I’m in a good place in my life- I feel loved and I love him back, with a peace of mind only possible in adulthood, not at all reminiscing of the exhausting experiences in my early twenties, when I was losing sleep and energy over a phone that didn’t ring or a date that was 3 hours late. If you haven’t experienced that, you should consider yourself lucky, I for one have been through it all- reciprocated love, unrequited love, hate, addiction, Platonic love, you name it. But not anymore. Now I love the way I probably should have from the beginning had I only known how. One of my earliest memories of not being like everybody else was when I kept wondering how it was possible for the parents of one class mate to love him as long as he had spectacles. I mean, I was probably 7 and that was what was going through my head, how you had to be perfect in order to be loved. Anyways.

Although I don’t feel particularly professionally accomplished (I know you’ve heard that before!), I’m investing time and money in my hobbies, I’m traveling and I’m reading like never before, I feel the world at my feet, the only thing I have to do is grab it by the tail! And that I am, every day is sort of an adventure, a small adventure, that is, ’cause I still need my naps, but these days I’ve been driving outside town with a friend for props- a marble board and old wooden boards- popped by thrift stores for antiques and styled my own little “tableaux”, with more or less luck. And today I’ve baked bread, not that I hadn’t done that before, but the kind of old-fashioned round bread, the no knead one. And boy, was it lovely!

Ingredients

4,5 cups of regular flour

2 cups of whole wheat flour

1 pinch of sea salt

5 dl lukewarm water

a full spoon of honey

1/2 tea spoon yeast

Mix the flour, sea salt and yeast together, dissolve the honey in the water and blend it in. Let it rest for 12-24 hours, usually over night, covered in a kitchen cloth. The day after take a kitchen spatula and fold the dough from each side, then let it rest for 1-2 more hours. Twenty minutes before the dough is ready to be baked, put your iron cast casserole in the oven at 250 degrees. Let the lid be on. Take it out and use a generous amount of flour in the casserole, in order for the bread not to get burned. Use the spatula and scoop the dough inside. If a little runny, don’t think about it, it’ll turn out just fine. Bake for 30 minutes at 225 degrees C, then remove the lid and bake for 15 minutes more. Take the bread out, let it cool on a board and serve with fresh strawberries on top of Philadelphia cheese or a nice salty butter with jam.

Bon appetit!

xxx, Alina