Cheddar Bay Biscuits

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Ok, it’s recipe Sunday again on the PBS Blog, so what are we making today? Yall know those ridiculously delicious biscuits at Red Lobster? Off the chain right? Well, did you know they are also ridiculously easy to mimic?

Now, some of yall are chefs so you can actually purchase the flour and literally make your biscuits from scratch. But, I am not a Chef so this is going to be a lot easier than you thought.

First, let’s go to the Grocery Store, you’re going to need:

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Bisquick Pancake Mix, Shredded Cheddar Cheese, Butter, Garlic, Eggs, and Cold Water.

 

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Mix in the biscuit batter (the measuring is up to you depending on how many you’re making. Now I pretty much just estimated, let’s just say like 2 cups of batter), ½ Cup Cheese, and ¾ Cup Cold Water. Go ahead and mix this up but don’t make it too thick. The idea is to make these soft and fluffy so add more water to thin them out and throw a couple eggs in there too. Bake on greased baking sheet at 425 degrees until browned. (They come out better on the individual baking sheet you use for cupcakes as seen in my picture).

 
Now, here’s the secret that actually makes them  taste like Red Lobster: Butter and Garlic Sauce.

 
While your biscuits are baking, take your butter and garlic and make a sauce. The recipe can be as tasty and creative as you want. After your biscuits are ready, smear the tops of them all with the butter and garlic sauce. Throw them back in the oven for about 10 seconds.

 
Take them out and eat them immediately. And there you have it, your very own version of Red Lobster’s Cheddar Bay Biscuits. If you don’t like this particular recipe, you can also just Google Cheddar bay Biscuits, but this is the easiest and most tasty way if I must say so myself (aside from the actual Cheddar Bay mixture Red Lobster sells in stores).

*Let me know how they come out! Mine were the bomb!*

For the LOVE of Writing

I’m aware that not everyone who blogs writes. It sounds kind of contradictory since you’re obviously writing, but people have many different reasons for blogging so that’s probably none of my business.

When I browse the pages of various blogs,  I sometimes see many writers complaining about writing. In many ways I am quite confused about this, but maybe that’s just because I’m in love with writing, and that’s what I would like to offer you. While Blogging is a topic in and of itself (as some of you are probably still trying to balance writing by way of the blogging medium), writing is the gift you would obviously like to offer to those in which you are blogging for so that’s what we’re going to talk about. That, if you could learn to fall in love with writing, it wouldn’t be a tedious process. OK, perhaps I’m being a bit selfish; it may not be that easy for you. After all, I am in love with writing.

Sad writer

What does it mean to be in love with writing? First of all, like I said, get the idea of blogging out of your head, we’re not talking about that right now. Being in love with writing doesn’t have much to do with how frequent or less frequent you blog. However, if you do love to write, it can help you to blog. I just wrote a post on “The Brilliantly Untalented”, in which we discussed how sometimes the most introverted “untalented” people (from the POV of self); make for the best artists especially as it relates to writing. These people are not so overwhelmed with fear that they cannot write, it’s just that these people love to write. They wake up writing, they go to bed writing, and all they can think about is writing and the message they want to put out into the world. Will the world want to hear it? Who cares! The point is that when you love something (or someone), you don’t have to make yourself be a part of it. So stop it! Blog Writers, stop trying to make yourself write and just write. Let it be as smooth as brushing your teeth in the morning; let it embrace your thoughts, and in the words of Mark Strand let your words bathe in the blank wake of your passion, and be kissed by white paper. I don’t have to force myself to lay next to my husband because I love him. You don’t have to remind yourself to make the children breakfast because you love them, it is instinctive. The same is actually true for writing. There are mistakes that are made in the process of course, but when you love to do something, whether you get paid or not, it is not a long drawn out and daunting process. The key is that you want to do it. You shouldn’t have to make yourself write. It’s not a punishment; it’s just what you do. In the end, after falling in complete love with what you do, the process will be deliciously enticing. You will find yourself looking for any excuse there is possible just to write. And as with any gift that you exercise and use on a regular basis, you’ll notice that you’ve become quite good at it too, after all, there is someone out there just dying to read your content. Yes, YOURS. You untalented ball of clogged up words, there’s even a reader out there for you.

