Sweet Potato Biscuits

My mother makes these great biscuits from little to no ingredients and they are some of my favorite breakfast foods even though I'm not a huge fan of sweet potatoes. 2 med/large sweet potatoes smidge of butter or Crisco 2 cups Bisquick 1/2 cup Splenda or sugar 1/2 cup Bisquick additional

Grease 2 medium/large sweet potatoes in butter/Crisco and cook for 75-80 minutes at 425 degrees. The potatoes will "leak" sticky juices, so you might want to put them on aluminum foil. You an tell they're getting done when the skin puffs up away from the potato. Wait for them to cool and peel the skin off (you can do this by hand).

Mix potatoes with 2 cups of Bisquick and 1/2 cup Splenda/sugar. They will be really sticky so use the remaining the 1/2 cup Bisquick to get them off your hands. Pull off pieces into golf ball sized bits and put on a cookie sheet. You can roll them out if you really want, but they taste just as good if they're uneven.

Bake at 425 for 12-15 minutes, checking the bottoms to make sure they're not too brown.

I highly recommend these served with slices of crisp bacon in between like tasty little sandwiches.

Our little angel

We spent a lot of money on dog training so that I could torture her with Christmas photos and have her sit relatively still. Click the picture for the rest of the set.

The tree is up; we're ready for Santa

My parents came over this evening to help us decorate our Christmas tree. There is a classic tale in our family from when I first got a kitten around age 7 or so. My neighborhood friend wanted a kitten so badly but her landlord wouldn't allow pets, so she told me "he can be our kitten and we'll just keep him at your house." We reference this a lot in our vernacular, so of course this Christmas tree is ours between my parents and us and we're just keeping it at our place. It never feels like Christmas until the tree is all done up. When I was a little kid I thought the tree was a requirement for Santa to show up, as if he scanned the neighborhood for houses with evergreens in the living room and if we didn't have one he might pass us by. I remember several anxious Christmas Eve's as we worked to get the tree up so that Santa could come.

When my brother was around 9 and I was around 3, my mother kept putting off getting the tree until Daddy could get back in town (I think he was in Carolina a lot at the time because one of his parents was sick, but I would have to confirm that). My brother kept hounding Mom to get a tree that she finally relented that we could look at trees but not get one until Daddy was back home. Of course, Perry found a tree that he fell in love with and insisted we get. This was one of the pricier lots at the time and my mother wasn't interested in paying that much. When she told him we couldn't get that tree, he started to cry.

When you're 3 and your older brother starts to cry, the sibling bond forces you to tears as well and soon my mother was faced with two kids weeping inconsolably in a tree lot. The lot attendant came over to ask what was the matter and my mother explained that Perry wanted to get a tree but we weren't in the market for trees that were so expensive. The lot attendant asked how much Mom was interested in spending and she said she didn't really want to pay more than $10 (this was around 1980). The man knelt down to my brother and told him "you go pick yourself out whatever tree you want, young man, and it's yours for $10."

My mother was shocked, but we went home with a beautiful tree that day. Several of my mother's friends later asked to borrow us to go tree shopping as well.