Today my family will celebrate my Grandma Joyce's 80th birthday. I've mentioned her before as the originator of the family fascination with gingersnaps, creator of the rhubarb crunch recipe, and a very clever lady.

Grandma Joyce is often in my thoughts as I work through chores. Her farm was where I first collected a chicken egg fresh from the hen as a young girl. I fondly think of her rows of glass jars holding home-dried fruit and egg noodles as I fill my own.

Grandma grew up making everything by hand and, thanks to tight economic circumstances, she never fell prey to the lure of meals in a box. Because she's done it all, she understands the real work involved in growing, harvesting, and preserving real food. She appreciates practical handiwork more than expensive baubles - a trait we most definitely share.

If there's a way to shave time off a chore, Grandma knows it. She doesn't rush through tasks but she never wastes a movement. When she says "why don't you just XYZ", her suggestion always makes more sense than what I was doing.

In another time and place, Grandma might have been an executive or tech guru. As it is, she's the most computer-savvy eighty-year-old I know, the only one of my grandparents who will read and likely comment on this blog post. Grandma instills in her three children, eight grandchildren, and one great-granddaughter that reading and learning are important life-long pursuits.

Grandma loves to travel. She took two obnoxious boys and their little sister on long family car vacations as a young adult. Now, she enables our fifteen-member extended family to travel together, creating memories that will last a lifetime.

Happy birthday, Grandma. We love you.

At the Tayse family Xmas extravaganza, Grandma Joyce, of Rhubarb Crunch and Ginger Snap fame, inquired about freezer biscuits. She is a fantastic biscuit maker, trained by the best I've ever known, her mother (my late great grandmother) Leona.

Now living alone, she would like to have a biscuit or two for dinner but doesn't want to consume a whole batch. She could buy some of those dough boy frozen ones, but she is too thrifty (like all good Tayses) to spend more than a dollar a dozen. What's more, she suspects they don't taste as good as her own.

Always up for a challenge, I set out to find out the best way to store homemade biscuits in the freezer. The next time I made biscuits, I froze two before baking (raw) and two after baking just before they were browned. Holler in the comments if you want the recipe I use - it's a standard from Betty Crocker.

This weekend, I took all four biscuits out of the freezer. I immediately put one raw and one baked in the toaster oven, preheated to 350 degrees F. The baked one I pulled after about five minutes when the top browned; the raw baked for about 25 minutes until the top was brown. The other two were allowed to thaw in room temperature, and then I baked the thawed raw dough for 20 minutes until brown.

Both frozen-raw biscuits had less than desirable texture, though the rich buttery taste remained. Neither rose to the height of the pre-baked biscuits. You can see that in the biscuit pictured below and to the right, the raw frozen one, the fat pooled in pockets rather than lofted the flour into flaky layers as usual.

The pre-baked biscuits held their flaky texture and tasted great. Lil judged the one reheated in the oven as the very best and I agree. The thawed and not re-baked biscuit was perfectly passable.

My advice to Grandma and any person wanting to save the trouble of baking a mess of biscuits for a small gathering is this: bake a large batch of biscuits, removing what you wish to save for later just a minute or two before they are fully 'done'. Freeze these on a cookie sheet and then pop into a freezer safe bag, squeezing out the air. When you later wish to eat a biscuit, cook one in a 350 degree oven for 5-10 minutes, or until brown on top.

Added to Simple Lives Thursday 46.