Just a Short Post… Say Hello to Clive…

Now you may think that this is just an old ordinary discarded jar of just finished Adams peanut butter. Well… you’d be wrong. Meet Clive. He’s a new addition to our cruising family and yes he is not inert. He’s alive!

Like so many others who’ve decimated the stores of every kind of flour imaginable… I happened to snag a bag or two… with the belief that even I might be able to master the humble art and science of bread baking. First two loaves: a delightful admixture of yeasty, chewy, crusty, mouthfeel.  Searching for more recipes, I kept reading about sourdough and why it has such a nearly cult like following.  I mean, sourdough has always been my favorite bread. It just seemed out of reach for little old non bread baking me.

That takes me back about 15 years when Les and I lived in Ramona.  The older couple across the street were going on an extended vacation and had us over for dinner just before.  Not an unusual thing, but towards the end of the meal, Veronica, a southern military spouse… started asking me about my cooking, what I liked to cook and if I’d ever made bread.  Well, I told her beer bread only.  Being a polite southern gal, she just smiled and asked a few more questions.  Then she looked straight at me and said, “Would ya’ll take care of my sourdough starter until we get back.  It’s been in the family for two generations and I couldn’t bear to lose it.

Hmmm… mighty attached to a pot of flour, yeast and an assorted community of bacteria, sez I.  “Well, of course I wouldn’t mind.  Is it hard?”  So, she wrote out the instructions which weren’t hard to follow and the day before she left, brought it over and made sure that I put it in the fridge right away.  For three weeks I worried and fretted and fed it as instructed and took it back to her the day they got back.  Good riddance!  What a bother.  And here I am now, cultivating Clive, cooing little noises to him as I walk by his resting place.  Waiting for the bubbles to form, feeding him twice a day…

To be continued…