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Quarantine and Sourdough

It started so innocently but scarily also. We were told by the small-mouthed elected official that it was nothing to worry about but then eventually well maybe it was something to worry about and we should quarantine ourselves as best as we can from others.

Those people who pay attention and read international news sources warned that this was not going to end well and that we should all take care of ourselves and start social distancing. Many of my learned friends started this process back in December and January. Those they cared about were encouraged to purchase food and supplies like we couldn’t get to the store for a couple of weeks and then they hiked that up to a couple of months.

So, with a gentle push – one such friend showing up at my door with a freezer – I go to the store and purchased more food and supplies than I had ever purchased at one time in my life. I filled the freezer and the cupboards with meat, canned goods, beans, frozen veggies, etc. I figured I would only have to go out for dairy products, and I knew a couple of stores that had drive-ups.

So now here is where the story starts to really twist. A friend/Client we will call “Joe” decides to start baking bread for his family. I hear about this bread, but I don’t worry because I have lots of bread in that freezer. But I realize I may not have purchased enough sugar and flour to last me till late June and I share this concern with Joe. Guess who shows up on my doorstep with 10 lbs. of sugar, 5 lbs. of flour, and a loaf of sourdough bread he just baked. Wow!! How nice I exclaim. I credit his accounting bill for the groceries, and I start eating the bread. Now, this loaf lasts me a whole week. I made toast – yummy or the next day I had a tuna sandwich or the next evening – hum maybe a slice of toast before bed! Woooo the carbs and tang of the sourdough made me so happy. This is an exciting change to my working from home accounting routine.

Then the next week comes and I am out of sourdough but no worries – I have other loaves of bread in my stocked-up freezer, but they are not quite as satisfying as the homemade sourdough. Magically 2 days later Joe shows up with another loaf. It’s even better than the first! I start the process all over again – toast one morning, sandwich the next day, and I don’t forget the toast the next evening (the movie Ground Hog Day comes to mind).

Now I must tell you that along with my skills as an accountant, I am a long-time baker. If forced, I can make my own darn bread and I do have a supply of yeast in the freezer should that need arise. But here is this wonderful loaf of homemade sourdough bread – bread I don’t have to make. So, I continue on my happy sojourn of having toast every day until that loaf is gone again. Oh crap!! I am out of sourdough. What should I do, call and beg Joe, text his children – too desperate? 

But magically once again Joe shows up on my doorstep with another loaf of the wonderful life-giving sourdough bread of happiness!  And once again, I start on my sojourn down the daily road of toast in the morning, a sandwich the next day and toast in the evening. As with all addictions, my need turns to a higher need and I sometimes have toast twice a day or three times a day and now I find myself out of sourdough and it hasn’t even been a week. Why didn’t I ration it? Why didn’t I slice it thinner?? Why didn’t I make it last?? Remembering I am in the middle of a pandemic I ask myself, is this how I would be if I was lost on a desert island?  I stand in my kitchen and I look down at the empty breadboard and the deflated storage sack and my shoulders sag with sadness and dejection.

Oh, wait I say, I am not on a desert island and this pandemic still has internet – I can look up how to make my own sourdough starter and make my own bread. I don’t have to call Joe and beg for more bread. I go to the handy dandy computer and find the King Arthur flour company has a web page on how to make your sourdough starter and I actually have the ingredients in the pantry. My excitement starts to build – I start reading the instructions about how you grow your own starter and after I read all the instructions – I realize this is going to take me days!!! What the heck!!! I need bread now – not in 7 days.

Where is Joe and my “crack” . . . I mean sourdough loaf of bread –three weeks and I am hooked. I may have to go cold turkey!! Crap, I should have listened to Nancy Regan when she told us what would happen to our brains on drugs and now, we know that sourdough is as addictive as crack whatever the heck crack is. Good thing I live alone, and I can go through withdrawals without others seeing the crying and the wailing and the gnashing of teeth. I guess I might have to open that loaf of Franz tomorrow morning or maybe tomorrow Joe will show up with another loaf of sourdough and I will be saved. This time I will cut it in thinner slices – I promise. Really! – you will see I can make it last – Or, maybe, I should text him right now with an accounting question about his books and slip in a little praise-be to his sourdough? Yes, that’s the ticket, it’s the quarantine and I have an essential question, which just can’t wait. Perhaps, I propose that he can use the sourdough as a write-off (Joe likes those) or failing that, if I were that kind of accountant (which I am not) we could find a grey area to hid financing my addiction under “office Supplies.”  You see how this goes? Joe, Joe, where are you Joe?