Friendship

Toni brought baggies of fermented goop to work a couple of weeks ago for us along with a recipe which instructed us to squeeze them, burp them, add more ingredients to them and basically babysit them for 10 days! My imagination smelled right through the plastic bag she gave me which in turn made my stomach feel weird. But she gave us a sample of the bread she made from this goop and it was really quite good, so I proceeded with the experiment. Ten days later, I made the bread, called Amish bread, and I was happy I did.

Then Sharon looked up the recipe for a "starter goop" on the internet, but we decided it would not be the same if you made it from scratch. She said the kind you get from a friend has a "history", and I liked how she said that because it is kind of like how we share a history with our friends. But then I thought about how so many of my friends in these days wouldn't want to be bothered by a recipe that takes 10 days to make, or rather, I wouldn't want to bother them. Or maybe the problem is that I just don't want to be bothered to put it in baggies and make copies of the recipe and bring them over to my friends. We are in such a rush. We don't share our history. And we are not Amish.

But for awhile, we Family Institute people are babysitting our dough, recycling it back to each other, and making our bread. The bread becomes so precious when it is finally made that it can hardly be wasted. Sharon could only spare us each a 1/2 of a piece that she made with applesauce today because her son loved it so much, but yet she really wanted us to try her new addition. We were so excited about it. And we are becoming old friends with Amish bread in our history.