- Hope to make a pumpkin pie in two years when your Mother-in-law and Father-in-law visit around Thanksgiving.
- After their visit, save the leftover canned pumpkin, affectionately remembering the pie you devoured.
- Remember the canned pumpkin randomly one day and daydream about FINALLY using your bread maker.
- Receive word that the only working converter is for 300 watts and under.
- Cross your fingers that your bread maker is 300 watts.
- After reading the 700 watt sticker, momentarily wonder if this is a sign of the impending end times.
- Sulk internally for 117 seconds.
- Look up a recipe online making sure to search under “the best” because of the effort you will put in and narrow your search to your limited ingredients.
- When your children ask if they can help, pretend that you don’t speak English.
- When the lightbulb comes on, also pretend not to speak Portuguese until they lose interest and stop touching all the stuff.
- Remind yourself that you’ll be a more encouraging, “let’s do it together” mother when it’s NOT almost kid bedtime.
- Wait for the heat index to barely slip below “melting of internal organs” to preheat your oven.
- Chuckle at the exact oven preheating degrees on the recipe while guessing what angle of the knob between on and off might possibly be 350 degrees.
- Sift bugs out of your flour, crop dusting your table and the remaining ingredients because of the isolating fan.
- DO NOT turn off the fan or this baking endeavor will instantly be over as you slip into heat exhaustion.
- Run out of sugar mid-mixing and retrieve the excess from the freezer where the ants can’t reach it.
- Crack each egg individually into a small bowl and then add it to the batter to avoid the flavor addition of “green, rotten horror”.
- Pound the dried cloves you found randomly at a grocery store 1.5 hours away (and paid way too much for “for such a time as this”) with a wooden mortar and pestle, guessing at a quantity that will equal 1/2 a teaspoon and spilling some on the floor while pounding too violently.
- Blame the floor with accusing eyes.
- Blend all dry ingredients together and combine them into the wet ingredients in a separate bowl.
- Press through the moment of realization that you will have to hand wash this eternity of dishes.
- Spill a little flour on the chair while stirring because the power flickers.
- Blame the chair with accusing eyes.
- Dig out two bread loaf pans.
- Shut a cat in the pantry.
- Contemplate using parchment paper in your pans.
- Remember that it’s a 2 day drive to replace the said parchment paper if it’s in stock or a $3,000 roundtrip ticket for a relative.
- Walk straight to the fridge and retrieve the butter.
- Move the homeschool math books aside on the table, dusting off the flour from step 14, and grease the pans with your bare hand to avoid even one more dish to wash because it’s the end of the day, people.
- Wash greasy hands and test oven temperature with your face.
- Ten beads of sweat means it’s preheated.
- Two loaves go in and set a timer for three-quarters of the baking time on the recipe.
- Check on your loaves like a paranoid mother of a newborn at least every 2 minutes.
- After the fourteenth or fifteenth poke, resolve to remove the bread.
- Glory in the fresh smell of victory and tomorrow’s breakfast all in one.
- Resolve to never bake again when you turn around to the precarious mound of dishes in the sink.
- Remember that you don’t have any more access to pumpkin products anyway.
- File it away on your mental list for Stateside baking options in 15 months.
