superb owl snacks.

Josh had a break in his last tour, where he was home for about a week and a half. He came home on Super Bowl Sunday, and I planned to have Super Bowl snacks all ready for him. After last year, when he burst into the house demanding Vienna sausages instead of homemade meatball soup, I determined that I would not be caught unprepared. I was going to be an awesome girlfriend by remembering his annual urge for meat-based products from a can wrapped in dough-based products, also from a can.

As I predicted, he sent me a text message during the day, requesting that we have Super Bowl snacks for dinner. Actually, he requested "superb owl snacks." These kids and their texting.

Despite my awesome girlfriend intentions, I really do hate Vienna sausages, and so while he was on tour, I decided to try and figure out a better product. I tried a few biscuit recipes and wrapped them around some good kosher hot dogs. This plan actually worked out pretty well, since when it's just me, I rarely have the motivation to spend more than ten minutes on dinner preparation. Pigs in blankets are remarkably quick, even when you go to the bother of making your own biscuit dough.

The first recipe I tried was all wrong. It was a drop biscuit, and so it didn't have the flaky layers that the canned crescent rolls have. So I specifically googled "flaky biscuit recipe," and this recipe was what I found. If you are at all interested in making yummy biscuits, please follow that link, because it has helpful words and pictures that I am not going to reproduce here. It tells you in very clear terms how to make biscuits properly, because apparently great hordes of people have failed at this. When I first made the biscuits, I did not know that I was overcoming a major obstacle. I was just following a well-written and clear recipe. But then a couple of weeks later, I read an article in the paper about cooking classes at A Southern Season, which is a fancy-pants grocery store in Chapel Hill. It's the kind of place where I want to have everything, but buy nothing because the prices infuriate me. They have a class just for making biscuits, where a well-paid chef in a starched apron reveals the secret about making flaky, fluffy biscuits. The article told you the secret - don't overmix the dough - and probably pissed off the people who would rather only reveal the secret to people who have paid for the class.

Now you don't have to pay for the class either. DON'T OVERMIX. Your owls will not find your snacks to be superb.

Anyway, I made the dough, did not overmix, and wrapped the result around Nathan's Famous hot dogs, cut into thirds. The result was pretty good, but not really what I would call Pigs in Blankets. I'm sure the difference is similar to my preference for blue box mac and cheese. I've made the stuff from scratch and I just don't want it. I want it from a fifty cent blue box, and I want it with cut-up hot dogs. So when it came time to serve Josh his annual serving of nostalgia, it was back to the can.

The bright side of this story (and don't think I've given up on my quest to put a pig in a better blanket) is that I now know how to make biscuits. I announced this to Josh over the phone while he was somewhere in Florida, and he didn't seem that impressed. Maybe because when you're travelling all over the country with your rock band, you're just not that concerned with your girlfriend's quest to make awesome breakfast breads. In any case, he seemed to have completely forgotten I ever mentioned it until last week. He decided he wanted an omelet, and I decided I wanted biscuits. He was not enthusiastic about biscuits, because an omelet takes ten minutes tops, while biscuits conjure up an image of a old lady in a Hardees apron clocking in at 5:30 in the morning. I told him that the biscuits would take ten minutes to mix up and then when I put them in the oven, he could start the omelet. Twenty minutes later, we had omelets and biscuits. People tell you that making things from scratch is hard, but those people are lying to you.

He was eating his second biscuit when he asked me when the heck I learned to make biscuits like this. Throughout the rest of the day, more of the biscuits continued to disappear down his gullet.

Now I've already shared the biscuit recipe and more importantly the secret about not overmixing, but I'm going to include a little bonus recipe for you. I'm going to tell you how to turn these delicious regular biscuits into bo-berry biscuits.

It would probably be fair to assume that most of my readership is Southern and thus already knows about Bojangles, but I'll be optimistic about the reach of my writing and explain anyway. Bojangles is a Cajun/Southern fast food restaurant. They serve fried chicken and biscuits and dirty rice and sweet tea. They also feature something called a "bo-berry biscuit," which is a regular biscuit that has blueberries in it and is topped with a sweet glaze. It's inspired, really. It's like they mixed the jam right inside the biscuit!

I've already given away so many secrets today, so what's one more? There are no actual blueberries in a bo-berry biscuit. There are blue pellets that when cooked, explode and taste like blueberries. I know, I know, I was terribly disappointed, too. I felt a little betrayed, actually. I did not feel that way when I found out that Taco Bell mixes a lot of soy with their ground beef, because who ever trusted meat from Taco Bell anyway? But I trusted Bojangles when they implied that there were actual blueberries involved in a bo-berry. Now I know the sad truth that bo-berry is not just a cute name, but an actual thing. A bo-berry is a little blue exploding pellet.

If you would like a minute to absorb this sad truth, please, take your time.

I would not feel comfortable disillusioning you so if I did not have a remedy. That remedy is actual blueberry biscuits which are made with actual blueberries. Now all we need is a catchy name.

1. Make the biscuit recipe found here. When you get to the step where you add the milk, also add in 1 cup of blueberries. I find that frozen works very well because it means the berries will stay intact while baking. That way, no one will ever confuse them for blue pellets. Then mix, but not too much. Please click on her pictures of what the dough should look like to know when to stop mixing.


2. Bake as instructed.


3. While the biscuits are baking, mix 1 cup powdered sugar, 4 teaspoons water, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice.


4. Take the biscuits out of the oven and brush the glaze over each one.


5. Eat. Enjoy. Feel superior to those who eat blue pellets. Feed one to your owl.