Offseason Survival Guide: Week 1

After this weekend, there will be only 13 Saturdays left until Auburn football returns. That’s a daunting number. It’s even more terrifying when you realize Auburn Baseball and Softball aren’t guaranteed to be on TV for the next few weeks unless they both keep winning. What is a Auburn fan to do?

Well, I am here to help. Our Masthead says “College and Magnolia, an Auburn Tigers Community” and I am taking that seriously. Communities need to rally together to help us get through the tough times. It’s hard to admit you need help, and sometimes it takes a moment of clarity to get to that point. For me, it was realizing I had spent three hours last Saturday watching Bigfoot videos on YouTube. I’m still not convinced half of them aren’t real, but that’s besides the point. I need help. We need help. We need things to fill our Saturdays.

Introducing: The Offseason Survival Guide

Each week, I will be giving you things to do to fill your weekend time while we count down the days until Daniel Carlson begins his quest to make a 70-yard field goal in a game.

Cook:

Everyone likes it when someone else cooks for them. So what you are going to do this Saturday is make Biscuits. Sourdough biscuits.

You will need:

• 2 cups of all purpose flour (not self-rising flour) This can be a mix of pastry flour and bread flour if you want.
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• ¹⁄₂ (or just under a teaspoon) baking soda
• ¹⁄₂ teaspoon fine table salt, don’t get fancy
• 1 cup sourdough starter, it’s better if you fed it last night, but it also works if you just use the discarded starter from a feeding. Don’t have a starter? Guess what you’re doing this offseason!
• ¹⁄₂ cup good buttermilk or just over ¹⁄₄ cup greek yogurt and the rest water.
• 1 stick frozen butter

Now, turn your oven up to 425F. Mix all the dry ingredients together by hand in a big bowl. Then get a cheese grater and grate the frozen butter into the bowl. Mix the butter into the dry flour with your hands. Pour the starter in. If you’re starter isn’t very thick and is more watery, then add all the buttermilk as well—otherwise just add the buttermilk until you get the consistency right. It should be a relatively dry ball of dough but everything should be mixing together nicely. Fold your dough in half over and over and then flatten it out. Repeat this a few times. Don’t take any aggression out on the dough, this dough is your teammate, not your opponent. Now flatten the dough out and then take a coffee cup and use the open side as a biscuit cutter. This amount of dough should make about 9-12 biscuits. As you’re cutting the biscuits, take the scraps and mush them together using the bottom of the coffee cup. Let that sit for a bit before cutting it into more biscuits. Put the biscuits on a waxed paper sheet on a baking tray in the oven and bake them for 15-18 minutes. Take that coffee cup again, put a little butter in it and melt it in the microwave. When the biscuits are golden brown, take them out and spread the melted butter on the tops of them.

You just made biscuits, champ.

Watch:

You could catch up on some shows, or rewatch season 4 of House for the third time. OR you could watch one of these awesome documentaries:

An all time classic about fishing for Catfish with your barehands.

Okie Noodling:

Or this super interesting story of the fall of Apartheid in South Africa. This is one of the better documentaries I’ve seen in a while.

The Plot for Peace (available on Netflix):

Or you could just watch this totally real and terrifying bigfoot video:

Do this Outside:

Go run for an hour and a half. Don’t worry about distance, that’s for professionals. Just run/walk for forty five minutes and then turn around and head home. You will be amazed at the sense of accomplishment you will feel just pounding out a cool 90 minutes of movement. Plus, you’ll get your steps in, and that’s what it is all about. Some people have bad knees. If running hurts your knees, don’t do it. Get new shoes that won’t hurt your knees or just walk for an hour and a half. Don’t want to do a morning run? Me neither. I run in the afternoons. Don’t worry about distance. Don’t worry about pace. Just get outside and move around.

Read this:

SBNation’s amazing coverage of the NBA Playoffs (those are still going on and Lebron is still amazing).

OK. One week down. We can do this, you guys. If you do all the things I’ve suggested, this weekend will fly by and we will be screaming “War Eagle” at Jarrett and the boys in no time.