Valley of Morning ~ Donald Hall Jack Baker rises when the steeple clock strikes three to shape dough into pans and wed pale rising bread to the fire, trays shoved in clay ovens over wood coals. After the summer sun touches the church’s steeple, he pulls from his bakestove two hundred loaves, crusted brown with […]
Everything Is Plundered ~ Anna Akhmatova Everything is plundered, betrayed, sold, Death’s great black wing scrapes the air, Misery gnaws to the bone. Why then do we not despair? By day, from the surrounding woods, cherries blow summer into town; at night the deep transparent skies glitter with new galaxies. And the miraculous comes so close […]
Most of my recent Great Clay Experiment was a disappointment. I found the Premo! Sculpey almost impossible to work with, and then it lost its shape while baking, so the pieces were ruined. A prayer card holder with a warped support doesn’t work very well. The one thing that did work well—although not as expected—was […]
Ask Me ~ William Stafford Some time when the river is ice ask me mistakes I have made. Ask me whether what I have done is my life. Others have come in their slow way into my thought, and some have tried to help or to hurt: ask me what difference their strongest love or […]
Somehow, on my travels around the internet, I landed on this page at The Dockyards, a Viking history site, which led me to this video on baking Viking bread from Archeosoup Productions. I am fortunate to live in the land of Organic Grocery Stores Which Carry Non-Standard Grains, so I picked up the necessary ingredients last […]
