"It's all about the South !"

[Ray]

That is the advertising slogan/motto of Jack's Family Restaurants, a fast food chain in the central deep south. We love our Jack's. Here in the heart of Dixie there is one in most towns and many locations in the big cities.

Once upon a time there was a plan to install as many as four state run "rest areas" on a busy four-lane east/west non-interstate highway and the funds (billions) were allocated. But that governor's administration self-destucted in fits of much publicized adultery . The leaked audio recordings sound much like don knotts in character as "bernard fife" lewdly pitching woo to betty lynn in character as "thelma lou". The old lady lieutenant-governor who stepped-in nixed the rest area deal opining, "if you need to pee, there is a Jack's every 15 minutes on that highway !"

Jack's biscuits are much celebrated for flavour and texture but they have dramatically shrank in size over the decades. They (biscuits) are an estimated a third to half the size of the competition's. Recently I was complaining in a good-natured banter with one of the relatively "wholesome" much tattooed and pierced drive-thru window wenches when I said, "if those biscuits get any thinner you'll be able to read a newspaper through one of them !"

To which she queried, "what's that ?"

The young "lady" did not know what a newspaper is/was !

https://www.eatatjacks.com/pages/our-story/

https://www.eatatjacks.com/product-category/breakfast/

https://www.eatatjacks.com/product-category/sandwiches/

https://www.eatatjacks.com/product-category/chicken/

[Bill in Oregon]

Ray, ya'll are making me ravenous. Boy those biscuit "smammiches" and burgers look good.
The comment about the newspapers makes this old retired editor feel sad.

[piller]

I think that buiscuit sandwiches are the perfect breakfast food. You have got me hungry again. I have used self rising flour, cold butter and a bit of buttermilk to make the biscuits. Turns out good. Add a sausage patty, some scrambled eggs, and a dash of Cholula sauce. With that mix, you have proof that GOD loves us.

[Ray]

Although I'm sure the preparations differ by location, around here McDonald's biscuits are a third bigger than Jack's and Bojangles quite double the bulk but both those competitors recipes and ingredients seem more commercial and less like grandma's than Jack's.

One grandmother made biscuits cut out of rolled-out dough. Those were both flakey in texture but had a bit of crusty bite about them on the exterior. The other grandmother made more of a batter than a dough and dollops of that batter were dropped from a spoon onto the baking sheet. These were often referred to as "catheads" due to their size and asymmetry. Ah ! The smells wafting through those tiny, antiquated, high-ceilinged yarn mill village bungalows of those weekend mornings, especially when soured milk was used in the batter/dough. Both of those homes still exist but the demographics of the neighbourhoods have changed so much that it is considered dangerous to even drive through.

IMG_20260719_091049.jpg[/attachment [attachment=0]IMG_20260719_090457.jpg

[Bill in Oregon]

Craftsman bungalows with big, inviting front porches as God intended.

[GunnyMack]

The one and only thing I miss about going back and forth to Colorado was stopping at a classmates house for a good sleep and his stepmoms biscuits and sausage gravy! The guys would have to pull me away from the table !

The shrinkage is probably due to all the serving size garbage the gubermint has forced upon us.

[Echo154]

Anybody had chocolate gravy and biscuits ? My Aunt in Hoenwald, Tennessee made them from scratch for me whenever I visited……..best biscuits ever!!! We got a place in Mountain Home, Arkansas (I live by Flippin) that makes them…..they are great but still not my Aunt’s!

[Walt]

Going to grade school in Capitan, NM in the early 60s, the school cafeteria made all our food; the percentage of commercially-made food was very small. My favorite memory was of the rolls they prepared, baked on large metal sheets, perfectly browned on top with a so-delicious, soft white middle. They were baked close together so they had to be pulled apart, they were lightly buttered on top and I would give a lot to be back there feasting on those hot rolls.

[jeepnik]

Walt, that's because the women (usually older whose kids were grown) knew how to bake from raising those kids. Every one I can remember was very grandmotherly.

[Bill in Oregon]

My stepmother is way old school and thinks nothing of making four dozen dinner rolls on her wood-fired stove and oven as just one of several courses. Has a 25-gallon galvanized garbage can in the kitchen filled with flour.
She's from the Maddox family that produced Rose Maddox.
And yes, Walt, I remember real food cooked at school served by grandmothers early 1960s at General Jonathan Wainwright Elementary School in an old suburb of Tacoma, Washington -- Fircrest, developed by a 1930s radio personality, Major Bowes.