The Brilliantly Untalented

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 I’ve had this book for awhile;  loaned to me by another  sister. I never completely finished reading it, and as I scrolled my library for a neat snack, it wasn’t too high on my priority list. But as I now found myself flipping through pages, Chapter 10 caught my attention:

 

“Writer’s are people who tolerate a high level of anxiety. We have a talent for holding up well under tension. Anyone can start writing. To keep on creating and to grow as a writer you also believe you suck. You question everything you write. I know writing students who really do seem to believe they are great, they love writing, they write a lot, they seem blandly cheerful….they spew out words. They have no doubt, they reveal no anxiety. I think that is great. But my students who are doing really fine work, really committing themselves to writing honestly, deeply, and truly—-they have anxiety. They doubt themselves all the time. Writing stuff that is going to affect other people intensely is walking a fine line between anxiety and pleasure—-its a vibe you ride.”

I actually love this advice. I find it present not just in writing but other forms of art as well. Some of the most nervous, most introverted people are the most talented: the “Brilliantly Untalented” and Undiscovered Geniuses. This is not to say you party goers out there should worry. Nor is this to say the introverted are overcome with intense fear, for fear and faith cannot coexist (one will rule out the other). But they have a kind of humility that seems to balance out the negative components of anxiety. They know that there is talent present, but they also believe that they suck. Is it contradictory? It may be, but yet this contradiction keeps them writing and keeps you reading. Every time I’m on stage to recite a poem my stomach turns into butterflies and it feels like everybody in the world is depending on me to deliver them from a crisis. It is a feeling of great pressure. Its an understanding that though I’ve been given a gift to bestow upon my audience, I am simultaneously aware that this gift is not mine; that it belongs to one greater than myself. Then I notice, that in such anxiety, I’ve tapped into a kind of depth people could really feel. I did not have to think too hard about it. Did not think so grand of myself that I would begin editing my soul I just spoke, hoping the butterflies won’t make it so far up my throat. My belief that I am nothing, that I suck, and that I am Brilliantly Untalented, has in the end seemed to always produce the greatest work.

 

Guest Feature – A Modern Day Slave Plantation Part 3 by Laura Dimon

*Note: This article was not written by The PBS Blog, it is featured as part of the continuation of an ongoing series and is written by Laura Dimon. This is the last part which includes my commentary. Please view our Guest Feature or Article Section for Parts 1 & 2*

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In King’s trials, the juries were all white, with one black person. This past March, Glenn Ford, 64, walked out of Angola a free man after 30 years on death row. He was Louisiana’s longest-serving death row prisoner, yet he’s just another black man who was convicted and sentenced by an all-white jury. King said Angola today still reminds him of a slave plantation, but not as much as it reminds him of a graveyard. “There seems to be an artificial sanitation that is disturbing to me,” he said. The land is “beautiful, whitewashed, looks like a college campus.” But underneath, “The bones are rottin’.”

 
Angola exists in the shadow of slavery, a time when black men did not have rights. In a state with the motto “Union, justice and confidence,” there is certainly a lingering stink of a bygone, ugly era for which “union and justice” is simply not a fitting description. The other two members of the Angola 3 are Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace. There is overwhelming evidence of their innocence and accordingly, state and federal judges have overturned Woodfox’s conviction three times, citing racial discrimination, misconduct by the prosecution and inadequate defense. But Louisiana’s Attorney General James “Buddy” Caldwell holds the ultimate power, and has contested the rulings, claiming they were based on technicalities.

 

To this day, after 42 years, Woodfox remains in solitary confinement in Angola. He’s thought to be the longest-serving inmate in solitary. In the documentary film, he says, “If a cause is noble enough, you can carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. And I thought my cause, then and no, was noble. So therefore, they would never break me.”
“They might bend me a little bit. They might cause me a lot of pain. They may even take my life. But they will never be able to break me.”

 
Wallace was released in October 2013 with advanced liver cancer. King went with Woodfox, who was permitted to leave briefly, to visit their friend and tell him he was out of Angola for good. “We told him,” King said. Wallace couldn’t move or respond. “[But] we saw it in his eyes. … He knew he was getting out.” Wallace took his last breaths a free man, after over 40 years. He died three days later.

