Oh, Dear

Sometimes life gets busy and the dough that is rising just keeps on a risin’.

I mixed up some sourdough last evening, forgetting that I’d be away all day on a field trip to the zoo with 40 munchkins. When I returned, I didn’t even look in the kitchen, I headed straight for my pillow.

The nap ended and here’s when I emphatically said, Oh, dear!

16 hours on the rise, that batch of sourdough was losing steam. I quickly dumped it out, shaped it into a ball,

heated the oven and a half hour later popped it into a super hot pot.

And, voila! Who said baking has to be a perfectly timed, measured and calculated event?

And it’s never to late to share when you have a house full of Arizona guests, happy to flee from their summer heat. Tonight it will sit all lonely on the cutting board–for the Capo Chef is making pizza. But tomorrow–oh, tomorrow! it will make some amazingly delicious French toast, don’t you think?

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Too Busy to Ask…

double batch of chocolate chip scones

Mixed 12:30

Baked  1pm

Gave to several twenty-somethings holding signs for food, downtown

I’m heading to France in just three days. I’m launching a reading program, hosting a birthday party tomorrow, my husband is out of town and my daughter is in the middle of a run of nine-straight days of opera rehearsal. Tomorrow’s the first performance. I need to write a newsletter, curl my daughter’s hair into ringlets, (every day–and it takes forever!) and put together the party bags. Oh, and clean! I don’t do well when I’m terribly busy. I shut down.

So, yesterday at 4pm I did just that. I had so many things on my list that I became crippled and sat on the kitchen floor, barefoot and in jeans and a cozy sweater, and cleaned the fronts of all my cabinets. I just sat there, for hours, spraying and wiping and monitoring each square inch of painted white. Finally, at 7pm, with the youngest already sleeping, I went to bed, too. I just lay there, a still-dressed lump, until I peeled my body out of bed at 9:30pm to collect my daughter from rehearsal.

Today the race began yet again, but with even less time and more to do. I knew I needed a strategy or I’d end up cleaning some other unimportant furniture item. Knowing my tendency to shut down when overwhelmed I decided all day long that I’d drive in the slow lane and only try to do one thing at a time. No multi-tasking. No eating while typing, or calling while driving, or gardening while hot-air ballooning. Better to leave something undone, than do everything poorly–or have to do it twice–don’t you hate that?!

So, with this strategy of Slow I’ve been able to make some strides forward. I even had a chance to bake a double batch of scones today, taking half to my son’s school for a performance tonight, giving the other half to folks holding signs downtown. We delivered them to several young gypsies who probably haven’t had warm scones in a while. Who definitely don’t look like they’re bothered by lists and getting things done. Maybe they’ve hit the wall, too, like I did yesterday.  Maybe they just feel like cleaning cabinet fronts. I don’t know.

Funny, that. I guess I was too busy to ask.

Shame on me…