Lately I found out Judy's course wasn't cheap at all. Initially, I thought it was around $8k, which was painful (to me) but later I found it was more like $16k. Ouch. These days I still found myself repeating the same words like a parrot. "I really wonder how you convince your husband to let you do this."
If I were to ask Jen if I could go to Germany to study a proper course and not the beer maids at Oktoberfest, leaving her behind being the sole breadwinner and caregiver of our 2 kids, what would she say to that?
No freaking way. In all fairness, I would probably say the same thing to her. Talking about breadwinner, our house mate has been diligently producing heart-winning bread for our family. Little Albany loves them, especially with a little bitter-sweet homemade marmalade made from the harvested Mandarins at MIL's backyard dashed on Judy's bread. On some nights, the house would smell like a bakery, something I found pleasant in the cold Winter nights. That beat the house smelling like fried fish or kimchi (I hate this shit) any day so we couldn't hold it against her when Judy announced she had officially retired our mixer. A new mixer for more bread and cakes? Anytime.
I have never seen Judy panic. Be it forgetting the house keys, leaving an umbrella behind at the shops, baby and toddler wailing in her face or realising she was late for school, she giggled everything away like a silly teenager. Perhaps as a mother of young teens, she had seen it all. I reminded myself to learn that from her. That would be, perhaps, the better way to negotiate the harder things life could throw at us so regularly.
Baking isn't about following the recipe or mixing all the ingredients together and dump in into the oven. There are so many intricacies in every procedure that we can get it wrong. Unlike cooking, there is rarely a chance to salvage a bake that has gone wrong. From my observation, baking requires a lot of patience, passion and a peaceful state of mind. It will be hard for someone like me who have been accustomed to whipping up meals very quickly to bake fine pastry one day. Nonetheless, I hope one of us would pick up some skills from Judy to bake some decent stuff before she leaves in the future. The sight of freshly baked bread on the table on Saturday mornings makes the house feel homey.
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