A LISA SIMPSON STORY

Bread making

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Sunday morning I woke up wedged between a dog and a cat. From my view point, I could see through a crack in the blinds that it was still overcast and dreary outside. We had an odd unseasonably cool Fourth of July weekend with lots of rain. Any way, I'm laying there trying to decide which animal to shove over first, knowing that disturbing the cat will incite Josephine to chew on the cat, when I think "I should bake a loaf of bread!" I know. Just wait until I reach about seventy four when the gaps in my brain are even bigger. I managed to shimmy out of bed without disturbing the animals, slid into a house dress and made my way to the kitchen.

I first made sure that I had all of the ingredients before heading over to the cookbook stack to retrieve my bread recipe. My bread recipe is written on an old scrap of paper that is worn and brown around the edges. It is the recipe I have always used to make bread ever since I started making bread and I made A LOT of bread. I'm going to tell you why I made loads of bread. It's a full confession of my absolute nerdery. Are you ready? Back in my early teens, I was a member of the Food and Fiber Group. It was a 4-H program designed to promote and educate people about Oklahoma agriculture. I think there was like six of us or something and we each had a table. Someone told the story of cotton. There was a table on pecans. Jessica Worstell had a table on dairy because her grandparents owned the local dairy. I don't remember all of the tables, but my table was all about wheat. I grew wheat. I milled wheat. I turned wheat into flour and I made whole wheat bread to hand out as samples. It worked really well when Jessica would make butter with my mom's little butter churn. Then we'd have bread and butter. We all wore matching denim dresses with green bandanas. Our tablecloths matched our dresses. 

Yes. I recognize that this was full on dorkery. Say what you want. I learned the value of getting a loaf of bread to the table and a little bit of scholarship money. In those days, I pimped myself out for scholarship money. So yeah, I'd wear that awful denim dress and do my whole song and dance about wheat a million times if I had to. I also became very adept at bread making, but for some reason, mostly because I got lazy, I stopped making bread. It just seemed like it was an unnecessary task, which is why I was a little surprised I woke up wanting to do it. In retrospect, I should have made an apple pie, because of America, but no. I wanted bread with flaxseeds and sunflower seeds. I am pretty sure that I had tucked that scrap of paper containing my tried and true bread recipe into one of the cookbooks in my collection. At least I was pretty sure. Turns out I may have stuck that recipe into a three ring binder that contained recipes torn from magazines; the very three ring binder that I threw away during one of my cleaning fits. 

That's right people. I've lost or thrown away the National Treasure of a bread recipe. I even called Mom to see if she had a copy and she said "nope!" There's no copy! I guess it's not really that big of a deal, because a bread recipe is a bread recipe. They all contain flour, yeast and maybe honey. Except that this was the bread recipe that I learned on. This was the recipe that I knew. When I was being taught to kneed dough, I was told to think of the dough as a punching bag. My Mom had just been fired from her job. Her supervisor, who was a real jerk, came up with some cockamamie reason to fire my mom. I used to imagine that dough was Mom's supervisor. Later that dough would become other mean hateful people that would skirt on the edges of my life, but the point is that I could take out all my frustrations on this lump of flour, yeast and water. Then I could bake it and turn it into something delicious. 

I ended up using some random bread recipe that I found online that seemed pretty close to the one I used to use. I'm out of practice. The bread turned out good, but dense and not as fluffy as it should be. It still makes great toast though and maybe this will become a regular Sunday thing. Baking bread could go on the list with CBS Sunday Morning, laundry and waiting until late afternoon to brush my teeth. Maybe I had some frustrations that needed to be turned into something delicious and that's why I got all obsessed about baking bread. Maybe it is just a good idea to practice releasing frustrations every week by pounding a lump of dough with my fists.  

THANKFUL FRIDAY

#VSCOcam This sunflower growing in my backyard makes me want to sing songs from the musical "Oklahoma". #365

"#VSCOcam This sunflower growing in my backyard makes me want to sing songs from the musical "Oklahoma". #365"

Sunday morning, Michael and I were watching  a story about Spam on CBS Sunday Morning, when I said "My mom judged the Spam cook-off at the State Fair one year. She's got a Spam apron to prove it." Michael looked at me sideways and said "there are so many things about that sentence that I can't even..I don't even know how to respond." It was something about the words "state fair", "judge", "Spam cook-off" all tucked in together in the same sentence that made his head spin. I replied with "what? You never entered things in your state fair?" and he responded with "what year have you traveled here from?" A few nights later I told him that Mom's pickles won first prize at the Tulsa County Fair this year. His brain nearly exploded. 

I thought everyone entered stuff in their county and state fairs. No really. I'm thirty nine and just now realized that not everyone sewed a garment, grew a squash or painted a ceramic dish and then submitted it to be judged at the county and or state fair. Usually, if you won at the county level, you were automatically submitted to State. When I said that out loud to Michael, he nearly fell off the couch. It was like I had just walked out of some black and white TV show wearing a gingham dress with pony tails and a straw hat. Needless to say Michael and I had very different childhoods. I am a country mouse who has learned to be a city mouse. Michael has always been the city mouse.

Mr and Mrs McAfee were our 4-H leaders in Collinsville, but they were also the caretakers of the fair exhibits. Mr McAfee was always roaming around the exhibit hall making notes on what picture was crooked and how that flower arrangement needed to be shifted over.  He was also acting security, deterring people from touching or taking someone's prize jar of pickles. I cannot think of any fair without thinking of Mr McAfee. Sure he listened to countless hours of speech practices and was always present to taste test a pie, but it was his constant presence at the fairs that I remember the most. One year at the Tulsa State Fair, Dad had given me $10 to ride some rides. I was helping out in the 4-H exhibit hall that day, moving things around, answering questions. When it was time for my break, I reached into my pocket for that money and found it missing. I had managed to lose it somehow. Later in the day Mr McAfee came up to me and handed me $10. He said he'd found it over in some corner or other, but I knew that wasn't true. He found that money in his own wallet. 

I suppose it is almost fitting that Mr McAfee would decide to leave this planet on the same week as the Tulsa County fair. Mrs McAfee passed several years back, but Mr McAfee was still going strong. In fact I was surprised to hear of his death. I don't know why, but he just seemed like this immortal figure. He was ninety two when he passed, making him almost immortal. Mr and Mrs McAfee were part of the village that raised me. I will be forever grateful for both of them, for the generosity and the countless hours both of them spent helping kids like me become better citizens.

I pledge my head to clearer thinking, my heart to greater loyalty and my hands to greater  service. For my club. For my community. For my country. For my world.

These are the lessons they taught me. I am truly thankful for the impact both Mr and Mrs McAfee had in my life. Here's to a blue ribbon weekend and a truly Thankful Friday.