For many years the act of baking occupied a primary role in the holiday festivities. I baked cookies, cakes, various coffee cakes and tea breads, and lovely artisanal breads. These would all be piled into baskets and distributed to friends and acquaintances. Even though G is not a lover of cookies, tens of dozens of cookies would roll out, some for the kids and even more to be distributed on gift platters, including my annual cookie platter which I take to the local post-office as a Christmas treat. I get my mail at the post office and the staff there have always been friendly and helpful. It seems like it wouldn’t be Christmas if I didn’t bring in my usual, huge, 36" tray piled high with cookies, a tray so overloaded I can barely stagger into the post office from the parking lot.
But then, about three years ago I found out I had Celiac disease and the urge to bake simply disappeared. My first attempts at gluten-free baking were not promising, and as I felt somehow betrayed by bread and cookies and cake, I felt very little incentive to work very hard at creating new treats. I gave it all up, even Christmas baking for others, because those first few years I couldn’t bring myself to buy regular wheat flour and bake all day and not be able to taste any of the results. As a result there was a big void in my holidays, a void I have struggled to fill.
One year I made various forms of chocolate bark for everyone on the list. One year I made several types of macaroons. I had always included macaroons and candies in my holiday baking ritual, but making them alone seemed more like a concession than an actual celebration of holiday baking.
This year I tried something different. I went to the store and bought a bag of flour and made cookies until the flour ran out. I made raisin cookies, a long time specialty of this house, big pillows of sweet made by taking two over sized sugar cookies and using them as top and bottom over a filling made of cooked raisins. I made Tassies, little round cookies with a thumbprint center filled with ginger marmalade or apricot marmalade and topped with rich dark chocolate. I made brownies, several forms of brownies. I couldn’t eat a one of them, and yes, I also made macaroons.
It felt good. I was singing as I baked, and it really feels like Christmas this year. Most of all just making the cookies has reminded me how much fun I have baking, even though I rarely eat many baked goods any more. I think I want to explore more gluten-free baking, and next year I want to do more, make more cookies and perhaps even some other things as well. I don’t have to indulge in the same kind of baking extravaganza as filled my past, but it will be nice to make some things. And although it was nice to learn that I can still work with wheat flour and bake things for others, it would be even nicer if I can learn to remake some of my old treasures, and find new treasures, so that I can make treats that I can eat and give to others, without their knowing that they are getting something "special" beyond the fact that it was hand-made. I had forgotten how baking, even though tiring, relieves stress. I used to bake in college at exam time. If I was stressed I would reserve the dorm kitchen and cookies would roll out of the oven. I would pile up trays of cookies in the parlors and they would all seemingly evaporate, nary a crumb left behind.
And what does this have to do with knitting? Nothing really, and yet baking like knitting, makes me feel calm, and happy, and centered in a way. The last two days have ended in exhaustion, with me falling into my chair and watching whatever movie offers some kind simple, hopefully uplifting story line, that I can half-follow as I concentrate on my knitting. I knit until I fall asleep, needles still in hand, probably only part-way through a row.
If the television options are too slim even for my pretty loose standards as to acceptable knitting viewing, I listen to a book on tape. I just listened to The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, a book recommended to me by more people than I count and also a book I had avoided reading simply because of some kind of mental backlash against the idea of popular, best-selling, uplifting, spiritual tomes, which often seem to be nothing more than uninspired pandering to popular taste. The same criticism has been leveled at this book, and it is true: it is filled with cliches, the characters are one-dimensional, the plot is simplistic, there is no complexity or intellectual meat. You could argue that they are beyond the point of the book, and to an extent this is true. It is a fable, a parable, a fairy tale and as such it works. Four hours of listening were certainly more entertaining than the great majority of the seasonal, inspirational, and uplifting movies that are out there, many of which are so saccharine and stridently uplifting that I might gag were I not burying my attentions in my knitting. Would the book have worked for me if I read it instead of listening? I don’t know. I like to savor the act of reading and I am not sure this is a book that bears up to loving perusal. But I have also long loved fairy tales and fables. It certainly works as a fable. Perhaps I enjoyed it simply because it was well read. Perhaps I enjoyed it because I listened at this time of year, this holiday season which is supposed to celebrate so many of the simple and important things, and which gets lost sometimes in the spirit of "buy more", "decorate more", "throw a better party", and "do more". It is nice sometimes to put the cynicism and catty comments aside and just enjoy. Knitting has its own simplicity and its own peaceful rhythm; that too sometimes gets lost in the rush to finish and the urge to start new. Sometimes it is nice to sit and enjoy, to unwind slowly, to fall asleep, yarn and needles in hand.
Too bad it probably won’t last.
