April 24, 2020. Madison, Mississippi. Cooking and Baking.

Three friends this week have told me that the grocery store was out of yeast. This had never happened too them before. What is happening is obvious. Now that people are home, they are baking bread. And they are teaching their children to do it too. In Nova Scotia, Gill and Mary have been making their own bread for a couple of years. Even Christina had baked bread this week. I wonder how long this trend will continue? Baking bread is similar to making pastry. If you do it regularly, everything is easy but when you only do it every so often it seems like a big chore. Last week, Christina baked bunches of things, with Molly's help. She said the problem was that they ate everything in three days. And I am cooking too. The controls for the ovens are high so I can not read the temperatures so when I turn on the oven, I must guess about the temperature. Ken was right. He thought we should install new ovens when we first moved in. I objected to the expense because we seldom use the ovens so we left them alone. Today, I decided to cook all the chicken breasts given to me at Christmas by Joyce and Robbie. My freezer is now empty except for the meat given to me. I have not cooked for 35 years but I put on an apron, looking official. I got out a pan and opened all the chicken breasts. My plan was to cook them all, then freeze the cooked chickens to be used in the future. All was well with the preparation and I was ready to put the chickens in the oven. I had turned on the oven but could not see the temperature. So I pushed the control up a notch, put the pan in the lower oven and went for a walk, hoping for the best. When I got home from my walk which took about 30 minutes, the house was not full of wonderful smells so I turned the temperature up a notch or two. As there was fluid in the pan, I figured the chicken would not dry out. After another 20 minutes I took them out to check. It seemed cooked. I ate a chicken breast for a late lunch, along with more rice and beans and kernel corn. Amazingly, I had remembered how to cook. My dinner at lunch was delicious.