Strawberries and Biscuits

Our summer vacation just started at the end of last week.  Friday was our first full day of summer vacation.  I wanted to do something big with the kids.  My husband had taken the day off.  My youngest daughter had other plans.  She decided that staying up to about ten o clock the night before was more important than her day with the family doing a fun summer outing (usual bed time being 8 during the school months).  This has only happened umpteen times.  We have tried everything to get her to sleep.  Extra activities to tire her out, a positive reward calendar, a negative reward system, sleeping with her sister, going to bed even earlier the next night ...  On and on it goes.  Finally, I said to my husband that we really had to put our foot down.  She had been told that if she did not to sleep, she would lose out on the activities.  And she did.  I made it as boring as possible for her and I at home, while my other daughter and husband went out and enjoyed the day.  Dang, I was sad.  I really was looking forward to the family having an outing together.  She is doing better but there is still room for improvement.

One of the things we had hoped to do was some more strawberry picking but that just did not work out.  Lucky for us we had a lot of strawberries the first time we went out picking.  We made this simple, lovely dessert.

Strawberries and Biscuits
Biscuit recipe from Epicurious

3 cups all purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup (1 1/2sticks) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch pieces
1 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 425°F. Whisk flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda in large bowl to blend. Using fingertips, using a pastry blender or a fork 3/4 cup chilled butter into dry ingredients until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add buttermilk and stir until evenly moistened. Using 1/4 cup dough for each biscuit, drop biscuits onto baking sheet, spacing 2 inches apart. Bake until biscuits are golden brown on top, about 15 minutes. Cool slightly. Serve warm.

My Strawberry Mixture

Slice 4 cups strawberries and sprinkle with 2 tablespoons of sugar.  Scrape a vanilla pod and add the seeds to the strawberries.  If you want to spice things up a bit more, add a tablespoon or two of Grand Marnier. Let sit at least 15 minutes to marry.

I dolloped the top with a bit of vanilla yogurt.