All thanks to my work and the fabulous Dallas furnished apartments, I can now bake and cook to my heart’s content, even when I’m away on business!

I no longer travel for business and stay in little hotel rooms and eat out every single meal.

So I write this while away on business, staying in this corporate housing in Dallas. The apartments are large and come fully equipped with all you could need or want – including all your baking goods – perfect for the chef in all of us!

This recipe is adapted from the America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook and tastes much better if you can find a local source of true buttermilk — what’s left after butter is churned from fresh, whole milk. Store-bought buttermilk is manufactured by adding lemon juice to milk that’s already been stripped of its cream. It is a sad replacement for true buttermilk.

Regular milk — in Appalachia we call it “sweet” milk to distinguish it from tangy buttermilk — will do in a pinch.

Yield: Makes 8 to 12 biscuits

Optional special equipment: pastry blender or electric food processor, biscuit cutter, cookie sheet or pizza pan, parchment paper.

Ingredients: 1 cup all-purpose flour, plus 1/4 cup more, divided (for rolling out dough)

1 cup cake flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

8 tablespoons or 1 stick butter, cut into 1/4-inch cubes and chilled for 30 minutes

3/4 cup very cold buttermilk

Instructions: Adjust oven rack to middle position and preheat to 450 degrees. Line the cookie sheet or pizza pan with a sheet of parchment paper. Note: you don’t want to use wax paper for this because it will smoke in the oven, imparting off flavors to the biscuits and stinking up your kitchen.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk the flours, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add the chilled butter cubes and, using a heavy-gauge metal whisk, pastry blender or large fork, quickly cut the cubes into the flour. Stop when you have pea-sized lumps of fat distributed throughout the flour mixture. (You can also do this in a food processor — it takes about 12 pulses). Using a rubber or silicone spatula, stir in the buttermilk until just combined.

DO NOT OVERMIX, or your biscuits will be chewy, not flaky. Mixing excites the gluten and protein in flour. This is a wonderful thing to do when you want to make sandwich or artisan bread, but it’s a terrible thing to do to biscuits.

The dough should be rough and sticky. Turn it out onto a clean, dry counter sprinkled with a half of the reserved all-purpose flour. Sprinkle the rest over the dough and your hands. Gently pat the dough into a circle about 3/4-inch thick.

At this point, you may do two things. You may cut the dough into 8 to 12 rounds with a biscuit cutter dipped in flour to keep it from sticking. This is traditional but will be messy and require you to pat out the dough a couple more times, perhaps toughening some of the biscuits.

Or, you can cut the dough into 8 to 12 wedges using a very sharp chef’s knife. This technique makes biscuits that look like the scones you will find in American coffee shops. I do the rounds because they are traditional, but maybe wedges are smarter.

Slathered with butter and jam, jelly, honey, syrup or molasses, these make an excellent dessert. Left savory, they go smashingly with country gravy, make wonderful ham, sausage or egg biscuits, but are best served with fried chicken. Mmm dinner tonight is sorted.

Curried venison meatballs with a chutney dip. It’s adapted from a lamb recipe found in Fruits of the Harvest: Recipes to Celebrate Kwanzaa and Other Holidays by Eric V. Copage.

Ingredients: 1 lb. ground venison (or lamb, buffalo or beef)
1 cup bread crumbs, dried or fresh
2 eggs
1 TBS. olive oil
1 small onion, finely minced or shredded, or otherwise thoroughly macerated
1 garlic clove, minced or put through a garlic press
1 tsp. ground cinnamon

1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1/4 tsp. curry powder
1/4 tsp. chili powder
1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
1/8 tsp. ground cloves
1 TBS. oil (corn, canola, peanut or similar) for frying

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Using your hands, mix all ingredients from venison to cloves together in a bowl until well combined. Roll mixture into meatballs — the size is up to you, but smaller is generally better.

Oil a heavy duty rimmed baking sheet with the frying oil and place meatballs on it. Bake in the oven for 8 to 15 minutes, depending on the size of the meatballs.

Serve with toothpicks and mango dip, or as a sandwich on pitas with lettuce, tomato, onion and other toppings.

Mango dip
1 cup mango chutney, fig preserves or similar fruit spread
3 TBS. orange juice

Place ingredients in a blender and process until smooth. Serve.

Since I’ve been on a tear lately writing about how to save money (sudden poverty will do that to you), I thought I’d share some strategies for how to stretch your meat budget.

1. Remember eggs — nature’s most convenient protien. Cheap and easy to digest with a long shelf-life, eggs are incredibly versatile. They can be added to ground meats to stretch the budget (think meatloaf and meatballs). But don’t forget what the French have always known — quiches and omeletts are good for breakfast, lunch, dinner or a reheated snack.

Fritattas are wonderful and when cut into small pieces make an excellent appetizer. French toast made of stale bread soaked in eggs is full of protien and tastes great with maple syrup.

2. Make friends with hunters. Wild game — whether hoofed or winged — is more nutritious and lower in fat and calories than farm-raised. It’s also a great bargain. This year I paid $45 in processing fees and got about 75 pounds of venison, meanwhile my friend Lee got to guiltlessly shoot more deer than he could eat.

