Yesterday I ground whole wheat into flour using our brand new Vita-Mix. I felt the way the ancients must've felt to see that their two stones together made a fine dust out of hard nuggets of grain.
Then I tried to make a loaf of bread using the recipe given. Something did not go right because I ended up with a brown mass, slightly hardened, that didn't rise. I baked the gummy mess, and we ate it in little one-inch strips. It tasted great despite whatever mistakes I made.
I'll try again tomorrow to see if I can improve the results. In the meantime, this "first" has got me to thinking about firsts in general. They usually don't go perfectly, do they? The first time I drove, the first time I kissed a boy, the first time I had sex, the first day of my first job, the first interview, the first marriage, the first time I tried to follow instructions to put furniture together. Each one of these firsts is a story unto itself, a story of fumbling and nerves, of determination to start and afterwards, keep going.
I'm painting my front door today, gold to match the color of our shop, another first for me. And this is my first blog. I'll keep going, n'importe quoi, (no matter what) because our brains like firsts. New synapses are born. Firsts keep us young and interested, if not a little enraged sometimes. The more firsts we have, the more we want, and the more we appreciate others going through their own firsts.
Happy Firsts to you!
1 comment:
I really enjoyed this, Karen. I grind rye in our very old Vita-Mix (I mean 20+ years old!) and it's so much fun. The recipe is an old German blackbread recipe from my grandmother, revised by my father, and now, again, by me. Each loaf weighs at least 42 pounds, I swear, and makes me feel nourished and happy, for so many reasons. (Don't worry: we don't eat it all at once!) I'm impressed with your constant willingness to plow forward into the future, Karen. You make it better for the rest of us every step of the way.
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