# Chateau de la Tobler

## Wednesday, August 01, 2007

### The Curse of the Amish

Do you know what Amish Friendship Bread is? It's a delightful, delicious, guilt-inducing way to show all your friends (and acquaintances, and neighbors, and random strangers you meet at the park...) how much you care.
Lovely.
Some fabulous homemaker whips up a batch of the starter, and then separates it into four, or six, or nineteen batches to share with her friends. With each bag of starter dough comes the instructions--not terribly difficult, but spanning several days. When baking day arrives, you separate out your four, six, or nineteen batches and then bake a wonderful loaf for your family. And it starts all over again.
Except for me.
If Amish Friendship Bread was a chain letter, I would have been killed by a falling grand piano many times over. The scenario is always the same:
Friend: I brought you a bag of starter for Amish Friendship Bread! (smiles brightly)
Me: (fakely beaming) Awesome! I love AFB! (This is not a lie. I really do love the taste of this stuff.)
Friend: Well, here you go!
Me: (Taking bag, putting it on counter) Thanks!
Bag sits on counter. Sometimes it gets punched, as per directions. Sometimes the needed ingredients are added on the correct days. Mostly it is my husband who does this. The bag gets hidden from view, but I cannot forget it. Even if I try to ignore it, it whispers to me. "You are a slacker homemaker. The Amish are vastly superior to you! You are so lazy you can't even make bread when someone has started it for you!"
Until I finally chuck it and the instructions/recipe in the garbage. To my husband's dismay (he really likes the taste of AFB, too).
So why don't I make it? I'm not a gourmet chef, but I can cook. But only when I feel like it. Generally the cooking day is a day that is busy, or hot (what is it about AFB and the summertime? It seems like that's the only time I get it!), or I just don't want to cook it. So I throw it out.
Or maybe I just don't want to be told what to do. Even by the Amish.
(Bradley, if you are reading this, the bag is on the counter behind the Goldfish container. It's day four, I think, and if you want some bread you have the recipe!)

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