In just about every community, there are people who hunt deer, turkey, grouse, duck, elk, squirrel and rabbit and may be willing to share their bounty. If you own suitable land, they might trade you meat for hunting rights.

Or, consider taking up hunting and fishing yourself. You’ll be helping preserve traditional American foodways, while saving a lot of money on the most expensive part of your grocery bill. Some even argue that reducing consumption of farm-raised meat can can help curb global warming. While there’s an upfront cost in classes, licensing and equipment, a chest freezer full of game could save you hundreds.

3. Reconsider your portion size. Whether you buy the most expensive local and organic meats, or cheaper conventional, this tip more than any other will save you money.

As any dietician will tell you, the standard adult-size portion of protein is about three ounces, or the size of a deck of playing cards. This means that one good-sized ribeye steak or a half of a chicken breast will serve two, maybe even three, adults for dinner — with the added bonus of helping you maintain a healthier weight.

Keep in mind that three ounces is a standard meat entree. As a side dish, it will go even further.

So….

4. Make meat a side dish. Grill a steak (again, we’ll say ribeye because it’s my favorite) or a piece of chicken, slice it thin and serve it over rice or pasta. Or, use it to top a nice Asian-inspired mix of romaine lettuce, red cabbage, shredded carrots, green onions and roasted pumpkin seeds drizzled with a simple sesame dressing.

Slice leftover roast beef thin and store in the freezer for a quick Thursday night fajita filling. Cube that roast beef to add to Friday’s vegetable soup.

When bacon is on two-for-one sale, buy it, cut each pound in half and freeze in individual Ziploc bags. When you feel like bacon, thaw slightly (it’s much easier to cut when it’s partially frozen) and then mince a half-pound to season a pot of beans, soup or stew. A half-pound of bacon will serve two people well for breakfast or BLTs (the world’s simplest and tastiest sandwich) — just thaw and fry as usual. Again, the reduction in calories is a bonus.

5. Buy cheaper cuts. Whether fried, grilled, broiled or steamed with vegetables, talapia is generally cheaper than flounder or halibut but, arguably just as good. Flash frozen shrimp is cheaper than scallops or lobster, but just as decadent. Stretch your shrimp or other shellfish by stirring smaller portions into rice dishes such as risotto, jambalaya, gumbo or paella.

Use backfin or “special” crab meat instead of lump in crab cakes, risotto or dip. Cheaper canned tunaand salmon make excellent mock crab cakes — and use up stale bread.

Boneless, skinless chicken thighs are inexpensive, impossible to overcook and delicious stewed all day in sauce in the crockpot. Shred the meat and stuff into pitas or tortillas with various fillings. Broiled with the skin on and sliced thin, thighs make a great chicken teryaki. Wings are cheap and can be marinated in various concotions, then broiled or grilled to become Mexican, Asian or down-home barbecue dinner. Kids love drumsticks, which are inexpensive and can be treated the same as wings.

Sausage is your best money-saving pork product. Sausage comes smoked, linked or bulk ground and flavored to be Italian, Cajun, polish or American breakfast. However it’s sold, it’s cheaper than chops or roasts. And it’s heavily seasoned and has enough fat to stay moist and juicy. Grill and serve in buns, of course. Cook with saurkraut, onions and apples and serve with mashed potatoes and cornbread. To stretch further, use it as a seasoning in rice or pasta.

It’s an ironic twist, but cheaper cuts of beef often have as much or more flavour than their high-dollar counterparts. Examples from the America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook are:

Thriftier steaks
All these cuts scored higher than filet mignon in taste tastes, but cost significantly less. Season with a spicy dry rub; grill, sear or broil until medium; slice thin across the grain.

Chuck shoulder steak, also labeled as London broil and chuck steak
Top blade steak, also called flat-iron steak and chuck steak (scored as high on the flavor and tenderness scales as prime rib)
Round bone steak, also called New York sirloin and shell sirloin steak
Top sirloin steak, also called sirloin butt steak

Less costly roasts
All these cuts were rated more flavorful than beef tenderloin, and tasted nearly as good as prime rib. They are arranged cheapest to more expensive. All are usually half the price of prime rib.

Bottom round rump roast, also labeled round roast, bottom round pot roast, bottom round oven roast
 Top round roast, also called top round first cut and top round steak roast
Brisket (choose the “flat cut,” not the “point cut”)
Top sirloin roast, also called top butt and center-cut roast
Chuck-eye roast, also called boneless chuck roll or roast or boneless chuck filet (ATKFC’s favorite pot roast)
Top blade roast, also called chuck roast, blade roast and top chuck roast

And finally…

6. Buy a vacuum sealer. You find a huge sale on pork chops and can just picture yourself pulling them out of the freezer on a cold winter day to roast in the oven and serve with garlic mashed potatoes. Trouble is, they sometimes get freezer burn before you can use them. So, you pass up the bulk sale savings. Well, not anymore.

For $10 to $100, you can buy a vacuum sealing machine and take advantage of that bargain 12-pack. Simply portion out the food according to the number of servings you’ll need for an average meal, vacuum seal and freeze. The vacuum device removes the air space around the meat where ice crystals form and cause damage. Preserved this way, meat can last a year or more.