescription for the regular handling of real food is the only cure.

Chicken was just a by-product of the egg industry in the early 20th century. I have a nearly 100 year old great aunt that prefers chicken thighs and legs because they have flavor. She's remembering the old fashioned extra roosters from her childhood. The Cornish X Rocks bred for the modern chicken meat industry are really quite mushy compared to a standard rooster. But they sure roast up nice! You should be able to find stewing hens at one of your local farm markets or direct from that local farmer. They'll likely have them in the Autumn. Most "spent" commercial layers end up in that soup...or perhaps as McD's chicken nuggets.

On the sausages, I'd bet it is some preservative or "flavor enhancer" like MSG that gave you the headache. Difficulty digesting onions and garlic (I think it is the sulpher in them) is the first thing that goes when you are stressed. So get out to that local farm and get your hands dirty. They'll have soup bones, neck bones, and shanks for you. Mmmm potatoes. I'm out of our garden grown taters. They never last long. I'm working on a local source of Rose Gold and Caribe (check out www.woodprairiefarm.com for the best in seed potatoes).

Don't worry about seduction. I'm pregnant (#5 at 40!!), young enough to be your daughter, my husband loves my cooking, and he owns a shotgun. Besides, you already have your blonde trophy wife. And I'm a brunette anyway.

Let me know when that cookbook is ready. I've got an old Shaker reproduction and another that dates from the 18th & early 19th century. Everything is "a hens egg" of this and "a teacup" of that. I'm trying to teach myself to make biscuits "by the feel of it" like women used to. What if measuring cups are outlawed?

Kristin

21 August 2008 - 2:42am — Harl Delos

Gossip, Mario Batali, Diapers, and Shotguns

I am aware of the laws restricting the sale of meat in this country. What would Adams and Jefferson think?

My late first wife used to comment that "People worry about what their neighbors think - but their neighbors are probably thinking about their own lives." I agree, but only in part; there are a lot of people whose hobby isn't bowling or knitting, though, it's gossip. I have been informed that several of my neighbors are drunkards or whores; my response to that is, "Yes, and isn't it wonderful that they have hobbies, instead of doing something destructive like gossip?" I don't get kept up to date quite as much as I used to, but I get to live my life that way, instead of living someone else's.

I believe this and the raw milk laws are what really killed family farms.

Family farms started dying before those laws were passed. The biggest single factor was the invention of the farm tractor; birth control is also a factor. Farms are limited in size to what you can plant or harvest in one season. I've seen the Amish in Indiana plow with seven horses wide (Dad was always flummoxed by that; how do you hitch seven horses?) but not around here. It's hard to control a team of four horses, so a farm is pretty much limited by how much seedbed the father and sons (and sometimes wives and daughters) can prepare in planting season.

There's not much difference between pulling a 24' disk (properly called a "disc harrow") behind a highly-powerful tractor and pulling a 6' disk behind a John Deere "Johnny Popper", though, except the investment in land and equipment.

And you can purchase wholes, halves, and quarters directly from the farmer. The law works as if you are purchasing the animal. The farmer deliver the critter to a custom butcher and you pay the butcher.

You still have to send the steer to a licensed abbatoir, and it needs to be a huge operation in order for them to pay for those USDA inspectors; it's not like restaurant inspections, where the health department shows up for a 30-minute inspection, once every six months or once every three years. The USDA inspector has to be there all the time and the facility has to pay for that inspector.

Tripe, sweet breads, and brains. I know they are very rich in minerals, etc. but I'm not that brave. Sad that people in the U.S. are so squeamish these days.

Don't worry about "rich in minerals". Think "rich in flavor". Brains need to be very fresh. Breaded and fried, they make wonderful sandwiches on white bread with mustard. Good white bread, please, not the doughy wonderbread type of bread.

I've been thinking about posting an old family recipe for Pepper Pot. Pepper Pot was invented at Valley Forge in the American Revolution, and this recipe dates to the late 1700s, but it calls for both honeycomb tripe and regular tripe. I don't know what "regular" tripe is. There are more than two stomaches (rumen) in a steer, and each produces a different tripe. Once they passed the abbatoir law, we couldn't butcher our own beef - we had two deepfreezes, but they were used for other things, not just beef - and it seems like the only tripe you can buy is honeycomb tripe.

Rich people eat poorly; poor folk end up with the best-flavored food. Check out Mario Batali's pork butt recipe. Except that you don't need to follow his recipe. Just take a butt (for the benefit of readers that don't know, a pork butt is the front shoulder), toss it in a roaster, and give it an hour at 375F, then cover the roaster with aluminum foil, turn down the temperature to 250F, and let it go for another 4-5 hours. At that point, you'll want to add salt and pepper. I usually tear up the meat at that point - it pretty much is falling apart - and make a very thin milk-and-flour gravy from the drippings, adding it back to the shredded meat. Funny, all the neighbors smell that pork, and our doorbell rings. They're trying to return things they borrowed, even if they borrowed from someone else, in order to try to wrangle an invite to supper.

I can't remember what's on the Gateway box.

Here's a Holstein heifer. They're large cows, and they produce a lot of milk, but it's not very rich - a tad over 3.5% milkfat. Dad always raised one Jersey - the smallest of the common milk breeds, Jerseys don't give many gallons, but they give really rich milk - sometimes 6% milkfat. Most of his small herd were Guernseys. They're medium producers, but the milk is in the high 4-5% milkfat range.

Dad mostly got rid of the livestock because he just didn't have the patience it requires to do a good job. Those old ads about Borden milk (think "Elsie" and "Elmer") coming from contented cows was valid. Happy cows give more milk, give richer milk, while stressed-out cows tend to get sick. Same goes for other livestock.

Hey, I used to be squeamish about handling meats. But I've gotten over it. This is a common problem among women these days.

And among men as well. My first wife had lupus, so I did most of the baby care. I figured that changing diapers is no big deal, but most people seem afraid to do even that. I have a hard time with first aid; sewing up a wound is terribly difficult for me. But you're not really a man - or a woman - if you're not willing to slaughter and butcher livestock. At best, you're an animal that is toilet-trained.

I have a nearly 100 year old great aunt that prefers chicken thighs and legs because they have flavor.

Dark meat has more sugar than white meat.

The Cornish X Rocks bred for the modern chicken meat industry are really quite mushy compared to a standard rooster.

The same thing goes for beef and pork. They're breeding for mushy meat because it looks better in the cooler at the supermarket.

Speaking of which, the "used grocery" store had whole pork loins today, frozen, for $1.09/pound. They don't call themselves a "used grocery" store - but they sell freight-damaged goods, overstocks, and short-dated goods, at tremendous savings. Sorta like "Odd Lots" only for food. Also, they had Tree-Ripe brand, certified-organic apple juice for $1.39 for a 1.5 liter box. I don't buy much juice - I figure I need the fiber of whole produce - but it's a nice treat once in a while.

Most "spent" commercial layers end up in that soup...or perhaps as McD's chicken nuggets.

In NW Ohio, they don't have time to be "spent" - they go to Campbells at 6-8 weeks.

On the sausages, I'd bet it is some preservative or "flavor enhancer" like MSG that gave you the headache. Difficulty digesting onions and garlic (I think it is the sulpher in them) is the first thing that goes when you are stressed.

It's family genetics. My first wife didn't believe me about garlic; she thought I was psyching myself out. She would make something, and toss even the slightest bit of garlic powder in it. She couldn't taste the garlic, but I'd have a headache from the first spoonful. Chives are OK, and onions aren't a big problem. I don't like slimy onions in soup, but a slice of Bermuda on a hamburger, that's good. So are good onion rings.

I'm working on a local source of Rose Gold and Caribe (check out www.woodprairiefarm.com for the best in seed potatoes).

Never had either variety, as best I know. I tried raising Kennebec a couple of years, back in the 1980s, and the taters were OK, but they attracted potato bugs that ate up a lot of the rest of the garden. Couldn't figure out how to kill them or repel them without poison, so the best answer seemed to be don't raise taters.

Don't worry about seduction. I'm pregnant (#5 at 40!!), young enough to be your daughter, my husband loves my cooking, and he owns a shotgun. Besides, you already have your blonde trophy wife. And I'm a brunette anyway.

You think my blonde isn't really a brunette? I've never seen her that way, except at the roots. And you're right at that dangerous age. And that shotgun? There's a story about the judge telling the guy that the unwritten law says you can shoot him, and the guy said to the judge, well, I thought it was better to shoot one woman than to shoot a couple of dozen men.

In the first decade, they are human. In their teens, they develop into females. In their 20s, they turn into adults. In their 30s, they become full-blown woman. In their 40s, they're sex goddesses - and in their 50s, they become widows, and for some reason, nobody seems able to figure out why all these guys are having heart attacks in bed. So if a guy thinks about trading in his wife for a much younger woman, it's not that he thinks sex with someone clumsy and inexperienced is better, it's just that he's trying to save his own life.

Five kids, huh? I'm very jealous. I should be the father of five kids, but Jasper was the only one we got to bring home from the hospital, and even that was an emergency c-section.

I'm trying to teach myself to make biscuits "by the feel of it" like women used to. What if measuring cups are outlawed?

It wasn't just women; except in planting and harvest seasons, when men were working 20-hour days already, men typically made breakfast, so their wives could stay in bed a little longer.

And you have to make biscuits, well, just about all bread products, by feel, because flour soaks up moisture from the atmosphere, so neither weight nor volume will give you reliable results.

Unless, of course, you make thwack biscuits. But they don't really count, do they?