Resurrection Biscuits

30/03/2010

Listen "Resurrection Biscuits"

Episode Synopsis

Happy Easter everyone!  I have to tell you, celebrating Easter always makes me think of my grandmother, Ganny, as we called her.  Now Ganny lived in a tiny little town in South Carolina; and when we'd go visit, the aroma of all kinds of good things cooking would float through her screen porch and out into the yard to greet us:  creamed corn, collard greens and hopefully cornbread.  I say hopefully, because the one thing Ganny could not cook was biscuits.  Lord, have mercy.  She was just not a big believer in things like baking soda or baking powder.  On those ominous days when she would decide to bake biscuits, she would open the door of her wood stove and pull out what looked like a tray of toasty hot shot-puts.  My uncle used to joke that if you dropped those biscuits on the floor, they would wake the dead.  Thus their nickname:  resurrection biscuits.
Now, I know I shouldn't talk negatively about my grandmother's cooking, but we Southerners have a little trick.  Down South you can say anything you want about anybody you want, as long as you end the phrase with "bless their hearts."           
So...this being Easter Sunday, I think about Ganny, bless her heart, and those little sad resurrection biscuits.  But, you know, I think her biscuits offer us an important Easter message.  Without baking powder--without that key ingredient, those biscuits became heavy and flat.  So, too, life without the resurrection, life without Christ, can be heavy and flat.