Look at this lump of coal. Now, imagine pressing it between your lips and biting down. Chew it slowly, then swallow, enjoying the bitterness of the ashen flakes as the float from your tongue down your gullet. Eating one of my biscuits is much like this.

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I've a story in this week's paper about Jo Anne Frederick and her world-class, made from scratch biscuits. For those who don't have access to the latest issue of The Itawamba County Times or are, perhaps, reading this on a fancy-dancy electronic reading device, the words can be found here: http://www.itawamba360.com/view/full_story/12769758/article-Baking-the-best-biscuits?instance=home_news_1st_left.

People like Frederick astound me. Once, when I was younger and more idealistic, I fancied myself a budding chef. I bought several books on the subject of food-making — instructional tomes with names that began with "Easy..." and ended with "...for Dummies" or something similar. I would scribble the easiest recipes from among those printed within onto a small piece of notebook paper and head out to the store, purchase the necessary ingredients and struggle for hours to prepare them as instructed. The evening would inevitably end with yours truly pouring himself a bowl of Lucky Charms...or, possibly, Coco Puffs. 

Alas, even though I managed to make it through six years of band — during which time I could march forwards and backwards through a precise series of locations spread across an entire football field while playing ten minutes of memorized music on a thirty-pound tuba — I find myself unable to either cook two things simultaneously or prepare a single dish that requires more than three steps to create. I don’t know what sort of mental blockage exists in my brain to give me such troubles, but it’s most definitely there and it most definitely mocks me every time I step into the kitchen on dinner duty.

For people like me, “homemade biscuits” literally translates into “from a can biscuits,” and “made from scratch” specifically refers to the gashes received while trying to pry those damn tubes apart so I can get at the gooey stuff within. Mandy tells me a biscuit can be made with little effort. She demonstrates by tossing some flour and milk together in a bowl, shoving them in the oven and then, some time later, yanking out something edible. It’s like magic. I know there’s a trick to it, but my brain just can’t grasp it. Abracadabra, everything’s burned.

Thankfully, magicians surround me. If there’s one thing the Southern portion of the United States has in abundance, it’s cooks with abilities that far surpass my own. Wonderful people like Jo Anne Frederick are everywhere, which is not a knock against her, just a compliment to the culinary prowess of the area. For people like me, it’s a Godsend. Let the biscuits shower down like delicious, buttery hail.

No need to worry about me: Like a toothless man sitting swimming in a sea of mashed potatoes, there’s no way I’ll ever starve.