Sunday, March 3, 2024 

Hey! It’s Bisquick Party Time with Iowa Waffles!

Kickin’ back this morning after enjoying our Pancake Sunday Breakfast and admiring my recently reorganizes kitchen shelves I couldn’t believe what I saw. Right there, on my cookbook stand in front of my vintage pamphlets, was the “Bisquick Party Book.”

Who knew? I’d forgotten I had it. And, what a treasure?

Yes. That’s what I said. A treasure -- harkening back to my childhood, to my Mom’s kitchen and the smell of Bisquick biscuits in the oven.

That was a staple, for us, back then. For those not familiar, many a Mom back in Iowa turned to Bisquick because the flour mixture could be used to whip up most anything from sunup to sundown, or in other words, from coffee cakes to casseroles and everything in between like tuna tips and pizza pies. And this quick and easy baking flour was especially handy through the winter months when you never knew when you might get snowed in and couldn’t make it to the store. They weren’t on every corner, you know, and weather reports back then were sketchy.

The favorites in our house, along with the biscuits, were chicken pot pie and strawberry short cake. Yum! My mouth waters just thinking about it. And the curious thing is, I just started picking up Bisquick for my own pantry, back in 2020, when COVID struck and I remembered what a great staple it was to have for the “just in case” times.

And, wouldn’t-cha know? The first thing I made was drop biscuits just like Mom’s. Oh my gosh. They were just as good as I remembered. So, as you might well imagine, they’ve become a regular on our weekly menu, even though the pandemic is long gone, and they’re still yummy with butter and jelly. Our personal favorite, though, has become, the garlic, cheesy biscuits as sides to my cheesy broccoli soup. They’re just so easy to whip up, especially with the recipe right there on the back of the box. Well, that was until just recently when they switched out the recipe for something new which sent me searching online. But that only happened to me once because I quickly copied the recipe down and filed it away in my recipe box for easy retrieval.

Does anyone do that anymore, by the way? Write down recipes or have a recipe box? That was always the best go-to gift. In fact, that’s the first thing I did for my kids when they went off to college and had their first apartments – give them each a recipe box with all their favorite recipes inside. A no-brainer, for sure.

Getting back to the Bisquick, I’ve gotta say, finding my little recipe book really made my day. Even more so, because I discovered a recipe inside for “Iowa Waffles,” named such, I imagine because it includes creamed corn mixed into the batter. But that’s just my take. Anyway, as you might well imagine, I’m now implored to give it a try because it’s named after my home state. Canned cream corn here I come.  (And, I haven’t had that in my pantry for decades.)