When people say, “Think outside the box,” the box I picture is Bisquick.
That’s a popular baking mix, of course, and it’s also what General Mills used to call the biscuits you could make with it. My father made them for us on weekend mornings when I was a kid; they were certainly an adequate conveyor of sausage patties and apple butter. My parents still keep a box of Bisquick in their kitchen; I see it when I swivel by it in the lazy Susan cabinet whenever I’m on the hunt for actual flour.
Because I. Would. Never. I make biscuits from scratch.
That sounds boastful, I know. Just writing it triggers a tumble of apologies, like a series of sneezes. (It’s fine to use Bisquick! Baking might not be your thing! I don’t judge!) But as a dedicated home cook and a lifelong foodie, I have a strong bias against premade, shelf-stable, factory food.
When Bisquick debuted in the early 1930s, its ads claimed that “Science’s Most Thrilling Food Invention” allowed wives to make biscuits “109% faster” and in 44 fewer steps. It’s true: using a mix saves time and effort.
Most important, though, especially for “inexperienced brides,” it saves thought. As those early ads asserted, “the ‘knack’ or ‘trick’ of perfect biscuits is made into Bisquick.” With Bisquick, you can make biscuits without knowing how; you don’t need to be able to cut shortening into flour (“something few women ever learn to do”), much less explain why.
But that part of baking — the part that uses my brain — that’s the fun part. That’s what connects me to the real, physical world as I try to figure out how I can act on certain materials (like flour and shortening) and certain forces (like pressure, time, and heat) to end up with the biscuit I picture in my head. If I’m not doing the thinking, I’m just doing a chore.
This combination of the thinking I am doing and the thing I am making, this meeting of inside my brain and outside in the world, it’s thrilling. It feels like being alive. It feels like being human. I don’t believe cooking from scratch makes me a better person or that there’s anything wrong with not cooking from scratch. Honest. If using Bisquick allowed my father to skip those forbidding 44 steps to our hot biscuits (and pancakes and donuts), I’m all for it. But cooking, actual cooking, makes me feel more like a human being. Because, like most people, I crave the spark of my brain engaged with the world.
Also like most people, I skip almost every opportunity to get that feeling. Yes, I bake the biscuits, but I do not sculpt the plate that breakfast sits on or build the counter under the plate or sew the napkin beside it. Basically, I take every single shortcut our mass- producing consumer economy offers except when it comes to making food. And when it comes to making meaning.
My scratch obsession really intensified when I had kids. I made my own baby food and graham crackers and applesauce — because I already loved to cook and I was home most of the time.
And — and! — because raising kids makes you intensely aware of everything you’re doing. Every choice you make, every word you say. Suddenly you have not just an audience but — how do I say this? — potential victims. Everything you do directly affects people you love most, people who depend on you entirely. People who are learning to be people by watching you.
It’s terrifying, sobering, electrifying.
So I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this was the point in my life not only when I figured out how to turn cooked oatmeal into a toddler finger food but also when I started to say out loud that God was made up.
When I had kids, I didn’t intend to raise them as atheists. But just as I was determined to give my kids food that I cooked myself, I was determined to teach my children things I believed myself — not hand down to them premade beliefs (in my case, Jewish ones) that bypassed my own brain. So despite the pressures of the prevailing culture, I bake my own bread. I celebrate a homemade holiday called International Pizza Day. I swat away automated suggestions for replying to emails or texts. Since I truly love sausage cheese balls, I would not rule out buying that yellow box. I would, however, rule out using the expression “think outside the box”: Clichés are the Bisquick of writing, for those who haven’t learned how to cut their own metaphors into a sentence.
I don’t always get it right. But I refuse to let the forces of capitalism and convention and the lure of convenience suck out the parts of my life that make me feel most human — and then tell me it’s both inevitable and for my own good. It’s neither.
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