This past weekend Mark and I made a couple loaves of bread. While I was sitting in a corner rocking back and forth wondering what the hell I was going to do with my life after the Bakery shut down, he was reading the book 52 Loaves by William Alexander. He'd been pestering me playfully for a week, saying he wanted to bake a loaf of bread. Finally, on Saturday, after several trips to the store for different kinds of flour, I put a packet of yeast into a cup of warm water and we made some bread.
I followed the recipe on the back of the bag of flour. Bob's Red Mill Honey Whole Wheat. I don't have a mixer so we took turns kneading the dough with our hands. I snapped at him - "You're doing it wrong." Nobody I ever tried to teach to make bread ever accused me of being a good teacher - my failings there still sting. But he is gentle, and patient, and reminded me that this was supposed to be fun. I showed him again how to fold the lump of dough, press it with the heel of hand, turn a quarter turn, fold and press and turn again and on and on. I felt myself falling into the familiar trance, the physical rhythm lighting up some part of my brain that had gone dark the day I read on Facebook that my Bakery was closed. I could feel it in my arms - the strength was still there.
The sky was dark with thunderstorms when we started, I had no idea what time it was. The bread didn't go into the oven till almost nine pm. That was ok because I've kinda gotten accustomed to staying up later during the last couple of weeks. He scratched our initials into the round loaf with a not quite sharp knife. It didn't come out perfect, of course. But it made my house smell good, and it tasted pretty good. The crust was weak because I don't have terra cotta tiles or a steam injector. There was a yeasty flavor that the Bakery's artisan loaves loose during their long proofing process. The crumb was too tight, because kneading it by hand forced me to use more flour, throwing off the hydration. I explained these imperfections to him, told him what we would do the next time we tried this recipe, how we could make it better. He made it into toast and smeared butter on it with a fork. I ate it like a prayer, the lynchpin in a magic spell that I've been hanging for the last 13 years of my life. I'm an Artisan Baker, and I am going to keep on baking bread.
Danny, Tyler and I had been mumbling grumpily to ourselves for months, maybe years, about how great the Bakery could be if only... things could be different. People have asked us "What happened to New Day?" and you know, I can't tell that story. Life is hard. Shit Happens. There is a sign on the front door of the shop that you can go and read just like I did. It sucks.
We decided to become business partners, the three of us, so we could keep doing what we love. With a lot of help from our friends, we are going to reopen soon as Phoenix Bakery. Danny set up a GoFundMe page, and already we have enough money to buy our Quickbooks system. That is the biggest, scariest part of this for me. I am confident that we can make great products - we have been doing that for years. I am confident that our customers will buy them. This software promises to help us take care of the rest of the stuff. We couldn't have even considered this without the help, advice and friendship of the team that built The Daily Kneads in the first place. So we are going to do this, and it is going to be an amazing adventure!
In the meantime, I am gearing up to move back to Edgehill House. That's a whole other poignant story. This summer is going to be one of labor and sweat, and it's going to be great.
Monday, June 22, 2015
Saturday, March 7, 2015
Saturday poem
The Sunblock
Gang
Saturday,
March 7, 2015
9:53 AM
I don't know why I
tried to hang
For all those years
with the sunblock gang.
Shunning daylight
out of habit.
My tanning oil
turning rancid in the medicine cabinet.
I gave up sleep so we could play
Always up at dawn
for work either way.
Seems stupid now, as
I've been told
We never really had
much in common anyway.
I filled their cave
with innumerable goods,
Fixed supper for the
worms and the elves.
Just like Anne, look
what happened to her.
Imagining the last
the bright routes.
I got some pills to
help with that.
It wasn't enough. I
don't live there anymore.
My house is made of
windows now
No vampires come for
tea
I miss the blood red
wine we drank.
I don't think they
miss me.
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
A Sunday Night
The day has melted
into this blur of movement
Circling around the
building
Life demands me in
small gestures.
Her shoes in the
middle of the floor
The quiet niggling
songs of faraway things are
Fighting with the
hum of the refrigerator,
The rattling of
radiators, the shuddering
of rigid pipes inside the walls of this old
house.
Trash goes out
tonight, weather permitting
I take the plastic
waterbottles to the curb
Break the melting
ice from the bin, thankful
For this small grace
- take the detritus of
my selfishness away
from this place.
I used to imagine my
next life, bright and
Free, when I was
young and wedded to a
Vision of what I
thought my life had to be.
I'm working up some stuff to read at the next MAC Poetry night.
Any feedback you feel like giving is appreciated.
Sunday, March 1, 2015
Pancake Recipe
Breakfast this cold and dreary Sunday morning was PANCAKES. I started thinking of them before I even got out of bed.