 
King continues the fight for Woodfox. So when he is asked about his own release, he responds with this apt adage: “I was free of Angola, but Angola would not be free of me.”

 

Image Credits: AP, Peter Puna, Robert King

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angolaCommentary:

The disturbing reality, is that no so called African American should be surprised by this article. At some point we must realize that under the fine print of America’s democracy you were never intended to be citizens. Your stay here in this country was never received with the certificate of adoption and thus you were never granted the same rights of America’s children, and that is why such institutions such as the Angola Facility still exist in the first place. You have Civil Rights but you have no Human Rights. It is no surprise then, that the mental state of the African American people is worse today than it was during slavery. Even during the Civil Rights Era your state of consciousness was not like it is now; for Freedom Rides denoted an understanding that you were not free here and you understood that. But the worse thing about mental enslavement however is that if the mind thinks itself free it doesn’t really matter what happens to the body. You can continue to mistreat it and it will still not grasp the understanding that it remains confined. You can put it in a hog pen, lock it up inside the inner rooms, isolate it and because the mind has been warped it will still think it possesses some kind of freedom. In The Mis-Education of The Negro Carter G. Woodson said it best, “when you control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him to stand here or go yonder. He will find his “proper place” and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary.“

  • Prison institutions determine how many more beds to add to their facility, based on how many black boys can’t read by the 4th grade

 

  • According a recent Brookings Institution report, black men born in 1975 who dropped out of high school had a 70 percent chance of ending up in prison by their mid-thirties. The probability is actually greater for young black men who drop out today.

 

  • The bible prophecy’s of black men being hidden in prison houses and that their heavens will be bronze and their earth iron (Deut. 28:23, Lev. 26:19)

 

  • According to Prof. Michelle Alexander’s analysis of U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, there are now more black men in prison than were enslaved in 1850.

 

  • The so called African American was never included in the U.S. Constitution; his civil rights were amended or added on, this means they can also be removed

 

  • The 13th Amendment, when it abolished slavery, did so except for convicts. Through the prison system, the vestiges of slavery continue.

 

Addiction

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It surrounds me and takes a hold of my mind
(It has me thinking about it all the time)
Sometimes I have to repent cause the feeling’s so good it has to be a crime
Taking me back and forth from past slavery days to my time
(to support it I think I spent all of my dimes 😦 )
I am addicted to poetry
It sits and wraps it words around my thoughts
It sits somehow waiting to be taught
Somehow attempting to read my mind
Finding itself inside of my dreams, my back is bent over and I’m searching the floor like a fiend
I mean, this poetry stalks me!
It wants to know the secret to the life that I live
And then devour these set-apart words that I spill
Nevertheless I am addicted to it
Searching the corners of this blog, I long for words that can satisfy these fluids
Wrap the pen around my wrist and forget it let’s do it!
I am addicted to poetry!
With it I spend all of my time
Hungry, mouth dry and thirsty (nothing seems to satisfy my stomach but this poetry)
I become another person when it’s in me you see…
May hair is all over my head
My voice tends to rise from the dead
It is no longer shy but loud instead
See,
No one can control this state that I’m in
Defending my knack for poetry till the end
Itching to scratch on this paper and pen
I am determined to tie that knot from—wait, I think my husband may count that as a sin
I am addicted to poetry
I am forever exercising my mind
Looking up and finding the new definitions to words
Excitement rushes through me as I wiggle my toes
Ink fumes reaching the far back of my nose and forcing out words that are untold
I think I better stop before my skin looks old and my body frame is way too thin!
I can’t seem to stop this state that I’m in!
These walking wonderful worlds of many words planning a feast in my head
Allowing me to feast on its beauty instead
Biting my nails I am starting to get paranoid
Because
T-t-t-there s-seems to be a-a void
a thing called writer’s block that is blocking my thoughts
its forcing me to say things that I don’t wanna say
(dragging my feet I am now in PA class)
Surrounded by brothers and sisters who are also addicted to words
Looking around like they see flying birds (they call them metaphors though)
It’s now finally my time to be heard
But I’m looking around I don’t know what t-to say
I haven’t had my s-s-strong d-dose of words all day
And the bloggers are urging me to speak
But instead I’m shaking my leg and chattering my teeth until finally I admit
I AM ADDICTED TO POETRY!