Fresh baked bread has been sounding really yummy and satisfying, lately. I don’t have much bread baking experience, but I’ve got a lot of recipes. My Traveling Partner has skills in this area, and bakes a lovely loaf of bread now and then. He offers to share pointers and help knead…if needed. 😀 Yesterday, I sat down with my cookbooks, selecting a basic looking “egg bread” recipe from the Good Housekeeping Cookbook (although in my later edition “salt” as an ingredient seems to have been simply removed from most of the recipes, I know to add it back for flavor and the recipes are hilariously often my Dad’s “secret recipe”, and it is a favorite cookbook for that reason). I baked a couple loaves of bread in the afternoon, yesterday, which elevated an otherwise tediously ordinary meal at dinnertime. Satisfying.

I could have made a potato side dish, or something else. I was really wanting fresh baked bread, yesterday, enough to make some. lol I’m not any sort of expert baker, just a woman in a kitchen with a handful of carefully selected cookbooks, trying new things. It was fun. I followed the directions, and took heed of the tips my Traveling Partner shared with me. It turned out well. (Life should be so easy!) It was a satisfying experience. The bread is really good, if fairly ordinary. I wasn’t going for anything fancy or complicated – just something I could start, finish, and succeed with. It wasn’t a costly endeavor, at about $1 a packet for yeast, about $0.50 for a cup of milk, and about $1 a pound for bread flour. The eggs still seem a bit expensive (about $0.66 each), but the price has come down some since last year. Whole healthy real food, made from real ingredients – no fillers, no shortcuts, no preservatives, no additives; tasty and healthy. There were verbs involved, and real effort, and time… and that’s okay. The outcome was so worth it.

It was a remarkably restful weekend, for me. Most of the housework was already “caught up” because we had planned on the Author’s visit. When that fell through, my housekeeping routine was rendered sort of pointless with so much already done. With my Traveling Partner’s encouragement, I took it easy, and made a point to rest, to read, to play video games, and generally chill and have a good time at home. I needed that more than I knew. I sigh contentedly. It’s a Monday Tuesday and that’s okay, too. The weather has been odd. Warmer than expected, sunny in the afternoons, and not especially wintry. I teased myself with maybe getting out into the garden and getting some things done there. This morning? This morning reminds me that it is indeed winter; it’s cold. The car was frosted over and sparkled under the street light. The temperature is an icy 28°F (-2.2°C). I’m not interested in an icy walk in the dark, and head to the cafe I’ve been frequenting as a too cold/inclement weather alternative to walking in the dark. My coffee is hot, and made well. It’s a good start to a new day, and I sip it slowly, enjoying the warmth of the cup in my hands.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. It’s an unremarkable pleasant morning that would be a Monday if it weren’t a Tuesday (yesterday was a holiday). I remind myself to call my doctor’s office and request a refill on an Rx that I’ve run out of. (I didn’t fail to notice I needed a refill, I failed to communicate that to my doctor’s office when I noticed I was due – still a failure, and as a result I’m scrambling. It’s a small thing, easily remedied, if I remember to make that call.) Ordinary stuff. Life. Choices. Consequences.

That’s the thing, isn’t it? We sometimes make our lives or circumstances more complicated that they really need to be. We create a considerable amount of the drama that vexes us. We make choices we know are likely to turn out poorly in some moment, and then behave as though we’re surprised that things went so very wrong. Human primates are weird. A lot of our suffering in life is self-inflicted. We’re often more inclined to complain about the quality of the bread we’ve got, than to bake fresh loaves for our own delight. I sip my coffee and think about that awhile. My mind wanders to the many things that can be made from stale bread: croutons, stuffing, breadcrumbs, bread pudding, French toast, semmelknödel, and more. There’s a lesson here, isn’t there? Something to do with choices, with suffering, with creating something satisfying from something less than ideal? Something to do with steps on a path, and choices. Bread as a metaphor?

I sip my coffee contentedly, thinking about fresh-baked bread, self-care, love, partnership, and creating moments of shared joy. I begin again.