The Way Home
Plus My Cheddar Biscuits Recipe
There’s a whisper at every season. A quiet voice that says. “begin again”. Not with pressure or promises, but simply, with presence.
Michelle Adams
New Year’s Reflections
This past year asked more of me than I ever expected. I entered the year saying, “this is it, it’s finally going to be my year”. Yet once again, I was met with challenges that led to the harsh realization that this most definitely would not be my year.
The events of the year unraveled plans and rearranged priorities. By Autumn, I was bereft. I had been so sure that this year was going to be different that I hadn’t made a contingency plan. Perhaps I wasn’t meant to have the elusive “good year”.
So, I started writing here, more to have an outlet for my restlessness and quiet creativity, than anything else.
I am a person who likes plans. God forbid I just start writing. Instead, I need to plan, organize, scheme. Define everything up front. Dot the i’s and cross the t’s. The problem with definitions is that they often make you a prisoner of the box you put yourself into.
I put myself in a “recipe” box. I know food well, I have my whole life. I gravitate towards cooking, gardening, and visiting farmer’s markets. But there’s something else on my heart. Something about my personal journey that I feel can help others. One week I allowed myself to step outside the box to write about it, and I finally found a voice I could identify with.
But as my daughter’s illness intensified in November and December, I quietly stepped away from writing. Instead, I used the time to wrap my arms around her, as well as the holiday season. In that pause, something shifted inside me.
I had a quiet realization that everything had worked out the way it was meant to.
If I had continued to pursue my initial, or even secondary, career goals, I wouldn’t be in a place to care for my daughter at a time she so desperately needs me. If I hadn’t spent the last few years derailed by illness myself, I wouldn’t have learned the things I am applying now to help her. And if I hadn’t stepped away to take a brief breath, I wouldn’t have been led to understanding that my writing here isn’t just an outlet, or a simple page for recipe shares.
Rather, it’s a return.
To rhythm and roots.
To the thing that’s been on my heart all along.
It’s a moment in time where food, memory and reinvention meet. It’s a place where we can gather around stories, just like we would gather around a table full of pies. It’s where aging feels like softening, not disappearing. Where gardens bloom and bread rises. Where answers come quietly through the work of our hands, whether for the harvest, or the hearth. Where peace rises to meet us where we are.
A Return to Home
During recent moments as I walked alone along a snowy lane, questioning softly as I do, I realized that the answer is home.
Home makes me happiest. Not just my house, but the feeling of home that is brought forth from warm and soft memories. Like when I was young and we would take long car rides amidst Autumn cornfields, stopping on the side of the road to buy pumpkins and Indian corn. At home, we’d eat a hearty Sunday dinner and watch the Wonderful World of Disney as the fiery sun dipped low in the fields. You can see the sunset really well over harvested fields and there is something quite magical about it. It’s a memory that evokes home to me, along with a thousand others.
As I walked, the crisp air mixed with nostalgia to remind me of a simpler, yet happier, time. I wondered, aloud, if I had over-complicated my life and lost out on home?
I hadn’t felt like myself for a very long time. I definitely didn’t feel like that girl—the one who lived according to the rhythm of the seasons. Who rode her bike alone on the backstreets of her hometown, anxiously anticipating meeting her best friend in the middle. Even in the winter, we’d ride to the woods near her house and spend time investigating the tracks of animals along the creek. In summer, we’d bike on blacktopped pavement emanating heat from the sun and try to soak up the breeze hitting our faces when we pedaled faster.
(And yes, we really did drink from garden hoses.)
That carefree girl had become a woman so consumed by trying to achieve something great, that she unwittingly became someone other than herself. When she did that, the essence of home moved out of reach. In the effort of trying to “do it all”, she had lost the girl she once was. The girl with dreams drastically different than the way it all panned out.
Just as I began to examine the events of the year and was coming around to the realization it was happening the way it was supposed to, I became aware of a gentle whisper. In the pause, the whisper became louder than the noise, and I finally heard the message.
Come home.
Come home to yourself.
