Baking creates recipe for simple pleasures
I remember vividly the first time I ever baked for money.
Of course, this is no great testament to my powers of recall: It was only about two months ago, after my hometown began holding a Saturday morning farmers market in the parking lot of a local ice cream stand.
In centuries past, Carlisle was an agrarian community; these days it is more of a typical suburb, but it turns out that scattered among the mansionettes and gorgeously restored antique Colonials are a significant number of locals growing tomatoes, basil, potatoes, and garlic in their backyards or at the nearby community gardens. Throw in a local cheese maker, a few craftspeople, and a baker or two, and you have a thriving Saturday morning market.
Returning from a long vacation, I was thrilled to learn of this new endeavor. Every now and then throughout the past decade, I've lamented that I never gave serious consideration to baking as a career, but I was almost certain it wasn't a fork in the road that I was likely to revisit. My career as a writer has been going well recently, and I was fairly sure I didn't really have the fine motor skills to create fancy pastries.
In fact, the aesthetics have always been my biggest hurdle when it comes to food preparation. I'm good at mixing and seasoning and testing for doneness, but I can't fashion a sugar rosebud to save my life. I can't even write in cursive with decorator frosting. Friends for whom I've created birthday cakes in the past have been known to comment that my confections taste wonderful but look like they came from a ''fun with frosting" session at day camp. Mine is not just home cooking but homely cooking as well.
But here -- just down the street -- was my chance to go down the road not taken. The next Saturday morning I was out with my card table and price list, as well as platters piled high with brownies, oatmeal cookies, chocolate chip bars, and banana bread. And for each quarter I took in, I felt a wave of triumph no less than when I open a letter from an editor accepting an article I've submitted.
We all have things we love to do, and we all have things we get paid to do, but what I'm coming to realize is how spectacular a moment it is when the two coincide. Each time a repeat customer comes back for another cinnamon chew, I feel like Sally Field in her famous award acceptance speech: ''You like me! You really like me!" Only it's not me, of course; it's my baking, which is something I've loved to do all my life.
Even better, my son Tim, who is 7, has become my business partner. He does not especially like the baking itself, and that's fine with me. I'm a little squeamish about the thought of a 7-year-old's fingers in the batter. So I do the actual food part; Tim has found numerous other ways to help, and I've discovered that the jobs he's undertaken exercise a wide range of age-appropriate skills. He helps package the wrapped goods neatly in plastic containers, which works his fine motor skills. He makes signs and price lists for our booth, which helps him to improve his lettering abilities. On market day, he sells the goods, which is excellent practice in arithmetic. Most importantly, he interacts with customers, which gives his social skills a workout.
So the farmers market has been ideal for us: a chance to live out a secret fantasy for me and a great ongoing homework assignment for Tim. It's goofy but it's true: Baking makes me really happy, and being able to sell the results is flattering. There are many things I'll never accomplish, but I can make brownies that people will pay for. It's just amazing how gratifying the simplest things can turn out to be. 