As Day Four of the Whole Thirty Days draws to a close, your intrepid correspondent is pleased to report that no one has been killed. I counted.
In fact, I did not even have the desire to kill anything today, except for every morsel of food set before me, and those figuratively. The fourth day has, on the whole, been the same as the previous day and the one before that. It is marred by nothing but that vague ache of emptiness and the urgent desire for an enormous slab of fresh-baked bread covered with butter and honey. Or a biscuit ring. Or three.
Have I ever shared the recipe for biscuit ring? I’ll do so now, just in case. It won’t take long.
Biscuit ring
- 1 can of Pillsbury biscuits (buttermilk work best, I think. The blue ones)
- 1/3 cup brown sugar
- A pat of butter, to taste – this might be a teaspoon or a tablespoon or maybe more
First, put the brown sugar into a pie pan, or some similar conveyance, right in the middle, preferably in the shape of the measuring cup. Put the pat of butter in the pan also, but off to the side someplace where it won’t get in the way. I’m not sure why this is important but it’s just the way things are done. Then, turn on the kitchen sink just a little bit so there’s just a tiny stream of water coming out, or maybe only some heavy dripping. Drip the water onto the brown sugar until it’s just beginning to get saturated and slide into a formless mass. (This is an art. Practice it.) Make sure all the brown sugar got some water, then put the pan into the microwave for 45 seconds or so to melt the butter.
While that’s happening, open the tube of biscuits. These days, you get bonus points if the biscuit can actually pops open when you peel the paper back instead of requiring you to wrench it open or bash it against something hard. Man, back when I was a kid, Pillsbury knew what they were about. Back then they manufactured biscuit cans under so much pressure it’s a wonder they didn’t spontaneously explode as soon as they started getting warm coming out of the fridge. Some of those cans made such a bang that unsuspecting passersby in the next room might start wondering if someone nearby was on Day Four of the Whole Thirty. But I digress.
Cut the biscuits into quarters. This should leave you with a large gelatinous pile of biscuit quarters. You’ll want to separate these out a bit, then stir up the now-melted butter and sugar mixture and put the biscuits into it. Stir the mass around and make sure all the biscuits get coated up. Then clear out a hole in the middle, grab a drinking cup or a mug, and put it upside down into the middle of the pan. This forms the ring, which is important for both functional and aesthetic reasons. Put the pan back into the microwave and cook to taste. My taste generally runs to about 2:30, but if you like your microwaved biscuits well done or if you have a substandard microwave then go for three minutes.
For a healthy variation on this theme you can add walnuts prior to cooking, but in my eyes there are two downsides: 1) I don’t like walnuts in my biscuit ring, and 2) I don’t like healthy in my biscuit ring.
If you’re one of those “read the package”-type people, you may also notice that every tube of Pillsbury biscuits warns you not to microwave the biscuits. They have said this for at least two decades and I still don’t know why. Most likely microwaving the biscuits causes them to be poisonous or something, and you will die an early and painful death as a result. I guess you can take comfort in the knowledge that if and when this happens to you, it probably happened to me already.
Back to Business
So anyway, here’s Day Four in the can. I did not eat a biscuit ring, or even three of them, but I won’t deny that the option did cross my mind.
I’m mildly curious to see what Day Five will be like, because thus far this whole venture has not lived up to expectations. Even Mystie said she didn’t feel like killing anything today, though she did go to bed early with a terrible cold (doubtless brought on by gluten shortage). Starting today I have experienced some mildly distressing effects in the gastrointestinal system, but as I daily strive to keep this a chaste and discreet blog, I will refrain from providing lurid details. It’s also difficult to say whether any perceived symptoms or benefits are actually thanks to the Whole Thirty diet or if credit goes to the apple cider vinegar and/or the probiotics I’m being compelled to ingest each day. I’ll certainly have more to say about each of these in turn.