Remember who you are and where you are from. Remember what you wanted to do, before the world told you what to become.
Remember the feeling of home.
Again, because I’m me, doubt took hold.
“Can I really go home when it doesn’t exist anymore?”
I teetered along the soft space in between what I wanted and who I became. I forgave myself for my failures and my shortcomings, I am only human after all. Then I began to reach for a life preserver—frantically, but with great conviction that if it existed, it would save me.
Would it be like it’s always been? Reaching out into the abyss, and feeling nothing to grab? Or would it be different this time?
I have no control over what is happening to my daughter. I have little control over my inherited autoimmune disease. I can no longer change the course my career took. But, there are things I can control, and when I put my energy there, I felt saved.
My garden, making food from scratch, watching the sunset every night, preserving the harvest, embracing where I am, sharing stories. Every time I walked through my garden, made food I grew, watched the sky flame red at night, or baked a loaf of bread—-I felt pieces of my soul slip back into place. With every story I told, all of my shortcomings began to fade.
Home—the return to my roots, and myself. Where food meets memory. Where stories are shared over coffee and pie. Where healing happens with homecooked food and slower living. Where peace occurs as we wander barefoot on the grass, stringing flower bracelets together under puffy clouds. Where inspiration takes hold as we watch the fiery ball of the sun dip low in the sky, then gather our reading and commit to rest. Where we get to be the person we set out to be, the one we have always been before the noise became greater than the whisper and led us somewhere we really didn’t want to be.
But now, in this stage of life, we not only hear the whisper—we feel it as well. That feeling is our life preserver, and we need to grab on to it.
Our memories became stories, and the stories remind us that we had the power to go home anytime we wanted to.
Let this be the year we come home to ourselves. Season by season. Gently, slowly, intentionally. Let us remember that home was never a destination, but always a return. It exists, because we do.
One way I’ve decided to come home to myself this year is to cook simpler meals. For some reason, simple nourishing meals make me happy. Homemade with good ingredients requires little effort. So this past Sunday I turned my Christmas ham leftovers into an uncomplicate Sunday stew.
I made broth from the ham bone, then turned it into a thick chowder with chunks of ham, creamy yellow potatoes and sweet corn. Every year my mom spends hours shucking dozens of ears of corn from the farmer next to her house so she can eat local sweet corn all winter long. She also brought me 50 pounds of potatoes from the farm, that I have stored in my cool basement.
These cheddar biscuits were the perfect accompaniment to a stew filled with local produce, and a reminder that you can continue to eat local no matter the season—and don’t have to grow everything yourself to do so.
As the wind roared and the rain pelted the windows, the meal was simple, yet filling, nourishing and satisfying.
I hope you enjoy these biscuits with your own winter stew.
Cheddar Biscuits
Ingredients
2 C flour*
1 T Baking Powder
1 t granulated sugar (optional, but balances the cheese)
3/4 t salt
1/2 t garlic powder (again, optional, but lovely)
6 T cold butter, cubed
1 1/4 C shredded cheddar cheese
3/4 - 1 C milk or buttermilk
Instructions
Heat oven to 425 degrees. Line baking sheet with parchment or lightly butter a cast iron skillet.
Mix flour, baking powder, sugar, salt and garlic powder together in a bowl.
Cut in butter using a pastry cutter, fork or your fingers until the mixture looks like course pea-sized crumbles.
Add cheese and stir.
Add 3/4 C milk and stir gently. Add more milk only if necessary. The dough should be soft and shaggy, not wet.
Drop heaping spoonfuls (I used an ice cream scoop) onto the pan, leaving space between for the dough to spread.
Bake 14 to 17 minutes, until golden on top.
OPTIONAL: after biscuits are baked and while still hot, brush with butter and sprinkle with Maldon flake salt. Other options include brushing with a honey-butter or sprinkling with garlic powder.
OPTIONAL: sprinkle additional cheese on top before baking!
Makes about 15 drop biscuits. Dough can be scooped and refrigerated up to 8 hours before baking.
Keep on writing 🤟🏼