In this episode, we talk about doing things differently as we practice what we preach taking on a new format for our discussion and making a Alison Roman's recipe for The Luckiest Biscuits rather than a recipe of our own. We learn and practice together as a community and talk about what it requires to break patterns.
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Original Alison Roman recipe for The Luckiest Biscuits in America.
Welcome to feed your fire in this week's episode, we are ditching our usual introduction and diving right in to begin things differently. This episode is about breaking patterns and embracing new approaches. And so in the spirit of that idea, we are stepping right into the topic, bypassing the pattern that we've established from the past. Whew, that feels kind of good and strange. Do you like it? Do I like it? Well, we're gonna roll with it and find out.
Feed Your Fire is about personal growth and fulfillment, and the only way to achieve that is by trying new things; to move beyond what we know and to be willing to fail and to learn from every experience, whether positive or negative. As I reflect on the most positively transformative moments in my life, they have one commonality—I stepped into something new. I let go of my past perceptions and I embraced a new mindset and a willingness to do things differently.
When you reflect on those moments in your life, what do you see? Do you see that when you broke free of a pattern, you stepped into a new possibility? Do you see that you had to get past discomfort and to be willing to accept a certain level of uncertainty in order to make progress? I bet you did.
We're all very familiar with that Albert Einstein quote that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, and yet we default to these patterns. We default to repetition because it's the way our brains are naturally wired. As humans, we like to see the world in patterns, because it helps us make sense of all of the information that we need to process. It creates certainty where there is uncertainty, even if it's faulty or assumed. And on top of that, we often fall into repetitive patterns because of character traits, things like loyalty and tenacity and desire to succeed and to push through and to give it one more try and to persist. And while those are wonderful traits, they can hold us back from breaking free of a pattern, if they're not coupled with awareness.
We love the idea of replication. In fact, that's the very essence of a recipe. And what makes recipes most successful is typically the communal nature of them—the fact that they are shared and passed down and adapted over time. They are not static. They are a guide. We are looking outside of ourselves, in many cases, for that inspiration, for that guidance, for that roadmap.
And while in these episodes, I usually share a recipe of my own, today, I am going to draw inspiration from others and learn something from their experiences. And as I was thinking about what we would make, it's kind of a big question, I was inspired by this recipe from Alison Roman for the Luckiest Biscuits. Who does not need a little bit of luck in their lives. You know that we subscribe to the lucky lentil. And who doesn't love a biscuit?
There was a market here in Richmond that used to have these vegan biscuits in their hot bar, and I would often go there for coffee in the morning, and I would challenge myself to beat the biscuit by not getting one, because I found them so addictive.
And the first biscuit I ever baked myself was for my mother when she was sick she needed something sort of simple to eat. And I thought, why not make some comforting food for her? They weren't very good, but we enjoyed them, and so biscuits have a very special place in my heart.
What I love about this recipe for us today is that it's not complicated by any means. Biscuits have been made for 1000s of years and are made of very, very simple ingredients: flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, butter —the real basics, but they're difficult to make well. And so there is this idea of practice that comes to mind. I think is a really useful metaphor as we think about doing things differently, because sometimes we try to do things differently and we just fall back to our same patterns, and so there's a process by which we have to get comfortable kind of taking a step back to take a step forward. And I'm looking forward to practicing these skills with you today.
Now what I'm finding is that I cannot resist the temptation to make a few small modifications to the recipe as we go along, and frankly, I think that's a good thing. I'm learning from her, but I am incorporating my own authentic self into it, which I encourage each of you to do in your own lives.
Before we start anything, we are going to start at the foundational level, wiping down our counter and sanitizing it so that we can get real close and comfortable with it as we knead our dough. In standard practice, she combines her dry ingredients—she's got her flour, some baking powder and baking soda, a little bit of salt. Interestingly, she uses a drop of sugar, which I am inspired and intrigued by. It's not a lot and not nearly enough to make this a sweet dough. There's just going to be a hint of it. And she combines them in a large bowl.
I'm going to go ahead and sift them together, because I think that will make for a nice, light, airy biscuit. If you've made these types of doughs before, then you know that it's really important to have super cold butter in your recipe. And so we've gone ahead and cut our butter into cubes, small cubes, like about one inch, and put it in the freezer so that it's just ice cold. And we're gonna put that into our flour mixture. She does this by hand, and I'm going to use a stand mixer, so don't tell anyone… I don't know if it'll have it make a difference. She says it will. I think it won't.
We're going to put the everything into a stand mixer with a paddle attachment and let that butter break up into sort of pebble size pieces. Now we're going to add buttermilk to the mixture, and based on her direction, we're going to use our hands to incorporate it until it's nice and smooth. Now we're going to take that mixture and put it on our countertop that we've lightly floured. We're going to knead it a few times, pat the dough, and form it into a rectangular shape. She cuts her biscuits into sort of square shapes. Some people use a biscuit cutter or a round cutter. We're going to follow her direction. She cuts the dough crosswise into four pieces and lengthwise just in half. So we get eight biscuits in total.
We're going to take these biscuits and put them on a parchment lined baking sheet, brush them with a little bit of buttermilk. She lets the buttermilk sort of drip down the sides of the biscuit and then sprinkles them with a flaky salt. I'm going to use some Maldon salt that I have. This is a very salty salt, so use it sparingly.
Then put them in an oven that's been preheated to 425 degrees. So that's a little hotter than you might anticipate, so make sure you're being mindful to cook these at a high temperature.
Now, while these cook, we're going to get real about what doing things differently requires of us, because it does take quite a bit of effort. We need to set the bar for ourselves at a different place. Our old patterns are no longer useful when they will simply replicate what's already happened, and what we're looking for is an elevated experience.
It also requires brutal honesty, and the only way to be that honest with yourself is to release yourself of shame, to give yourself the grace to grow.
We also have to acknowledge that patterns don't create certainty. We feel like they do because they're predictable, but that's not necessarily leading us to a more certain future. The Latin root for the word certain means settled, and that's very different than predictable.
Now I'm going to take these biscuits out of the oven. The room is fragrant, and I cannot wait to taste them. Biscuits are best when paired right they need some type of condiment— a little butter, a little jam, a little cheese, maybe some fried chicken. The possibilities are endless. Right now, I'm going to be a bit of a purist with a touch of nostalgia, and I am going to eat my biscuit with a little smear of butter and a drizzle of honey, which is how my brother used to eat them, and I'm going to enjoy them with you here today.
Now I don't know about you, but I'm feeling pretty lucky right now. I feel lucky to be surrounded by this community. I feel lucky to have the opportunity to enjoy these fabulous moments and to grow together.
So how do you know if doing things differently was a success? Should I measure it in downloads or likes? How good the recipe turned out, or is it something else? How about how it made me feel, and whether I felt like I expanded by taking on a different approach?
That's a big question, and I encourage you to think about it yourself. I know that for me, success is not measured in numbers, it's measured in possibilities and whether I've believed in myself enough to try harder and to do things differently. Until our next episode, I say so long.
Feed Your Fire, where food nourishes growth.