So, I'm a Baker

Don’t get me wrong, I love to cook. We Cancers are happiest with food in our hands (or mouths for that matter) and aprons on, proudly fluttering around the kitchen. I have several aprons in fact. I LOVE aprons. If you truly know me, then you know how much I love aprons and that I actually collect them. My grandmother wore an apron, and I loved her beyond measure. She was a gruff, French woman, but she showed me how much she loved me by baking yummy things. But, I digress.

Cooking requires improvising, and I don’t improvise well. I’m the same way with my baby, but that’s for another day. Cooking allows you to stray from the recipe, to “take the road less traveled,” so to speak. You can add a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Hey, maybe let’s try this, this go around. But baking? Eh, eh. There’s no improvising really, just exact measurements in each recipe, and these exact measurements are crucial to your end game. A little too much of one thing - and your cake may not rise. A little too much of another thing - and your cookies may be dry.

I’ve come to learn that I like exact measurements, a recipe if you will. I used to improvise well! In fact, ask my husband and he’ll tell you just how much. But these days, my life requires more of a recipe, a list of measurements and ingredients to follow. And I’m okay with that. In fact, I need that. I may not have 10 years ago, but again that’s another story. I’m a wife of almost five years, a stay at home mom, and an amateur baker. My sanity requires exact measurements because there just seem to be too many variables; too many ways life improvises and requires you to go along for the ride.

So at night, I grab my baking recipe - baby down, husband fed, wine poured, and I find my happiness in what I know will be an exact result. Not a nap cut short, a dinner that didn’t quite turn out as it should, or a last minute meeting that keeps the hubby at the office. Precision and harmony. Ahh.