A show-stopping scene:
nature’s thanks to humankind—
for global warming.
Photo: The bloody Canberra sunset from a couple of days ago. The redness is a direct result of the smoke that wafted into the city from the bush fires lapping up forests and natural reserves not far away.
Coughing up shady,
as criminal in hiding,
looms, bush fire embers.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the bush fires raging throughout Australia. This morning, Canberra woke up to heavy smoke wafting from fires around the state. It’s been a devastating day.
In captured moments,
yearns human, naturally,
hopes to make time—still.
As a pop-up shop
in the middle of nowhere,
a spring in nature.
I’ve done quite a lot of baking since moving to Australia. But I’m no baker. I’ve never made delectable goods people would want to buy.
I’ve baked vegetables, pumpkin seeds, and oat clusters. I’m a complete novice otherwise.
I volunteer at a co-operative food shop. Yesterday, one of the managers walked up to me as I cleaned the counter and asked me how I felt about baking.
Unprepared. Unconfident.
And then, for the first time, I was asked to bake something. It was to be either banana bread or cookies. Nothing new or unheard of—we had s pre-designed recipe. I just had to follow instructions. If it said to boil two cups of salt, well… you know.
I wouldn’t boil two cups of salt.
But I was making chocolate chip and tahini cookies.
This wasn’t my usual marinate-vegetables-and-shove-in-the-oven recipe. It wasn’t anything like the pumpkin and oats mixture I bake all the time. To put it simply, it wasn’t simple.
However, on paper, the recipe was pretty straightforward. It had fewer steps than the banana bread, and even though I’d have chosen the bread to stuff my face in, the cookies seemed far less intimidating to make.
I read the instructions over and over just to make sure I didn’t forget the salt or the vanilla, the oil, or the milk.
It was a vegan recipe, and only a few days ago, I’d seen the recipe’s author bake some cookies herself. So I had a reasonable idea of how they were supposed to look. I recalled awe-ing at how flawlessly the cookies had spread and how much people enjoyed chewing them.
It was a lot to live up to. And that terrified me. Even though it was just flour, baking soda, and salt for the dry and oil, tahini, milk, and sugars for the wet, I still felt an enormous pressure over my head as I measured the ingredients, battling with myself over the difference between a heaped and flattened cup.
The recipe suggested 15 cookies. And as I balled up the cookie dough, smiling to myself at how much it resembled the cookie doughs I’d seen on television, I realised I was making far too many—I’d made thirty small balls instead of 15 big ones. Anxious, but still proud of my mixing capabilities, I greased the trays, arranged the balls, and popped them into a waiting oven.
For the next fifteen minutes, I was thankfully too distracted to bite my nails and check in on the cookies every two minutes. When they came out, smaller than I expected, they were more like blobs of chocolate-topped brownish flour than flat disks of chewy goodness.
My heart sank. Perhaps I’d sunk the cookies.
The first taste-tester said it was good. But he’s a nice guy. The second affirmed the first guy’s comment, adding that the cookies were crunchy and crumbly—which is good, if you like crumbly cookies.
They were both more than less than helpful. I still couldn’t tell if the cookies were any good. And I didn’t trust myself to eat any.
We sold out of cookies in a day.
Many people appreciated my cookies. And yet, as a novice baker and an incredibly-doubtful person, it’s hard to believe.
Perhaps it wasn’t so bad.
Perhaps I’m not such a terrible baker, after all.
Perhaps I could do more…
