Originally published on 1/2/2022
I'm not going to write every day of the year, although I have resolved to read a poem daily. I have, however, decided to try finding a little time a couple of times a week to let my fingers tell a keyboard what I am thinking. So here goes:
Sugar Cookies and Irish Soda Bread
There were a few boxes of pre-cut cookie dough in the fridge, all with variously short expiry dates. I have no idea why my father-in-law bought them, but I am grateful that he passed them on to us. It is such a simple, yet mindful and grounding little thing - to open a box and lay the raw cookies on a baking sheet.
My younger son took such joy in helping me. Even at five he is a child of the modern world, comfortable with interrogating a voice assistant or searching video-on-demand. Still, as I said, it is such a simple, yet mindful and grounding little thing. Of course, he asked Alexa to set a ten-minute timer.
We made ate breakfast and made some jello while the cookies baked and cooled. Of course, they didn't get much time to cool. My older son must have smelled them, and between the two of them they devoured half of the batch; they would have had no problem polishing them off if I hadn't rationed them and kept watch. Not that I am a huge fan of pre-cast sugar cookies, but sharing is an important lesson - no, actually, I ate my portion pretty quickly too, warm and just undercooked enough to still have that raw dough taste - I had actually taken a marker to all of the boxes before bringing them home, and added "not" before the "safe to eat raw" badging, but that is a whole 'nother story.
The oven was still warm when I opened the fridge to put the jello in, and I spotted the box of soda bread scones that had been sitting there for a couple of weeks. Simple instructions: heat at three-fifty for four or five minutes.
The older one was still lurking in and around the fridge, looking for something else to eat. I told him to hold on a few minutes, and put a couple of scones on the the baking sheet that the cookies had so recently vacated. Now, George has developed a liking for tea since our most recent visit to Ireland, this past summer. What else would wash down a soda bread scone but a nice cup of tea, and we just opened a new box of Lyon's Gold Blend last week. No Kerrygold at the moment, but I did find some nice blackcurrant jam. George wasn't a fan of the canola butter, but was enjoying the scone, so I skipped the butter on the second scone and switched with him.
So that was a little slice of my Sunday morning. Simple, but mindful and grounding.
* Mary O's Soda Bread Shop is a COVID era project based out of the well-known Mary O's bar located on Avenue A in Manhattan.