The kitchen was tidy enough to cook in this morning, thanks to Mark who washes my dishes. Last night we went to the MAC to see a show. "Same Time Next Year" was a pleasant enough diversion but I have to say I didn't think the performance was very good. The second act was better than the first, but I didn't think it was very romantic at all. Romance for me, this week, is a man who takes you out to see a delightfully awful play and then washes the dishes that the kids left in the sink.
Back to Pancakes, though. I suggest mixing them in Fiestaware, but any bowl will do as long as you love the way it feels in your hands. Into the Beloved Bowl, put:
Now, into a measuring pitcher (or a bowl with a spout, or a regular old bowl even) combine:
Cook on a medium hot griddle or frying pan till done.
Enjoy with sliced fruit, Maple Syrup, by themselves,
Later, I made a sandwich out of the last two cold pancakes and the last of my Camembert cheese. Might have been better than the strawberries and Maple Syrup.
The kitchen was tidy enough to cook in this morning, thanks to Mark who washes my dishes. Last night we went to the MAC to see a show. "Same Time Next Year" was a pleasant enough diversion but I have to say I didn't think the performance was very good. The second act was better than the first, but I didn't think it was very romantic at all. Romance for me, this week, is a man who takes you out to see a delightfully awful play and then washes the dishes that the kids left in the sink.
Back to Pancakes, though. I suggest mixing them in Fiestaware, but any bowl will do as long as you love the way it feels in your hands. Into the Beloved Bowl, put:
- One cup of Flour. Mine is currently a mixture of whole wheat pastry flour and white whole wheat, but all purpose would work just as well, I think.
- 2 teaspoons Baking Powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- One packet of instant oatmeal of your choice. Or you could use 1.5 ounces of plain old oats, or Bob's red Mill hot cereal, or CoCoWheats if you are into those kinds of things.
Now, into a measuring pitcher (or a bowl with a spout, or a regular old bowl even) combine:
- One cup Milk
- One Egg
- 4 ounces of Applesauce (one individual serving size plastic cup's worth)
Cook on a medium hot griddle or frying pan till done.
Enjoy with sliced fruit, Maple Syrup, by themselves,
Later, I made a sandwich out of the last two cold pancakes and the last of my Camembert cheese. Might have been better than the strawberries and Maple Syrup.
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
Oh, Christmas Tree
Yes, I know it isn't even Thanksgiving yet, but it was so warm out yesterday (70 in town, 65 up on the mountain) and someone said it was going to snow Wednesday, so I figured I should get one while the getting was good. I drove up to King's Tree farm after I got finished working on my day off. They seemed surprised to see me, I guess most everyone waits till after the turkey is roasted.... "You got any Hemlocks?" I asked, and the man seemed dismayed. "You don't want one of those, the needles start falling as soon as you cut them!" So maybe one year when I'm running super late I might get my dreamy fernlike tree, but I decided against it this year.
I had the whole place to myself. It was a nice safe place to walk considering most of my favorite trails wind through prime hunting territory. Not one hunter, not a soul except the tree man moved through the farm. He was busy driving his cool little Bobcat around, smoothing the tracks and spreading gravel in preparation for the onslaught of tree shoppers in their family cars and pickup trucks and SUVs.
The fields change from year to year, as mature trees are harvested and new ones planted. I got lost, sort of, just like I like to do, wandering from field to field. Here the Scotch Pines, there the Blue and Norway Spruce. White Pine, which is soft and pretty in it's own fuzzy way, I avoided. The Frazier Fir field is still relatively young, and I stayed out of it this year. After about an hour of wandering through the neat lines of trees, picking up stray pinecones, brushing my hands over the soft or prickly boughs of a hundred or more trees, I found one that wanted to come home with me. With my handy folding saw I cut it down, all by myself. Not difficult at all, kneeling on the damp leaf covered ground in my Sunny Day skirt I sawed back and forth, back and forth, till only an inch of trunk remained - then I pushed it over with ease and sawed the rest of the way through. Dragging it back to the car, the needles scratched my calves with every step. A Norway Spruce, the tree man said. It cost $42, a little more than the trees at the Kroger, but worth every penny.
Memories of years past chased me around every corner. Little Delia, about 6, throwing snow, eating snow, and then throwing some more. Pregnant Lisa, carrying the unborn Pippa in her belly through the rows of trees in late autumn to pick one out for later cutting, since we were pretty sure she wasn't going to be heading out there once the baby came. Snow play with Kira and Piper, the year Steve and Sarah came with us to cut down a tree. Last year, with Pippa in her smart coat and tiny Iris in the baby carrier. And every year, for the last, well, almost a decade, my husband with his saw, patiently waiting for me to give one tree the honor of being our family Christmas tree. As good as the Griswold's. Sigh.
