The sweet smells of home

Yesterday was a day that I was surrounded by the sweet, comforting scents of home.  I'm currently re-reading Luna by Sharon Butala.  In one section of the story, Rhea is busily making bread.  She laments how so many of the younger women in the community never learned this skill.  I am particularly grateful to my momma for having taught me how to make bread.  It was a great way to fill up a silence-filled Saturday.

I was the "on-call mom" for Xavi and Anouk yesterday as Rob and Angela made a whirl wind trip to Bali in search of a dining room table.  We started our day with pancakes.  We had very yummy strawberry and blueberry glaze to top them!  While the blueberry glaze left everyone with black teeth, tongues and lips, they were certainly tasty.  The last of the batter was used to make none other than chocolate chip pancakes...a perfect late morning snack or lunch-time dessert.  They were also a hit.

As the children went about their day hanging out with friends, I took to the kitchen.  I set a small batch of buns.  A good thing about the heat in my kitchen is that, like the buns I make at camp, they rise like crazy.  I turned half of the buns into dinner rolls and the other half into cinnamon buns.  In my family, they've always been 'sticky buns', and boy, were they ever sticky. Last night, as I lay my weary head upon my pillow, my house smelled of burned sugar because the ooey, gooey buns happened to flow over the baking dish.  Now, that is the true sign of good sticky buns.

My baking didn't stop there.  I truly demonstrated a good list of wife-skills in the kitchen yesterday.  The last baking adventure was pizza.  Way back in university, a friend shared with me her pizza dough recipe.  It's my go-to recipe whenever I need to make a quick batch of cinnamon buns (not yesterday's batch) or pizza dough.  It is such an easy dough to work with and you can do so much with it.

I seasoned the flour with oregano, and a bunch of other spices that are in my special "spices from home" drawer.  Not only was it fragrant, it was also super tasty.  An hour later, I was shmushing my dough into the pan and making a pizza.  I laughed that I could shmush so forcefully but still have a pizza with fluffy, light crust.  At supper, as the Xavi and Anouk were enjoying their homemade cheese pizza, Anouk said to me, "We have to make sure we save some of this pizza for Momma and Pappa.  This pizza is better than Pizza Hut!"

It was a great day - a great way to take my mind off my voicelessness.  I will miss my baking buddies next year.  I will miss their parents too!  It's like having family, right across the street.  However, I am excited for all of their new adventures as they set of on their next journey!