Baking Day

Today is our second "baking day" of Amish Friendship Bread. Last week, we made regular-sized chocolate chunk bread loaves and cinnamon vanilla mini-loaves. Bud liked the former, Sis the latter. Today we made chocolate bread sans chunks and cinnamon vanilla bread cum dried cherries. This time, the vanilla is in the big loaf pans and the chocolate is in the mini-loaf and our new jumbo muffin pan.

Not to worry, we won't eat all that bread. Some loaves are for church, some for our "teacher" last year, some for our teachers this year. Oh, well, and maybe a bit for ourselves. Gotta taste it!

It actually saved our morning. The kids have been at each other's throats all morning. But they wouldn't separate. It was as if their feet were tied together so they couldn't avoid fighting each other to the death. And so, instead of turning on the tv--and for the first time in two weeks, I wished I hadn't consigned it to storage--and instead of separating them upstairs and downstairs (which is almost impossible), I decided we needed to do something . . . together.

And it worked. By cooperating to make bread, taking turns to pour in ingredients and stir, and then cooperating again to make the second batch, and then asking to make a batch of chocolate pudding and finally eating it altogether (all together?? Both.), they actually are getting along much better. Is this reverse psychology? Luck? Exhaustion? Desperation?

But as I type, they are playing Mr/Ms Potato Head together in the other room.

Give me this day, my daily bread baking . . .