This year, I took that tree home to my new apartment, spare and full of light, and I put it into the magic EZ Up tree stand I found at Lucky's Attic on one of the thrifting trips Mark and I make almost every week. It really was easy, I did it myself. Then I donned my long leather Lighting gloves, and wound the pink lights around it like my father taught me how to do. I thought of him, I thought of my girls, who were both off in their other lives - Becca with her mother and Delia with her father. I dressed the tree with birds and butterflies, and stars, in pink and white and silver. All the ornaments are new, I haven't had the energy or the heart to go about splitting up seventeen years of Christmases Past with my husband.
Mark came over later that evening and admired my work. We hung the little sisal hedgehogs, and bronze glitter pinecones, and snowy owls covered in glitter. We played the vinyl records he'd picked up at the indoor flea market, and we laughed at them, all warped and creepy sounding, one after the other they went into the trash. Then we drove up to WalMart and found some CDs in the $5 bin and came back to sing and dance in the kitchen with Burl Ives, laughing at ourselves and our terrible dance moves the whole time. He went home to prepare as best he could for a stressful hearing the next day, and I fell asleep in my bed, christmas lights glittering in the next room.
I had the whole place to myself. It was a nice safe place to walk considering most of my favorite trails wind through prime hunting territory. Not one hunter, not a soul except the tree man moved through the farm. He was busy driving his cool little Bobcat around, smoothing the tracks and spreading gravel in preparation for the onslaught of tree shoppers in their family cars and pickup trucks and SUVs.
The fields change from year to year, as mature trees are harvested and new ones planted. I got lost, sort of, just like I like to do, wandering from field to field. Here the Scotch Pines, there the Blue and Norway Spruce. White Pine, which is soft and pretty in it's own fuzzy way, I avoided. The Frazier Fir field is still relatively young, and I stayed out of it this year. After about an hour of wandering through the neat lines of trees, picking up stray pinecones, brushing my hands over the soft or prickly boughs of a hundred or more trees, I found one that wanted to come home with me. With my handy folding saw I cut it down, all by myself. Not difficult at all, kneeling on the damp leaf covered ground in my Sunny Day skirt I sawed back and forth, back and forth, till only an inch of trunk remained - then I pushed it over with ease and sawed the rest of the way through. Dragging it back to the car, the needles scratched my calves with every step. A Norway Spruce, the tree man said. It cost $42, a little more than the trees at the Kroger, but worth every penny.
Memories of years past chased me around every corner. Little Delia, about 6, throwing snow, eating snow, and then throwing some more. Pregnant Lisa, carrying the unborn Pippa in her belly through the rows of trees in late autumn to pick one out for later cutting, since we were pretty sure she wasn't going to be heading out there once the baby came. Snow play with Kira and Piper, the year Steve and Sarah came with us to cut down a tree. Last year, with Pippa in her smart coat and tiny Iris in the baby carrier. And every year, for the last, well, almost a decade, my husband with his saw, patiently waiting for me to give one tree the honor of being our family Christmas tree. As good as the Griswold's. Sigh.
This year, I took that tree home to my new apartment, spare and full of light, and I put it into the magic EZ Up tree stand I found at Lucky's Attic on one of the thrifting trips Mark and I make almost every week. It really was easy, I did it myself. Then I donned my long leather Lighting gloves, and wound the pink lights around it like my father taught me how to do. I thought of him, I thought of my girls, who were both off in their other lives - Becca with her mother and Delia with her father. I dressed the tree with birds and butterflies, and stars, in pink and white and silver. All the ornaments are new, I haven't had the energy or the heart to go about splitting up seventeen years of Christmases Past with my husband.
Mark came over later that evening and admired my work. We hung the little sisal hedgehogs, and bronze glitter pinecones, and snowy owls covered in glitter. We played the vinyl records he'd picked up at the indoor flea market, and we laughed at them, all warped and creepy sounding, one after the other they went into the trash. Then we drove up to WalMart and found some CDs in the $5 bin and came back to sing and dance in the kitchen with Burl Ives, laughing at ourselves and our terrible dance moves the whole time. He went home to prepare as best he could for a stressful hearing the next day, and I fell asleep in my bed, christmas lights glittering in the next room.
Friday, October 10, 2014
Reflections on "Song of Myself"
I had to look up the word "kelson" because I didn't know it. Turns out it is a beam in a wooden boat that runs the length of the vessel and holds the boards of the hull in place.
Yes, I think, Love does hold all the pieces in place. Self love, and the love we give to others, and the love we receive from others.
