 It's the little things, right? I had a great Thanksgiving! Love that holiday. It's my favorite, filled with eating and the ability to nap spontaneously, and the long weekend didn't hurt either. More time, guilt-free naps, and longer weekends are something I'd love to see more of in my future. Until that's possible I will celebrate the discovery of a reasonably simple dinner roll recipe that I found in my attempt to relax. Relaxing is something that needs to be eased into for me, so finding myself unable to just sit still and veg out, I thought I'd try my hand at making some dinner rolls. I googled "dinner rolls recipe" and the second recipe I found was a winner. I did a test run and THEY WORKED!! It is amazing that people have made bread and bread-like items since the dawn of time and here I am in modern civilization celebrating my ability to made dinner rolls. But, you see, I'm not a baker as much as I am a cook and I bake only when required by the need for a birthday cake, a big zucchini that is only good for zucchini bread, overripe bananas that must not be wasted, or a school bake sale assignment. Baking is a bit too slow-paced for me and I just don't have time. So, I found myself with some time. It was so exciting to make hot, pull apart and slather with butter rolls that my family devoured in short order. I watch British Baking Show and it always looks so complicated and takes so much time: the measuring, the water temperature requirements, the kneading, the proofing, the actual baking with the threat of something being "undah-baked"--the science of it all  I'm not a big dinner roll person at Thanksgiving. I'd rather dig into all the other stuff, but my brother likes them and I thought his wife might enjoy a fresh-baked roll. The recipe I found, which you can find HERE, didn't require the greasing of bowls and it only made 12 rolls, which is a reasonable amount. I don't need the 24 rolls that many recipes yield.
I did have a couple of tweaks: I had to use regular yeast I had in a jar (so activated it before mixing it by combining it with the very warm water and then a teaspoon of sugar and waited ten minutes), I used a wooden spoon and elbow grease to mix instead of the electric mixer in the recipe, and then just followed the recipe and let it "rise" for more than the 30 minutes in the recipe, but still they were really fast as far as homemade bread goes. I didn't brush them with anything before baking and they came out golden brown. A success! These days with so much going wrong all around us, it's nice to have a humble success to celebrate--and eat:)  I just did something for myself. Well--not counting the KitKat bar I just asked my second born for. She obliged willingly taking it out of her sibling's bag. I shouldn't have accepted or condoned or whatever crime it was to allow my second born to take a chocolate from one of the other born's bag for my own craving--but it's Friday, so I did.
Anyway, that was not what I did for myself. What I just did was participate in a poetry workshop. On Zoom, which I'm a bit sick of . . . but it was free, and I needed something. Like the KitKat, but for my creative spirit. I needed somebody to feed me creatively and force me to produce something creative. The workshop was sponsored by International Women's Writing Guild (IWWG) and facilitated by Warrior Poet Kai Coggin. She'll be offering a poetry intensive workshop if you are looking to get creative. Find out about that here. Here is the poem the workshop helped me produce. It's a draft--as everything is:) Joy ----- She sat there in our ordinary kitchen. My cup of tea, still hot, perfectly sweet and splash of milk. Ordinary black. Stringless bag. Sinking. Steeping. She sat there circling us--taunting knowing she wouldn't stay. She couldn't -- -- wear out her welcome -- be taken for granted. Expected. Sitting there--as if always. In our kitchen every ordinary, sleepy Saturday. Tea and talk, dancing. So simple until she slipped away to another kitchen, somebody else's unassuming moment. |
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