The Rainy Day Bakery

Before kids' lives were scheduled with classes and playgroups and sports activities, we had Mom (the geniune stay-at-home variety) and each other. Before we knew about blood sugar and cholesterol, we baked. We loved to bake! What a mighty mess we made, and what a good sport Mom was, getting stuck with all the cleaning.

I remember only one baking "incident." At the tail end of a long, complicated recipe, I begged Mom to let me add the eggs. Just as I was considering my egg-cracking strategy, Mom turned on the old KitchenAid mixer. It startled me and I tossed the whole egg into the mixing bowl and watched the beater come around and crrrrunch it into the batter. Mom's also very forgiving.

With that one exception, they're all happy memories. Quiet times with Mom selecting a recipe, gathering ingredients, measuring and mixing. Without even realizing it, we were practicing reading and math. It kept us busy, and generally cooperating, for a couple of hours. Oh, there were the inevitable arguments -- I get to lick the bowl! You got to lick the bowl last time! -- but what a payoff: cakes, cookies, pies, rolls.

I think about this at the grocery, when I pass those tubes of slice -n- bake cookies. That's not baking. And are they designed to help mothers avoid spending time with their kids? What a gyp.

I remember baking as mostly a rainy-day activity. The rule back then was, if it wasn't actually snowing or raining, children belonged outside, sucking fresh air and absorbing sunshine, every possible minute. Or maybe that was just Mom's rule, a sort of self-preservation strategy. After all, she was outnumbered four to one.