bread

The forecast is for snow and ice and all kinds of wintery weather, if all else fails I will tuck myself up under quilts and pillowcases stuffed full of fibre and have hot baths and generally stay warm.

right now I am about to make some bread, herb bread that should (if I dont burn it fill the house with the scent of baking and almost a positively healthy if not low calorie aroma. The machine will clunk because Im using the bread maker, in my nod to the 21st C, my father would be rolling his eyes at that. One of my earliest memories is of him baking bread at home. I must have been under 5, there was some kind of strike on and he was an army baker. I distinctly remember how his hands worked the dough, each hand rolling in opposite directions as he made perfect bread rolls. I remember thinking how the army issue flour canister must be exactly for bread making because it had its rounded domed lid that was just like a risen crust ..though to be fair the fact that it was green was a bit of a logical under five leap of imagination.

I remember with the awe of a daddies girl, a picture of him sent from Christmas Island during his stint as a nuclear test guinea-pig, of his sat on top of a loaf of bread, even though I knew he was far too big, some how magic had happened and there he was sat on top of a loaf of bread. 

Later as an adult he would bake bread at home for the small shop that my mother ran, loaves would line up to prove on the  big storage heaters. Customers would snap up those fresh baked loaves.

I admit, freely, to being a bit eccentric, and all the things I do turn my hand to, could be easier accomplished by sensible people in much more straightforward ways, quilts can be bought, wool yarn can be bought, heck if I could knit yet jumpers can be bought! but so can bread, and still my daddy made it....and that evening afternoon, what ever it was, is locked in my memory as precious, and as a moment in time when my under five year old self learned that if you want to you can make anything.