Whatever He Says

By Belinda After writing about never giving up on true friendships, I feel that it is important to add the counterpoint and say, "Sometimes there comes a point when you just have to bale.!" For a month I've had this high maintenance friend that moved in with us. Really she was a "friend of a friend." She was very expensive to keep feeding and I just found that she was sucking up way too much of my energy, so I decided I had to call it quits and end the relationship. I did it tonight. It's over. I have no more "starter." I baked all of it in a massive batch of Amish Friendship Bread and Amish Friendship Muffins. My kitchen is closed (I just said that to get my own back on Dave who told us he was deleting his blog on April Fools Day) and I am hanging up my apron! I knew it was time when I visited someone yesterday, and took a loaf of Amish Friendship Bread as a gift. Just before I left I remembered it and reached into my bag. "Oh, I ...

By Belinda It was Day 10. Enough said. The instructions that came with my Amish Friendship Bread starter, include a paragraph that states, "You will be baking every 10 days." Can you hear the  tone in those words? " You will be baking..." Like it or not; no matter what else is on your agenda for that day; if it is Day 10, you will be baking. So even though it was Sunday, I came home from church knowing exactly what lay ahead before I could relax for the afternoon; a vast quantity of baking. It was a "vast quantity" because I outwore my welcome with all of my friends the last time I inflicted bags of AFB starter on them and can't bring myself to do it again. So my plan was to bake a quadruple batch of bread (8 loaves,)freeze them, and keep just one bag going on the counter for another 10 days. I then plan to bake the lot (10 more loaves) and be done with it! The bread stops with me. I beat a dozen eggs into submission and measured and po...

By Belinda Me and the Amish Bread ( I have dropped "friendship" from the name; read on and  you will see why) are in a standoff. Maybe even "standoff" is too gentle. I feel as though war has been declared. On me. Did someone whisper to the bag on the countertop what I wrote about it earlier this week? The bag in which Brenda brought her Amish "friend" home to Mom on Sunday was the medium sized Ziploc. I was so shocked to be "tagged" with a bag that at first I didn't think too much about the size. I wondered why two years ago (the last time I had an Attack of the Amish) I had used the large sized bags to keep my blobs of goop in. Maybe I had been wasteful using big bags, I thought. On Wednesday night I had to add to the bag a cup each of flour, sugar and milk. I eyed the bag and thought, "Yep, she can take it." I opened it and poured in food for the "baby." It was a tight fit, but I could zip 'er back up. Just. ...

By Belinda We've been getting to know each other, bit by bit. We watched a performance of Hamlet together with Brenda--our mutual connection--and I enjoyed our conversation during the interval. But this weekend a quiver ran through our budding friendship when she sent home a "gift" with Brenda. "Mom," Brenda said, proffering a plastic bag of fermenting goop. Hesitating (as she should have,) she said, "Tina sent you this." And dropping it on the counter, she beat a hasty retreat. It was not lost on me that she didn't come home with a bag for herself (being gluten intolerant has its blessings!) "Aaaargh! NO! The curse of the Amish Friendship Bread! What friend gives you this?" I sighed. It seems only yesterday that I finally gave up the endless cycle with my last batch and allowed it to die. This one comes with instructions that end with the ominous sentence: "Only the Amish know how to create the starter, so if you g...