Bread

Was meant to make pie yesterday for the Harvest Dinner but forgot to buy squash or pumpkin or anything, even after going to the store expressly for that purpose, and then got started making bread and so didn't go back to the store. Spiraled down into a vanity of cooking.

Anyway, once oatmeal has been made, bread necessarily comes next. I hate oatmeal. There's no way I'm ever going to eat it. But I do force the children to occassionally so that I can make bread. And when I make bread, I don't make actual loaves of bread. It's too much of a hassle. It leads to little children trying to hack their way into loaves or me having to stop everything to cut bread and then crumbs everywhere and much irritation and sorrow. I only ever make rolls with stuff in them. Saves having to make lunches of breakfasts or snacks or anything.

So, cinnamon rolls, which is basic and boring–bread dough rolled out into a long narrow slab, a stick of butter cut onto the slab, sugar and cinnamon sprinkled all over, rolled up, cut into one inch or so stiches and mashed into the pan. No big deal. But that's only breakfast. And it's really lunch that I hate trying go cope with, so, even though children watching the production say stupid things like, “I don't really love cheese” by which they mean that they hate cheese and will try to pick it out, here's my cheese and salami roll.

As for actually making the dough, that requires a big mixer the same color as this beat up old table, not sure if I could make bread in a mixer that wasn't this color, and what you do is, and this is so crucial, first you shove everything on the counter to one side and drop some cans of boring beans on your toe, and then you try to shove over the child standing on a stool right in front of the mixer so that you can even get to it, and then you pause and think about not doing it because who cares anyway, but then you get distracted by something else and while you're distracted you dump half the pan of gross slimy cooked oatmeal into the mixer and sprinkle a tablespoon of yeast over the top and then, if you feel like it, and you're feeling rich, you add two eggs and a stick of soft butter, and then lots of flour. You kind of sling the flour in so that it covers over all the other stuff on the counter and gets all over your black sweater. Then you turn on the mixer and while it's going and when you can no longer see the yeast that's when you add some salt. However much you feel like. But not too much! Be careful not to add too much. So then you keep adding flour while the mixer toils away until the dough is no longer sticking to the side, nor your hand when you touch it, and then you let it sit to rise until the child you have told no less than thirty individual times not to touch it finally does touch it and it collapses and so you have to roll it out whether you are ready to or not.

And then, because you only used half the oatmeal, you have to dump some baking powder and an egg and some sour cream and some more sugar into what's left and then only some scant flour, so that it is still very sticky, and mush it into a baking dish because, what are you, Ina Garten, to go ice cream scooping perfectly portioned amounts into muffin tins. No, you have to get it in the pan because while you were making bread you forgot to make super, so time's a wasten. You just mush it in the pan and bake it for a really long time. And there you are! Bread! And Muffin! But still no pie. So you better get up! Better go get working on pie! Don't just lie there! Go on!