Earlier this year I made a great life decision. I ditched my lame day job for another, more interesting gig that is also fewer hours. My decision paid off, but now I’m busier than ever with writing stuff. Let me catch you up on why Biscuits of Today has felt a little neglected:

I kicked off 2013 with a guide to home cured charcuterie for Urban Farm. Thanks again to Bryan Butler of Salt & Time and Peter of cookblog for chatting with me!

I wrote a profile of Colby Smith of Smith & Smith Farms for Edible Austin. Colby did such a great interview that the piece pretty much wrote itself.

Each week, I’ve been writing part of Johnson Backyard Garden’s newsletter.

Two of my recipes (and a photo!) are in the Austin Food Bloggers Alliance cookbook, along with a blurb I wrote about Austin’s grocery store scene

I’m also writing regularly for Serious Eats as one of their Austin correspondents. I interviewed Paul Qui (omg!), Brandon Hunt from Via 313, and John Pennington of Winflo Osteria. I’ve also written about lots of sandwiches and did almost endless SXSW coverage. You can check out all of my Serious Eats stuff here.

Last month Slow Food Austin generously awarded me a scholarship to attend the most excellent Foodways Texas Symposium (bbq was this year’s theme), and I also wrote about that.

Of course there’s more stuff in the pipeline. I can’t wait to share it!

Got back from New Orleans a few weeks ago. Ate lots of delicious food at Jazz Fest– the highlight was the sweet potato turnover as always. I went to my old ‘hood, Magazine Street, and was Chef John Besh at La Divina Gelateria. Then I ate some hand made chocolates from their rival, Sucre. Also popped into a banh mi shop in New Orleans East. I’ll be back in less than a month to get married!

I haven’t had a moment to “catch my breath” in the words of Kelly Clarkson. Lately life has been a whirlwind of good things (“no complaining!” I tell myself) but also tough on my awkward sensibilities.  I need lots of alone recovery time to feel normal.  Plus I recently lost my glasses, so I feel totally exposed to the world.

See above for the telltale signs that mulberries are in the vicinity. Once or twice a year I bike around the ‘hood to pick from my secret stash of trees. Picking fruit is fun, but it comes all at once, and then you need to do stuff to/with it.

The problem with mulberries? They’re just sweet and flavorless (once, some “farmer” passed off mulberries for blackberries at the market in Baton Rouge, and I was PISSED). With the help of lots of lemon juice, they still make great jam and desserts. Also, their little stems are always attached. Maybe you could carefully pick them off, but that just seems psychotic. I deal with the stems by making more of a jelly than a jam– squeezing the juice out of the fruit, and then maybe adding back some of the pulp for texture.  I made some small-batch jam (just two or three jars) because sometimes I just can’t handle canning right now.

Oh! I also finally found a biscuit recipe I can handle– these Two-Ingredient Biscuits by Nathalie Dupree. I made my own self-rising flour by adding baking soda and salt. The recipe directions are intense, but I just cut corners as usual, and they still turned out great. There’s nothing better than homemade jam and biscuits!

I could tell you about how everyone asks me if my blog is about biscuits, but that might be too painfully boring.

Small Batch Mulberry Jam

Ingredients:

1 pound mulberries

1/2 a vanilla bean, cut lengthwise and seeds scraped

2 1/2 cups sugar

1/4 cup lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon Pomona’s Pectin