I could single handedly be the reason people started warning, “don’t fill up on bread.”  I would have to ask my Mom, but I think she said it so many times it became ritual and urban legend. I didn’t heed it then, and I still don’t. No matter the kind, I just find happiness in crumb and crust. And, as it turns out, the simple brilliance in the ingredient that makes it.

From the time I grew old enough to reach the counter and mixing bowl, I was wrist deep in flour. Sometimes elbow.  I always found joy in making something from the mess of finely ground potential. In fact, the older I grew, the more it became a constant friend in my life. From heartbreak to celebratory moments, opening a bag of flour was always the beginning of creating the perfect mend or joy.  Moreover, the perfect ingredient for sharing all of life’s moments with those I love. And sometimes even those I just met.

Through childhood to awkward teenage years, the craziness of college dorms, fumbling to navigate standing on my own in early adulthood, going back to college to reinvent what life should be, reuniting with the love I thought I had lost in high school, and turning my life upside down to move across the country, rarely a moment has gone by when I wasn’t covered in a dusting of flour. Any maybe potential. Looking back, and forward, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Welcome to my life in flour