Sunday, March 15, 2009

Recipe for the Doldrums

It's a beautiful, miserable night and I've just finished a glass of wine with my meal: a plate of crackers, cheese, and dried apricots topped off with some mini Reeses cups as dessert. It's not exactly substantial, but I wasn't in the mood to cook, and I did had lunch with my boyfriend's family after church, so I'm all set on the rice and beans side of things. The most I'm getting done in the kitchen today is setting out the week's bread to rise. It requires nearly no skill.

I'm trying to do real sourdough, no yeast added. We'll see if it works. When I took the starter out of the refrigerator, I shook up the plastic peanut butter container and thought, briefly, what the starter's name might be. Go figure. The weird part was that the name came immediately, solidly: Miranda. As if the lactobaccilius or whatever it is that's growing in the froth were really into telepathic communication...

I have a living organism sitting next to the light in my fridge and her name is Miranda. And boy, what a nice loaf of bread she makes!

So it's technically NOT true that I live all alone. I have a colony of wild yeast living with me, not that I'm sure it counts for the well-meaning people who constantly remind me of how alone I am. Like last night at a birthday party, from across the table:
"So, how many other girls are you living with?"
"Oh, it's just me and Jesus..."
Silence, awkward silence. And then I was left to listen to the married women talk about breastfeeding and how long they had to wear support hose after their C-sections...

The pastor at church today talked about the dangers of all this independence, kids wanting to move out of their parents homes and live on their own...

The kind friends who say, "Oh, I could never do that. I can't be away from my family that long, can't risk my reputation, oh, it would be too hard. Too scary. Too lonely."

Thanks for pointing it out. For reminding me of how much it is not common here, of how my independence is both feared and pitied. And, yes, since you forgot to ask, I do get lonely. But it's okay. You care for that with chocolate, white wine, good poetry books and nice pens, Moleskines, cheese, and music. Spinning around in the living room to Laura Pausini or Zap Mama. Long showers without guilt since you pay the water bill and there's no one who needs the bathroom afterwards. Hot tea with milk. And fresh bread.

Fresh, springy, heavenly Miranda bread.

No comments: