My baby sister and I are having a bit of a mind meld these days. Days after I began toying with the idea of running the Top of Utah marathon, she emailed me with exactly the same idea and why it could work. And then last night, she called for a completely unrelated reason and muttered somewhat about an Amish Friendship Bread mishap she was having in her kitchen. And I began to laugh.
You see, the night before, I had decided to make all the friendship bread from the starter I had been fermenting because I was beginning to feel like (despite how much my family and I love the stuff) Amish Friendship Bread is the chain letter of quick breads. In case you're not familiar with the stuff, I'll explain:
Someone gives you a ziploc bag of fermenting milk, flour and sugar and instructions on which days to mush the bag, add more milk, flour and sugar and then on which day to make it all into a recipe of bread, after extracting out 4 more starters to pass on to friends with their sets of instructions. Kind of reminds me of the old Wella-Balsalm commercials of my childhood with the ever dividing screens (and they tell two friends and they tell two friends, until the world is using Wella-Balsalm shampoo and baking friendship bread every ten days).
So, when it came time for me to divide out the 4 more starters, I didn't want to do it. Not because I don't have 4 friends, not because I don't like to share, but because I didn't want to force a commitment on anyone who wasn't interested (by the way I HATE chain letters/emails and refuse to pass them on for this very reason). But, the bread IS good and I couldn't bring myself to waste, so I decided to make it all. 5 recipes all at once. Perhaps I should have reconsidered when I was breaking 15 eggs into the batter. But I didn't. I mixed away and somewhere toward the end of adding all the ingredients (slowly so as not to overflow my largest bowl or burn out my mixer (cue foreshadowy music)), there began to be mechanical protest noises from my mixer and then there was smoke and then my mixer gave up the ghost. Amish Friendship Bread killed my mixer. That doesn't seem very friendly to me.
I finished the bread, I baked all seven loaves and put most of them in the freezer to be pulled out as quick bread needs are ascertained. And I cleaned up the mess and put "buy new handmixer" on my wish list. And then my sister called last night having done almost exactly the same thing (except the killing the mixer part. She mixed her 4 batches (she kept one to perpetuate the madness) all by HAND) for exactly the same reasons. Oh what fun sisters are!
And so this morning I am basking in a bit of a warm sister glow. I have only sisters. While we have our moments like all siblings do, I love them all dearly and can't imagine life without each of them. My baby sister and I are having a bit of a time of special closeness these last couple of years because we have a lot in common. And she talks me into running crazy races with her and there's a lot of bonding that can be done in the time it takes to run a half marathon. But before we had our little M and it seemed, at the time, that it was entirely possible, in fact probable, that CE would be made to go through life without a single sister, my heart broke for her. I have four sisters and can't imagine life without any. I have plenty of friends and relatives even who have had productive and meaningful lives with no sisters and I have friends and even relatives who may not have the best of relationships at all times with sisters they do have, but I didn't want that future for my CE.
So now, the age difference between CE and M is almost exactly the age difference between my baby sister and me. When she and I have these mind meld moments or when we run together or babble on about crazy boys taking over our homes, I get a separate warm sister glow just thinking of the future of warm sister glows that I hope CE and M will create for themselves (it's early yet, M still needs to learn to talk). I can only hope my baby girls have as tender and wonderful a relationship as sisters as my sisters and I have. What a blessing that will be!
Oh, and I found online that you can freeze friendship bread starter. I had 3, now they're gone. That was fast.
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3 comments:
I HATE friendship bread--the theory behind it, not the bread itself. It's delightful. I always end up with way too much because I forget to/won't give it away on the right day and I can never remember which day I'm on and which thing I'm supposed to do.
Sorry it killed your mixer.
With two girls 8 years apart, I keep thinking that even if they aren't close at first, I have hope they will be someday because of you and BT. And while I have always wished Dad could have had a son, there's probably nothing cooler than a family of all girls. Or, at least our family of all girls.
I am impressed that you have enough pans to make 7 loaves of Amish friendship bread all at one time! I love that bread (but really shouldn't it be called cake?) and was talking to my neighbor about it probably 6 months ago because she loves it to too. Neither of us knows how to start the starter! So - I would totally take one of your starters OR you could tell me how to start the starter & my neighbor & I can start to infect our neighborhood with the goodness or annoyance of Amish friendship bread!
Great post about sisters - by the way! So glad CE has her sis! I have always been close to my sis who is 8 years younger than I. When I was home from college I used to go in her room and lay on her floor at night and we would talk until we fell asleep! Funny enough - as it turns out - our kids are about the same ages & we too have a lot in common!
So I'm a little slow in reading posts these days. This definitely made me smile. Sisters are the best, especially the ones who don't think you're crazy when you suggest things... and then even join in the craziness with you!!
Oh and by the way, use cake pans next time. The cake Amish bread turned out great!! Of course there are some really nasty flour clumps, but the cinnamon sugar masked them pretty well.
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