FYI, I use milk as a substitute all the time, with no deleterious effects.
Also FYI, Pillsbury’s storebought biscuits are NASTY and are extremely unbiscuitlike.
Definitely ditch the canola oil! Joy of Cooking has a biscuit recipe that uses oil instead of butter, but why? When butter makes biscuits taste so nummy, why use oil instead?
butterbutterbutterbutterbutter
Last night, we finally got our kitchen working: our new stove was delivered at 7:00 pm. It was the first time in nearly two weeks that burundi and I had a working kitchen, and by about 7:02 pm, we were busy making dinner. She made a superb black bean and tomato soup, while I whirled up some herb-and-onion biscuits. Here’s roughly the recipe I used, from memory:
-Heat oven to 450
-Schlep 1 3/4 cup flour, 1 Tbsp baking powder, and 1/2 tsp salt into a food processor (you may want to use more salt). Whirl it around a little.
-Take the stick of butter out of the freezer, chop about half of it off (i.e., 4 Tbsp butter), and cut it into pea-sized chunks. Whirl it in with the flour mixture until it’s about cornmeal-texture.
-Add in 2 minced green onions and a handful of minced yellow onions, as well as a small handful finely-chopped parseley and about 1/3 cup grated cheddar. Whirl it in a little bit.
-Pour in 1 cup regular milk – use a little less if you want fluffier biscuits.
-Spoon this mixture out onto a baking sheet in nice-sized globs. They’ll be ugly by virtue of being globby, but beautiful by virtue of being colorful – the parsley and green onions fleck it nicely, and the cheddar either adds orange (if you use orange cheddar) or golden-brown (with white cheddar – it browns in the oven) flecks.
-Bake for about 15 minutes.
Without the parsley, onions, and cheese, this recipe takes about 5 minutes of prep-time. You could probably mince the parsley and green onions in the food-processor, grate the cheese in with the grater attachment, and just chop the yellow onions manually. They’re very simple and oh so good.
Daniel
Thank you for all the replies!!!
You all reminded me, I did add a smidgen of lemon juice to the regular milk on Mr. Bunny’s suggestion, but it did not seem to help. Maybe it was not enough. At any rate, no one seems to support the oil recipe, so maybe Moosewood is just off on this one. I can’t wait to try the recipes you’ve shared!
And no, I’m NOT buying any more nasty ass prepackaged biscuits. I can make my own hockey-pucks just fine, thank you. 
The biggest key is chilled butter. The butter has to be very cold when you cut it into the flour. When you do that the butter melts in the oven and creates little pockets of steam and creates the flaky fluffy texture biscuits need. I can’t imagine making biscuits with oil. And don’t bother with margarine or shortening, that’s nasty. Butter all the way, baby.
You can make excellent biscuits with milk, but you need baking powder, which contains acid as well as baking soda. Since buttermilk is acidic you substitute some of the baking powder for baking soda when you use it.
But remember, ice cold butter. Cold butter. Did I mention you need cold butter?