March | 2012 | The Woman and the Wheat

Friends from church recently had the most adorable baby, whom I’ve been wanting to hold and rock. BUT, I couldn’t because I was in Reno, and then I was a chauffeur to play rehearsals for days and days. Phew, life has finally slowed and it shows by the three half eaten loaves of bread on my bread board. I’ve been baking.

Here’s a cooling loaf of Struan, and a jar of jam, sent by a friend whom you will hear more about this Saturday. Christine sent this extra jar of jam along to me, all the long way from Alaska, just so she could join in the giving. Giving multiplied! Isn’t that sweet?

John Ronan did the gentlemanly thing and carried the basket for me to the car (plus he dutifully posed, and grinned.)

And here sit the food delights, cuddled into the passenger seat. I like driving around town with homemade bread and jam beside me.

Once we arrived, I rocked and chatted for the sweetest few minutes. The baby was swaddled, and so new, and I stared right into her open and curious eyes.

And tomorrow, I get to bake again. We’ll have church and a soup dinner after the service, and who doesn’t love some molasses bread with their soup?

Sending you all cheery-ness and goodwill. Happy baking, friends.

I can testify that it is impossible to bake bread when you’re staying at Circus Circus in Reno. Even harder when you’re chaperoning eight kids in three separate choirs. No baking, I tell you.

But there was a whole lotta music. I can’t tell you how much I love listening to my children sing. SO MUCH! And here are 350 children, all singing. Wow.

And because things just happen that way, as soon as we landed back at LAX the kids were onto the next big thing–a production of The Diviners, and only five days until the opening. Goodbye Circus Circus (thank heaven! I can’t even tell you how relieved I was to leave that place) and hello to my little Thermador oven.

Out came the molasses bread. On went the plum jam, and into the tote bag flew the sandwiches to feed a whole playhouse full of hungry rehearsing thespians.