Recently I have found a video channel Her 86m2. I was amazed by the content and quality of videos. A stay-at-home mom creates peace, beautiful ordinariness, calmness in her home and through her videos she brings it into homes of others. In one of her videos she bakes pretty pumpkin breads that not just include pumpkin puree in the recipe, but breads are shaped like a pumpkins too. I have decided to give it a try!

My turn – first try

I bought a red kuri squash which was the easiest part of all of this. Cutting it in halves was hard but not the hardest of the process. Baking. Peeling the squash. Making puree. B. helped with everything. But time was up and it was evening. We continued the next afternoon.

I reserved us a whole afternoon for this. We started. B. “excavated” flour into the bowl while I combined wet ingredients. It went well but it took such a long time for a dough to raise for three times. So we managed to finish the whole process for dinner. Pumpkin breads looked good and tasted fine. Actually, B. and M. liked them a lot.

Intermezzo

The next morning was quite difficult. A lot of crying, screaming, yelling… B. decided to “decorate” his bed sheet with handprints. In the evening he felt uncomfortable lying on it. He also chose not to clean up his toys and activities so his shelves ended up to be almost empty. Crying, screaming and yelling continued.

Second try

This time the dough was sticky and with fingers stuck in the dough I kept asking myself why people do not show this messy part in their recipe blogs/vlogs. I got nervous, frustrated and angry, I was ready to throw this triple batch of dough away. I let it rise, took a break and at least partially cleaned up the dishes. And again, I asked myself why people do not show the behind the scenes while cooking or baking.

The dough “put itself together” and we could continue. It was still quite sticky and B. was not able to participate as he wished which caused frustration, crying and screaming. Even I had a hard time working with dough. At first I resigned from pumpkin shapes and created balls. Later I tried to tie a string around those balls to create pumpkins. Somehow I managed, but the cheese kept leaking out of the breads.

I made many pumpkin breads that afternoon… All of them were cracked, cheese leaked from all of them. Last three breads were filled with jam as I run out of cheese. Jam leaked on baking sheet and made all the breads around it soggy.

I dealt with another load of dishes. And you do not even see what was left on the kitchen table…

Recalling the video by Her 86m2 I question my abilities to bake, to invite B. to help me in the kitchen, to manage household. Quite opposite what I originally took from the video. I needed to step back. People are different, children are different, households are different, goals and abilities of people are different. So I decided to share my messy, angry and disappointed experience which lasted for three days.

To find something positive: we spend time together and it was quite fun after all. In all that anger we found understanding and empathy in each other. Everyone liked breads, they were gone the next day. And I worked on my patience again.

Would you like a bite?