on coming to accept I can settle down

bread baking, bone broth, and home-making

Recently, this thought passed through my mind: “I want bread, but I’m not going to buy bread! That would be ridiculous— I can make some myself!”

What was truly ridiculous was the audacity of this thought. I have made a total of eight loafs of bread in my entire life, only five of which were edible and none of which were a normal shape or consistency. Additionally, I’ve recently run upon a rough spot with James (my sourdough starter). Last week, he developed a slight white fuzz on the top of his jar near the lid, which I think was extremely rude (and obviously not my fault for feeding him too many days in a row without cleaning the jar…). Since rescuing the untouched part of the starter, I have been resentfully keeping James alive while trying to research whether it is safe to make bread with him. All this to say, the likelihood of my making bread is hardly the given my mind presented it to be. Nevertheless, I did not buy bread.

This is reflective of an overall shift in consciousness that I have been experiencing since moving to London. It’s like I’ve been possessed some kind of benign spirit of domesticity that whispers thoughts into my mind like “I should make banana bread with the spare bananas and strawberries before they go bad” or “the starter needs to be fed” or “perhaps I shall make fresh pasta tonight.” This week, I made a giant jar of granola. The first time I made it I burned the pecans, but now I’ve got the hang of the recipe. I feel smug and happy each morning gobbling my granola with berries and set yoghurt, glorying in how much nicer my granola is than the stuff you get at the store. Almost every day I have bones of gurgling away in the slow cooker, making broth. Who am I? Have I become a bone broth girl? Can that just happen to a person from one day to the next?