It started with a visit from a neighbor who brought me three things: a paper of instructions, a ziploc full of goop, and some cinnamon bread. Pleasantries were exchanged on the doorstep after which I shut my door and shifted my eyes to the baked goods in the palm of my hand. Not even bothering to take the walk down the hall to the kitchen I took a bite, closed my eyes, and exhaled while leaning back against my wall. Crusty, cinnamony on the outside, moist and delicious on the inside. I eventually made my way to the kitchen where I finally took the time to survery the other items in my hand.
I flipped over the paper where the bold print across the top explained my delivery as "Amish Friendship Bread". My cursory glance at the rest of the directions revealed a list of ingredients and numbered instructions for how to recreate this culinary masterpiece using the bag of goop conveniently supplied for me. A more in-depth look also explained that this procedure would only take me approximately a week and a half. This was a problem, you see, because I sort of wanted more of that bread like, right now.
Day 1: Mush the bag. Sounds easy enough.
Day 2: Mush the bag.
Day 3: Mush the bag.
Day 4: Mush the bag.
Day 5: Mush the bag. I'm starting to feel ridiculous about this process. I imagine a couple of girls in black dresses and white bonnets peeking over my windowsill and giggling while whipering to each other, "She's actually falling for it!" and then running off to a barn raising to tell the rest of the village.
Day 6 is big: Add 1 cup of flour, sugar, and milk. And then mush baby, mush! Except the Amish didn't say baby. Or use the exclamation point.
Day 7: Mush the bag.
Day 8: I'm supposed to mush the bag, and in all seriousness it is a challenge to find the time. I have to go to the gym, run to Costco, make food for a youth activity, take Drew to piano, take Samantha to flute, drop off fundraiser money so my daughter can have something delivered to her on Valentine's Day in the middle of class, shop for snow boots, insert 73 self-deprecating references about how I'm not measuring up, make dinner, and campaign for world peace. I mush the bag with hostility and wonder if this is what the Amish had in mind.
Day 9: The Amish have been screwing with me for over a week now. Mush the bag.
Day 10: It is the last day. I finally get to make the bread!! I'm supposed to add a bunch of ingredients, and then divy up the batter into four separate bags to deliver to friends along with samples of the bread, and thus the cycle continues. Except this is not a good day. It's a day with no promises of any kind of 2 hour block of time to accomplish this task and I wonder if the Amish ever considered that. I'm beginning to think they don't care about me at all, but I've invested over a week of my life at this point and so I fit it in. It isn't until the bread came out of the oven and I took my first bite that I began to forgive. I conclude, "Tobias, Rachel and I? We're like THIS."
Day 11: Doesn't Betty Crocker have a recipe for cinnamon streusel cake that tastes just as good and only takes 45 minutes?
Day 12: Am I really supposed to believe that this bag of fermented slop resulting in baked nirvana started with a girl in Pennsylvania named Rebecca who wants me to widen my social circle? I google Amish Friendship Bread and this is what I get.
Day 13: Betty Crocker, page 74, "Cinnamon Streusel Cake". Prep time: 10 minutes. Ready in: 30 minutes. Giddy up.
10 comments:
See, that's the thing. The Amish don't have to do eleventy five errands and drop-off/pick-ups for kids music lessons. They have time for bread mushing.
But if you need someone to give the bread to, I'm available for that.
And is there even cinnamon in that recipe? I don't think so.
I had a similar experience, except my original bag of mush didn't come with bread to torture me. I just had to hope that ten days of TLC was going to result in something worth having - which, of course, it did.
Was the Betty Crocker *really* as good????
Thanks for the link to the starter. My daughter enjoyed the culinary delight after my VT's dropped over the mushy bag. It was good, but I am lazy and didn't add anything to divide up. I just mushed for 10 days and cooked it up. She has been begging for it ever since, but since I'm not Amish, I couldn't make it again. Thanks for the link. Now I can just enjoy it and not have to spread the wealth/work to everyone I bump into!
Nice.... real, nice.
Only 73 remarks about not measuring up?? I usually get at least a hundred. Did you know that for every negative remark we make (to ourselves, our kids etc.) we have to have 4 positive remarks to erase the one bad one?? Remember glass half full, and even though it's 75 degrees at my moms house, my 35 degress is quite the hot summer day for me.
Boliver
Amish bread is truly the chain letter of the bread world. It might make you feel better to know that my attention span is far too short: I have never made it 9 days (I usually throw it out around day five).
Big Rachel
One time I got a bag of the stuff and after 4 or 5 days, it attracted those tiny, slow flies... needless to say, it was weeks before I could get rid of the flies!
I just can't keep up with your ostentatious habit of writing. I need to set aside an entire day to catch up on your highly amusing life. How does Sunday sound?
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