Weather Talk Stops Now - I'm Declaring Spring HERE

OMG, can you believe the weather?

It is so cold/windy/awful out! When is this going to end?

I can't remember a season that has affected so many of us in such an icky and never-ending way. Even this morning, as the kids and I left for the cafe, my usually upbeat and winter loving 8 year old son took a look at the dusting of snow we got overnight and looked at the sky and muttered, "Really?"

So... that's it. I'm done now. The end of March is long enough. We're done. I'm planning my spring menu. I'm looking at seed catalogues. I'm perusing photos I took at farmers' markets and our garden last summer.

Remember Tomatoes on the Vine?

My teeny tiny silver lining in all this was my "spring cleaning" of my freezer. I discovered some of the strawberries I froze at the end of our strawberry season last year. I know they're not as good as fresh strawberries - but it snowed like a zillion feet here and the temperature was as cold as I imagine it is on the moon - so... they tasted pretty fantastic.

Last year's strawberries from the freezer

We decided to do something simple. I made tea biscuits and some maple whipped cream and that was it! (Sadly... we ate them all and... I forgot to take a pic - sorry. I temporarily thought of taking a photo of the empty plate - but decided that might be a bit mean.)

You may or may not know that while I have certain things I'm pretty good at baking, cooking is really more my deal. However, it just so happens that tea biscuits ARE one of my things! Mom taught me how to make these a ridiculously long time ago before I found out that baking was a science. When I thought it was easy I did a lot more of it. Later on, after the advent of the Food Network and hearing countless celebrity chefs go on about not touching dough, making sure cold water was COLD and a thousand other things, I sort of found my niche in cooking and left most of the baking to other people.

Tea Biscuits

2 cups all purpose flour

4 tsp baking powder

1/3 cup sugar

½ tsp salt

1/3 cup butter

½ - ¾ c milk/ginger ale**

Preheat oven to 350. Combine all ingredients mixing as little as possible. Lightly flour a flat surface and roll out the dough until it is about an inch thick. Take a cookie cutter (or, in a pinch, a drinking glass) and flour it. Cut the biscuits and place on baking sheet. (I always use parchment paper.) Bake 12 to 15 minutes and remove from oven.

**The original recipe for tea biscuits calls for milk - but one of Mom's friends always uses ginger ale when she makes hers. I usually do now too - they are definitely less dense this way!