Self Care and Cooking

Yesterday was a rainy day, which was delightful for me.  My spouse headed off to do his in-person teaching after doing his online teaching in our living room.  I sprung into action.  I had a vision for dinner:  a quiche and lemon yogurt muffins.  I decided to make the pie crust from scratch, which is not one of my strong suits.

I made this FB post, which I shortened into a Tweet; this detail will be important later:

"On today's docket: cooking as self-care. I will make pumpkin butter to spread on toasted slices of homemade bread, lemon yogurt muffins, and a quiche for tonight. Yes, I am still making the food that I first learned to make from Mollie Katzen's "The Enchanted Broccoli Forest Cookbook." But decades later, I no longer need to consult a recipe."

Even before I started baking, I knew that I might not have any muffin pans.  Once I had 2 pans that made 12 muffins.  I knew that one had rusted beyond repair in the post-hurricane Irma flooding.  I thought back to my summer sorting.  Would I have given the other one to Good Will? I can see myself scoffing at the idea that I would ever have time to make muffins again. I can see myself pledging allegiance to my loaf pans.  Happily, I kept the small loaf tins, and they worked perfectly.

As I talked about yesterday, I was happy not to be on campus on a Wednesday.  Near 11:00, I made this FB post:  

"In a few minutes, my colleagues at the school that severed me will go to their weekly Campus Directors' video meeting on Teams. That meeting will last at least 90 minutes. Meanwhile, I am about to bite into a fragrant lemon loaf, fresh and hot from my home oven. Ahhhhhh."

At the end of the day, I hadn't made the pumpkin butter, but we did have quiche, roasted broccoli, and lemon muffins for dinner.  Actually, I didn't eat the lemon muffins.  I had eaten my fill earlier in the day.

After I got flour all over the kitchen, I swept and mopped the floors, which was something I had planned to do even before I knew that I would be baking.

Just before my evening seminary small group, I went back to check on Twitter.  Much to my delight, Mollie Katzen had responded to my tweet!!!  I made this FB post:

"I took the post below about what I would cook today, and what cookbook inspired it, and I turned it into a tweet, tagging the cookbook author Mollie Katzen. SHE RESPONDED TO MY TWEET!!!! She wrote, 'Perfect, all of this.' It's the modern day fan letter--and I got a response!!!"

Back in 1982, my mom gave me The Enchanted Broccoli Forest cookbook for Christmas;  it was the cookbook that most shaped me.  I am so glad that Mollie Katzen is still alive, still doing good in the world and responding to fan-girl tweets that tag her.  I am so glad that I am still able to cook that kind of food, that I can practice self-care in these underemployment days, in the form of cooking.