Nothing soothes the soul like beer.

Well, technically, beer bread. I'm not nursing a solo beer at 11 am. Promise.

It's another March snow day today, this time with a little less panic and a lot more ho-hum. We'll be going to school over two days of our spring break now, to make up for an excess of snowy days. I really should be using this time to do all manner of things, like sleep, or catch up on laundry, or clean my bathroom, but instead...
I'm baking. So far, cheesy beer bread to go with seafood chowder tonight, and more grahams (I am obsessed. Omg, with cream cheese slathered all over them--magic). I'm thinking I might attempt another batch of homemade crackers (those are crazy easy).

I love to bake. This small fact is completely and utterly surprising to myself and to those that knew me when I was younger. "Domestic" and my name did NOT belong in the same sentence...probably not even the same paragraph. I was the girl that could not boil water and regularly created small fires in the kitchen. I almost burnt down my dorm one year trying to make my roommate birthday fried dough. (Turns out plastic utensils do NOT work well in lava-hot oil. Who knew?)

Then pagach happened.

My grandmother has always made pagach--this dense, chewy, buttery,crispy potato-filled bread. It is our quintessential family heirloom food, thoroughly Slovak, served with the Polacheck specialty--sugar on top. Yum. I have so many fond memories of my mom excitedly announcing, "Grandma made pagach!" and off we'd go for tea and sugary butter potato bread, fried in a pan and eaten hot.
Then one year, Grandma didn't make it. The arthritis had gotten the best of her hands, and the intense labor required to roll out that dough paper-thin with just the right amount of potato just wasn't in the cards for her any longer.

Another year. No pagach. No one stepped up to the plate. I was heartbroken. It felt like a family tradition was being left behind, and I'm strangely attached to tradition. So I decided to take it on.
After several lengthy phone conversations and step-by-step directions, (maybe I'll post a pagach-making post on here as Easter gets closer) I tackled it. Holy crap, you guys, it was almost a disaster. But then, it wasn't. It was good! The next year got better...last year was perfect. The baking bug had bitten.

So now, I bake. My love for all things anal-retentive matches beautifully with the precision needed to bake, and my total overestimation of my ability to try new things and succeed has allowed me to dive in head-first to layer cakes, advanced decorations like from-scratch sugar leaves, nut brittles, quick and "slow" breads, cookies, crackers, whatever I feel like making....and pagach. Always pagach, twice a year. Sometimes it's a tragedy, but surprisingly often, it's not. There's just something soothing about dough on your hands and the smell of a hot oven. Bliss.

So, what's the point of all this? Firstly, it makes me happy to share what makes me happy. But also, maybe that's how I should look at the year coming up. Dive right in, and keep overestimating that everything will work out for the best. What's the worst that can happen?