In August, our craft day became a baking day. One week in advance, Kristin took our baking instructor shopping for ingredients. For the next week, we had 20 bananas ripening in my kitchen!

We have a wonderful neighbor who has many talents and is an amazing teacher. She is creative, patient, and organized. She invited our group to bake at her church, Bethany United Methodist, so that there would be plenty of cooking utensils and multiple ovens. When we arrived at the church, the basement was already set up with 10 cooking stations - each with its own bowl, spoon, and laminated recipe card. Along the kitchen counter were ingredient stations: one for dry ingredients and one for wet. There was another table with an array of baking pans from tiny loaf pans to medium ones to heart and star-shaped ones. We each got to choose a pan.

As we made our banana bread batter, our teacher shared pieces of cooking advice that had been past down to her by her grandmother. Sometimes she just explained the reason behind things that some of have always done but didn’t know why. Learning all of these morsels of wisdom was great. We also had fun while the bread was baking. That was an opportunity for us to visit and catch up with each other. Topics of conversation ranged from nutrition to crafts to baking experiences to escapades of children and grandchildren.

We are looking forward to blanket tying, more baking, scrapbooking, and tie dying in the coming months.