Staying home. Baking up a storm 🍞
Doin’ GREAT!
Ummm.
Yeah.
Perhaps a touch melancholy.
Image: Joséphine-Éléonore-Marie-Pauline de Galard de Brassac de Béarn, Princesse de Broglie, 1851–53, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain.
Hello friends! Wondering how you're getting along. Hoping you're healthy, with food to eat, and employers that are keeping you on the books for the duration.
Me, I'm doing great! Just lounging at home in my ball gown, NBD, might don some opera gloves later if I get tired of looking at this arm party of diamonds and pearls. Are we all forced to stay home, forgoing parties and strolls and gentleman callers? Never mind, we shall put a good face on it, get dressed, and meet the world using our handheld device.
Ugh. Yeah. It's gotten a little harder, especially since I've given up my daily walk. As you may know, I live in a village--well, it's on the edge of a larger town, but I live in the villagey part of the village, where the lanes were built by cows, for cows, more than 300 years ago, and it's never been easy to keep a social distance here. I really don't know how this town survived the flu of 1918.
Anyway, I'm at home, and I'm baking every day. Croissants are my kryptonite, and so are bread and cake and donuts and cookies, and by kryptonite I mean I would live on these wheaten substances if I could do so and stay healthy, eschewing all kale and kale derivatives.
But a woman can't live by gluten alone and stay healthy, therefore I have set limits on their consumption, which is a thing that adults can do.
There are a LOT of people out there who will tell you that it can't be done; that to eat one bite of refined flour or anything else the color beige will send you down a slippery slope to drown in a sump of bad carbs at the bottom. That the only way to recovery is strictest abstinence from all dangerous substances like flour and sugar and butter and alcohol and dried fruit and potatoes and more. But I disagree.
There are a LOT of people out there who tell you that if you want to recover from an eating disorder, you better swap out your identity for one that doesn't include "cook" "baker" or "interested in the pleasures of the table" or "collector of cookbooks" or "owns specialty cannelé molds." But I DISAGREE SO HARD.
For me, there's no eating disorder recovery without moderation. No moderation, no recovery.
Which is a great relief when you're stuck at home and your knitting is not going well* and the whole internet is baking super fun things!
So if you are in my camp and agree that adults can be recovered from eating disorders and do a little baking, too, here are two things you might enjoy:
First, from Briana Holt, the baker I most admire in the world, Tandem Bakery's Beneficial Biscuits. This recipe (and endearing instructional video) is a benefit for the Portland, Maine bakery's employees during their furlough. Proceeds will keep them in health insurance. $5 (and up, if you want.)
Next, from Samin Nosrat and her friend Hrishikesh Hirway, a podcast about pantry cooking: Home Cooking. Don't miss the show notes.
Okay, friends--that's the week! Let me know how you're doing and how I can be of help. xoxok!
*If you care to know, I have ripped out my Ranunculus yoke 6 times so far this week.