In the kitchen

I have really been wanting to blog.

I mean, I have successfully gotten some band reviews and travel reviews up, so it hasn't been a total void, but actually writing about me and sharing that has felt important and also impossible.

The last time I tried, I was also trying to get a lot of baking done. I was not specifically doing it because I was depressed, though there were ways in which it felt pretty appropriate.

I had gotten the ingredients for another batch of Kodiak cookies, which had been really popular the last time I made them. Then a family that we love lost a mother and grandmother (and great-grandmother - just one person, but different roles) and I wanted to do something.

It started that I was going to make a large batch of pumpkin bread and a double batch of cookies, working on them right before making dinner. Then someone unexpectedly came by, meaning I needed to change dinner plans. No baking happened that day.

The next day I got started again, but I didn't have as much time to soften the butter. I decided to just give it a tiny bit of microwaving, which I miscalculated.

I was worried that it was too soft looking at it, but it was still holding it shape. Well, that became less and less true the more I mixed. This was not going to be ideal for baking.

Fortunately, even though melting does completely alter butter, apparently you can do a reasonable facsimile of undoing the damage if you put the too-liquid cookie dough into the fridge and let it firm up a bit. The next day I baked them and they were fine.

It feels like there was one more thing that went wrong and delayed things, but maybe that was just all the time spent indecisive and unsure. (Is pumpkin bread really the right thing to take for mourning?)

I eventually ended up with three loaves of pumpkin bread (two from scratch, one from a mix), one of banana bread, two of regular bread, and the double batch of cookies.

Uncertain ideas, indecisiveness, and false starts - but always good intentions - sounds  a lot like my blog right now.

Mom is getting worse. She requires more attention and takes more patience, and there is less gratification. I don't blame her for that, but I still feel it. I am often overwhelmed and sometimes angry, but mainly I am just sad. Oh, and also tired.

But sometimes things still get done, whether that is a fresh blog post or fresh bread.

Life goes on.