Post-Thanksgiving Biscuits

Hello, everyone.
We had a big mound of very buttery sweet potato mash on T-day and there was a little left over. Perfect! Perfect as an ingredient in another recipe.

The last three of this morning's Sweet Potato Biscuits. (Hey, if I talk about recipes I have to capitalize every word, right? 😉)

This started from the standard biscuit recipe with 2 cups of flour. As the sweet potato mash was very buttery, I cut back just a smidge from the half-stick of butter. Also, as the butter I use is salted, I use less salt. The extra weight of the cup or so of sweet potato meant increasing the baking powder by about a half tablespoon. I cut up the butter into the flour in the Kitchen Aid mixer, added the salt and baking powder, and let the beater blade cut it all in together until the visible fat bits were little smashed things in the rest of it. Added the still-cold sweet potato and turned the beater on again, gently. When it all looked the same, I added about 3/4 cup of milk to get a medium soft dough.

(Started preheating the oven to 375F at the start.)

Put some flour down to prevent sticking and patted and rolled until the dough was about 1/3 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut out 3 inch biscuits and lined them up on the cookie sheet--ungreased--about 1 inch apart. The yield came out to about 11.5 biscuits...one little one and the rest pretty disks. Put a little milk on top and cooked in the preheated oven for about 16 minutes.

They came out really well!

Thanksgiving Greetings to all

Hello, everyone.

Today is Thanksgiving Day in the U.S.  It's a day to remember and be grateful for the blessings in our lives.

 As we drove to visit family for the holiday, we learned that hay is not the only thing that is put up in round bales. These are cotton bales, with plastic wrappers to keep the lint at least somewhat clean and dry. On the sunny side, the green ones are actually bright yellow. There were also a lot of bright pink ones.

While walking to Mass I was reminded of one of the reasons people like to plant holly bushes. Aren't these bright red berries beautiful?

For my US readers, I wish you a happy and blessed Thanksgiving.  For my international readers, I wish you a wonderful day. And for all the peregrinos I hope that the fruits of the pilgrimage grow and blossom in your lives. Thank you all for reading my little blog!

Memories from Madrid

Hello, everyone.

I've been remembering sights that, though simple, were in their ordinary beauty a blessing for that day.

In particular, when in Madrid last summer we strolled over to the Mercado San Anton and saw these displays:

 So many beautiful types of tomatoes!

These are mostly beans of different kinds. I loved seeing the many colors. (Also there is some rice.)

Sorry it's been so long

Hello, everyone. The gaggle is changing houses and we've been up to our ears in boxes, cleaning, furniture toting, and more boxes.

A picture of my favorite Spanish breakfast food:

Pan tomate, toasted simple bread (basically baguette bread) with tomato and olive oil. It's to die for. Some places had even found prepackaged tomato servings, kind of like the little ketchup tubs only less cooked, and also tiny packages of olive oil.

Wonderful alongside a cup of hot manzanilla, camomile tea, or of cafe leche.