New

Bread meets Omicron

New. It’s this really powerful word. Short. Sweet. What does it mean right now?

I have no idea what to write about the new year and what it means while everyone is dealing with the fallout of last year. 

I come up with some titles: 

Be the Yeast!? Not today…

Three Kings…I don’t know, do I really have the energy to write about cakes and traditions? No, I tell myself.  Just. No.

There’s so much COVID who has…? At least that was the process I was involved in when a brain fog hit me. 

Yes, dear friends, I’m a little late to the future because, well my mind might be looking forward but my body is sporting last year’s virus. Can I prove it? Apparently I can’t because the spread is so strong that all the testing centers canceled on me. But here’s the thing: I feel it.

I feel the dreaded ‘rona burn in my throat. First I had a sniffle that came on strong and then “Poof” disappeared. It returns every so often in a truly surprising sneeze every few hours. The chest, it has the same burn as the throat, one that tightens around in a circle. Yes, I feel it inside me.

Now I and a few million of my closest neighbors know COVID-19 in its alpha and omicron forms. (Lucky us!). I know that between my own personal cocktail of vaccine (Make it a double.) but no booster (Natural immunity chaser for my Pfizer cocktail, please??), that I’m on my way to what should be nothing much more than a few rough days. Trust me, I see the reports from all the outlets and they’re not really wrong. It’s like a bad cold, one with an attitude.

This feeling of fighting off this aggressive bug does bring me back to basics: to food as medicine and food as comfort. It brings me back to our grandmothers who always had tea and soup ready for the sick and fevered. It brings back the smells that heal, of thyme and rosemary and other plants we think of as “spices.” I don’t know the Croatian word for spices because honestly, nobody ever called them that growing up. The way I learned it, each spice, each herb was called by name, like you would a friend. 

Even tea used to be called by name. As a child almost no one ever said to me “I will bring you some tea.” I was always told, “I will bring you chamomilla.” or mint, or rosehips. The adding of the water and the final product of “tea” was completely understood.  It seems like a really small difference and it is, but it’s one that comes to mind as I keep trying to figure out what’s new, what’s old and what brings them together. 

Thinking about tea, that staple of bread and tea, well toast and tea -- to be exact comes to mind. I love simple foods to the point of being a snob about them. So, I wonder if I start tonight, can I manage, with the sore throat and all, to bake some bread that will be ready for tomorrow morning? Now of course, I have options. I could buy some. I could even have some delivered. I could make it out back, in the wood burning stove. I tried that once and it worked! (sorry no pictures were taken -- next time). I could even go outside and live out one of my fantasies.

First let me tell you how it goes: Someone not me, has dug a fire pit. They’ve stacked the wood and it is burning to embers. I can see it now, the fire is burning red as the clouds from the approaching snowstorm provide a backdrop of grey. I see the dough go into the pit. The coals go over the dutch oven, the one in Le Creuset’s newest color of the season, whatever that is. Then, my friends and I drink tea that is maybe laced with bourbon or CBD drops or whatever feels really luxurious. Me I opt for straight tea with raw honey, produced in the beehives located on the rooftop at the Waldorf Astoria — no kidding — while someone asks me how did I find it? I add the honey to the cups of my friends, brushing off the CBD for later -- for pain relief. I tell my imaginary friends to finish up the bourbon. There is always more. 

This daydreaming continues for a little while and just as I’m about to wrap my head around the glassware (or should they be mugs?!) I suddenly snap out of it. Looking at the clock, I realize I have no fire pit, no friends and no interest in moving out of this house. (I mean, I have friends, just not here -- not today. I swear.) 

I also realize, maybe through my brain fog, that I have yesterday’s emails to answer, and last month’s bills to pay. The days of the year are moving along and I have two unfinished presentations mocking me from the tiny little laptop I call my mobile office. Still, I want to wake up to some bread. I want to soothe myself with the smell of dough transforming into a crusty, crumbly piece of the simple life. So then I decide to actually get simple, easy — to imagine a bridge between the vision in my head and this stark menthol-scented reality where clocks matter. 

This is when once again suddenly (because my mind is like a thunderstorm), I remember that in fact today is the absolute perfect day for me to bake bread in a machine. Yes, as I recover from asking myself,  “Shouldn’t I use this time to go dig a hole in the backyard so I can make bread like my ancestors did?” I realize that my brother, who gave me the machine, is a genius. That last thought definitely hits like a bolt of light of some kind, but it is actually very true and for a moment, I realize the machine is amazing. I realize that my brother too, can be amazing.

In some ways, in fact many ways, my brother and I could not be more different but we are the same in that very special way that defines all siblings. We are two sides of the same coin, two faces to a particular lineage. Genetically, historically, realistically my brother understands what I’m trying to do and here he is, giving me gifts that support this dream of mine.

So there it happens, inspiration moves from the daydream to the plausible in moments. From a single auntie’s desires to hold onto the food and intangible language it offers to a father-of-four’s get it done attitude a small miracle, a small bridge appears. Somewhere between the life of our visions and the world of our circumstances, life and its tiny treasures persist. 

Rest assured, I won’t be giving up on the bread baked in the fire. I might give up on the hotel honey and some other details that were running around inside my feverish, foggy, head today. We’ll see. Whatever I give up on, and whatever I might add, will make sense at the time. And I guess that is all I have to share today, on this day that wraps up traditional Christmas, on this evening of snowstorms amidst the news of snow jobs and brand new pathogenic litanies.

I hope you’re well and finding your bridges into the new. Thanks to my brother, I’ve got a new tool for exploring just that. Maybe you have something like that around you as well. Maybe there is some missing key to whatever puzzle you’re solving right now. Maybe that thing is something you never considered. Maybe it’s the opposite of what you think you wanted or needed. Yes, I’m still talking about food and nutrition and culture and health. Yes, I’m talking about life and relationships and the patterns we want to continue and the habits we might have to break.

Today’s bread might not have the romanticism of the old one, but it will serve its purpose of nourishing both body and home. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an instruction manual to read and a perfectly fine cup of nameless tea to drink. When the fog of this infection lifts we’ll discuss more details.

Happy New Year to All and to All a Healthy 2022!

Mariette

PS - I bought myself flowers today