Buttermilk Baking Mix Copyright 2000 Stan Lyness   4/4, up-tempo except slow bridge, male or female voice	dialup listen
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A birthday of late is no cause to celebrate
yet I can still remember when it was:
I could say I was one more than I could the day before,
but the even better reason was because:

Every childhood birthday Mom would make my favorite meal:
fried chicken! with the fixin's and the best part of the deal:
Once the chicken was evicted from the skillet we could fill it
 with some milk and flour we squished into the chicken grease,
but the best part of that gravy was the biscuits underneath.
And the best desert was coffee cake, the way my mom would fix it,
it had apple slices in it but it tasted like the biscuits.

Now it didn't happen often but was heaven when it did,
Mom would make a special breakfast - not Rice Krispies - for the kids.
Pancakes on the griddle!  And you know they were delicious
'cause they tasted like the coffee cake that tasted like the biscuits.

An' we never had no waffles 'cause we never had no iron
but one day we finally got one just to keep the kids from cryin'.
Don't you know our family waffles were familiarly delicious
'cause they tasted like the pancakes
 that tasted like the coffee cake that tasted like the biscuits.

Now sometimes, you add some milk, other times you pour in water,
for coffee cake you add an egg; Ms Crocker says you ought to.
You should never put in short'nin' - cause the fat's already in it,
and 'cause once you've finished addin' stuff it's ready in a minute,

and when you bake with baking mix, best not to be ambitious,
or it won't taste like the coffee cake an' it won't taste like the biscuits.

For a holiday however we threw everything together
in a fancy French invention called a casserole
 - that's a 17-course meal made in one big bowl -
began with everything left over for the last two months or more,
then we emptied out the crisper and the lunch meat drawer,
in the freezer we found tater tots and lima beans galore,
in the pantry we found cans we couldn't read no more.
Then we poured the batter over, let it bake until we swore
everything in there was dead, then let it bake a little more.
Now all the animals and vegetables and minerals we threw
in the pie tin with the batter had become a tasty stew,
and - this is what's impossible - the bottom of the dish is
something rather like a pie crust, only spongy, and delicious,
'cause it tasted like the waffles that tasted like the pancakes
 that tasted like the coffee cake that tasted like the biscuits.

Now sometimes, you add some milk, other times you pour in water,
for coffee cake you add an egg; Ms Crocker says you ought to.
You should never put in short'nin' - cause the fat's already in it,
and 'cause once you've finished addin' stuff it's ready in a minute,
and when you bake with baking mix, best not to be ambitious,
or it won't taste like the coffee cake an' it won't taste like the biscuits.

Later on when I was single and I had my own apartment,
when I smelled my own home cookin' momentarily my heart went

back through chicken-dinner birthdays, back to ancient tribal meals,
and the fullness and familiarity our family'd feel.
Should my shortcake and my dumplin's beckon me to reminisce, it's
'cause they taste just like the waffles that taste just like the pancakes
 that taste just like the coffee cake that tastes just like the biscuits.