Before I read this poem, I thought that in essence, we are in fact the sum of our parts. All my life experiences, everything that has happened to me in my forty years, all the people I have loved, lost, hated, barely known - I thought, and still do think to some extent, that these things made me who I am. I have been thinking a lot lately about my marriage, my long relationship with my husband, how we grew into adults together, made each other into the people we are now. How we have made our daughter into the person she is now. That's a lot of responsibility, to think that you have such an important role in the formation of the self of another. I can't help but wonder how I would be different if I had made different choices, how my daughter would be different, how Husband would be different, how my life and our lives would be different. Is there something inside me that deserves the recrimination I feel for shuffling us all into the current disarray?
Who is my true self? What is the entity which
Whitman says in his poem
I wonder if I have been letting that Other me, the one that is made of my relationships with the world, drive my life, and I have not been listening to my True Self, the one that whispers to me when I am walking in the woods or sitting quietly in contemplation. Do we all ignore our True Selves in favor of the masks, the separate identities we wear? Is that why after years and years of being The Wife, The Mother, The Daughter, I finally found myself flailing about completely unmoored, drowning in an ocean of shoulds that I can't even remember jumping into? I had to go on medicine to keep from killing myself. It was awful, for me, for Husband, for Daughter... For everyone. And then it got better. And then ...
I'm learning to be human, one day at a time. Walt Whitman clearly knew the depths of his own humanity, and his poem is one shrine on the faneway of self discovery.
Yes, I think, Love does hold all the pieces in place. Self love, and the love we give to others, and the love we receive from others.
Before I read this poem, I thought that in essence, we are in fact the sum of our parts. All my life experiences, everything that has happened to me in my forty years, all the people I have loved, lost, hated, barely known - I thought, and still do think to some extent, that these things made me who I am. I have been thinking a lot lately about my marriage, my long relationship with my husband, how we grew into adults together, made each other into the people we are now. How we have made our daughter into the person she is now. That's a lot of responsibility, to think that you have such an important role in the formation of the self of another. I can't help but wonder how I would be different if I had made different choices, how my daughter would be different, how Husband would be different, how my life and our lives would be different. Is there something inside me that deserves the recrimination I feel for shuffling us all into the current disarray?
Who is my true self? What is the entity which
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,Looks down, is erect, bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,Looks with its sidecurved head, curious what will come next,Both in and out of the game, and watching and wondering at it.
Whitman says in his poem
The other I am must not abase itself to you,
And you must not be abased to the other.
I wonder if I have been letting that Other me, the one that is made of my relationships with the world, drive my life, and I have not been listening to my True Self, the one that whispers to me when I am walking in the woods or sitting quietly in contemplation. Do we all ignore our True Selves in favor of the masks, the separate identities we wear? Is that why after years and years of being The Wife, The Mother, The Daughter, I finally found myself flailing about completely unmoored, drowning in an ocean of shoulds that I can't even remember jumping into? I had to go on medicine to keep from killing myself. It was awful, for me, for Husband, for Daughter... For everyone. And then it got better. And then ...
I'm learning to be human, one day at a time. Walt Whitman clearly knew the depths of his own humanity, and his poem is one shrine on the faneway of self discovery.
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Song of Myself
Excerpt from the
1855 edition
Trippers and askers
surround me,
People I meet….the
effect upon me of my early life….the ward and city I live in…of the nation,
The latest news….
Discoveries, inventions, societies…. Authors old and new,
My dinner, dress,
associates, looks, business, compliments, dues,
The real or fancied
indifference of some man or woman I love,
The sickness of one
of my folks - or of myself…. Or ill-doing…. Or loss or lack of money….or
depressions or exaltations,
These come to me
days and nights and go from me again,
But they are not the
Me myself.
Apart from the
pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused,
complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is
erect, bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looks with its
sidecurved head, curious what will come next,
Both in and out of
the game, and watching and wondering at it.
I believe in you my
soul…. The other I am must not abase itself to you,
And you must not be
abased to the other.
Loafe with me in the
grass….loose the stop from your throat,
Not words, not music
or rhyme I want…. Not custom or lecture, not even the best,
Only the lull I
like, the hum of your valved voice.
I mind how we lay in
June, such a transparent summer morning;
You settled your
head athwart my hips and gently turned over upon me,
And parted the shirt
from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my barestript heart,
And reached till you
felt my head, and reached till you held my feet.
Swiftly arose and
spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of earth;
And I know that the
hand of God is the elderhand of my own,
And I know that the
spirit of God is the eldest brother of my own,
And that all the men
ever born are also my brothers…. And the women my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of
the creation is love.
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