I wish I were someone who wanted to bake sourdough bread

I think it would make me interesting in a way that I am not currently. I mean, picture this: I’m at a dinner party and my available conversation topics are smutty hockey books, the breadth of my e-reader collection and my favorite colored pencils. Perhaps the meditative nature of diamond painting, or, if I’m really desperate, the fact that I trained at the Trancendental Meditation Center in DC for a while.

I’m the nutty woo-woo aunt that everyone avoids at the family reunion because they are afraid she will try to sell them oils or crystals.

But Sourdough girls are fascinating. They feed these weirdly alive creatures that they then cook and eat, after throwing them around for a while to develop their gluten structure. It’s earthy and fascinating and horrifying in pretty equal measures. They name the creatures, and occasionally split them and give parts of them away. Crazy.

Sourdough girls are a more accessible sort of weird than smutty hockey girls, is all I am saying.

Yesterday, before I started fantasizing about all the bread I could be making, I tried a new white chocolate whipped ganache frosting recipe for the cakes I am inclined to bake and it was sort of a disaster. I swear I followed the instructions, and it just turned out…goopy. BUT—and this is an important lesson for young bakers—there is very little that can go bad with frosting that can’t be solved with a box of vanilla pudding mix, so it turned out quite tasty in the end.

Speaking of Trancendental Meditation, I really was trained 7 years ago by a lovely woman who was trying to separate me from even more money by asking if I wanted to learn how to be a TM-Sidhe, which is apparently a higher level of consciousness than your workaday Ommmm-ing. Sounds lovely, Joan, but I got financial aid for THIS class, so I am not sure what made you think I wanted to pay an additional 4 grand for the privilege of meditating while jumping up and down.

Not exactly kidding there.

Having said all that, I think that the initial TM training is worthy, and my practice is centering and invigorating in a way that almost nothing is. When I remember to do it. It’s a longer time commitment than a Daily Calm, though, and sometimes I’m lazy, you know?

And now I really am going to read The Romance Revival, but before that, here’s the good stuff:

Monday, August 4

I meditated for 45 minutes yesterday, then I made a new recipe for dinner, baked bread, and baked a cake, which I froze half of. I read 176 pages, and was exceptionally grateful for instant vanilla pudding.

Love y’all.