I Blame the Biscuits! by Jill Printzenhoff

The recipe title gave me pause and required a bit of internal questioning before proceeding. Slap Your Brains Out Biscuits. Do I really want to voluntarily bake something that could cause me bodily harm? It’s one thing to be injured accidentally, but quite another to willingly partake in an activity that could bring impairment to vital cells—my brains cells. I kind of need them. So I was hesitant to make these buttermilk wonders. But the name of the recipe kept beckoning me, like a lovesick pup howling at the moon. Phrasing it that way sounds pathetic! Like I was in need of a biscuit fix. But I love biscuits, and anytime I can get my hands on homemade ones, this southern girl is happy.

My grandmother, she was the bread queen. She baked bread religiously. No, she didn’t bake for religious reasons, but there was a period of time when she regularly whipped up rolls and loaves of bread. This brain slapper was one of her hidden secrets. While I couldn’t tell you if she ever served these dough balls to us grandkids, as an ode to my grandmother, I thought I give ‘em a try. I just hoped that doing so didn’t leave me mentally impaired.

While kneading the dough, I quickly realized that my hands were not as deft as hers, so the first batch, while ok, was nothing to write home about. The second batch, well that was another story! Those biscuits were lip-smacking good! So I had seconds. After indulging, my stomach smiled, and I was quite proud that I had made those golden-crusted treats, ate them, and in the process hadn’t suffered any loss to the gray matter. But then Wednesday rolled around, and I started feeling weird, and a fog clouded my logic.

Wednesday morning was rough. My alarm and I had a verbal battle, but the alarm finally won, and I begrudgingly drug myself out of bed. At some point that morning I donned brown boot socks, my pants, and a blue corduroy shirt. Just before leaving the house I attempted to shove snow boots on my feet. My brain registered that something was wrong. I kept looking at my socks and pants, and then at my boots, all the while some thought kept trickling through my mind about the color scheme. My wardrobe wasn’t coordinated.

Wading through the fog I finally realized that the brown socks and brown snow boots did not match my black pants and blue shirt. What’s wrong with me? At first I chalked it up to still being half asleep, but eventually brushed it off thinking I just have way too much on my mind.

The next day left me wondering what was going on within my body. I was halfway to work when I looked down at my shirt and shook my head in disbelief. I was wearing another corduroy type blouse the same exact blue shade as the one I wore the day before. It was too late to go home and change, so I held my breath and hoped that no one would notice the duplicate attire.

Arriving at work, I entered my office, unloaded my bags, and realized I was one bag short. My purse! Where was my purse? A quick text to my husband revealed that my purse still hung on the back of the dinette chair. He offered to bring it to me, and I was thankful that he wasn’t too macho to drop off my handbag to the lady at the front desk.

Friday morning one of my high school students came bustling into the science classroom lamenting over leaving her mind somewhere and wishing she knew where she had left it. I was empathetic because that’s how I felt most of the week. Then, mid way through the day, I spoke with a coworker who also lamented on her own brain cell dysfunction. Talking with her I began to feel better about my own mental synapses. Well, that is until I looked down. What I saw caused me to slap myself. Yep, another blue shirt, the same shade as the ones I wore on Wednesday and Thursday.

The culprit? It had to be the biscuits. That was the only logical explanation.