gardenymph

I made some Mama Bread the other day. The recipe is not officially called Mama Bread, but it’s what Marlena started calling this bread when I made it on a more regular basis a few years ago. I haven’t made it in a long time, mainly because after the last move I couldn’t find the issue of Cooking Light that it was in. But last week I found it in a stash of magazines that I was going through. Yay!

Making the bread took me back to our little house in Virginia, which was out in the country. We lived up on a hill with cows for neighbors. We lived there for only 3 years, and it was a very modest little house, but it was the first house that we ever owned and so it holds a very special place in my heart. It’s also a special place because it was just the three of us. None of us had any idea that we would be blessed with two more family members in the years to come. When I look back on those days, they almost seem… quiet. I know that it wasn’t that way, that it was full of the noise and bustle of our family life, but much in the same way that one tweaks a picture in the darkroom or photoshop until it becomes more pleasing to the eye, time has a funny way of blurring the edges, adding a layer sentiment, and turning up the glow of reminiscence.

I loved being out in the country. I did things that I loved. I had a flower garden that Marlena helped me plant and pick bouquets from, I composted on a regular basis ( I was quite a fanatic about it, even going so far as to regularly pick up used coffee grounds from the coffee shop in town, and in return, bring them flowers from the garden that their coffee grounds had helped to grow. I would even stop and pick up other people’s bagged leaves because we had very few trees on our hill and I needed a carbon source), I checked out books from the library on chickens (If we had stayed there, there would have been a hand built chicken coop out back. Barry didn’t want chickens because of the snakes that they would attract, but I was chicken smitten), and I cooked a lot more because we were so far away from town that there were no quick trips to the market, or restaurant choices for take out.

Here are some pictures of Marlena back then. I have had a really good time tonight going back through all of the pictures from 2003, 2004, and early 2005. It wasn’t that long ago that she was my little helper in the house and garden, but at the same time, given how different our lives today, it seems like another world, encased in a snow globe of sorts. I am surprised at how quickly the tears came to me eyes as I looked at pictures from that time. It’s kind of like seeing a post card of a foreign country that you once traveled to and knowing that you can never visit it again.

Oh my! This was supposed to be a rather simple post about a loaf of bread, and somehow I got lost in my thoughts. I guess that happens when you sit down to write at 11:30pm and find yourself getting very sentimental while the rest of the house sleeps.

So, on with the bread!

One of the things that I really wanted to learn how to do while we were in Virginia, was to bake bread. I checked out all kinds of books from the library and completely overwhelmed myself with information about oven bricks, wild yeast, and milling my own flour, that I sort of thought it was too much to live up to. Then the May 2005 issue of Cooking Light came out and there was a recipe for Simple White Bread. It looked harmless enough so I gave it a try. Turns out it is pretty hard to mess up, and I have found it to be a very reliable loaf of bread.

It’s still a big hit! I found the recipe on line here if you would like to try it out. I wonder how much the taste and smell trigger memories in Marlena that she might not be aware of. She says that she remembers the the house in Virginia, and she remembers Mama Bread very clearly. One thing is for certain, Mama Bread is back in heavy rotation around here.