Baking Day

In an effort to bring in some extra money, I have been baking every week for the past few months.  My neighboring Amish community has a produce auction each Friday and I brought baked goods to sell there.  Grant it, some weeks were worth it and some weeks weren't, but saving up the income every month really helped us clear some bills we wouldn't have otherwise been able to pay.  As the growing season was coming to an end, I looked forward to the last auction of the year.  Yes, we would miss the income, but after baking from dawn till way past dark on Thursday and then loading up the truck and spending most of the day on Friday at the auction, I would lose almost two whole days of cleaning or sewing or whatever else that had to be put on hold.  Upon setting out all of the baked goods on the last day, my friend and Bishop came to me with a smile on his face and asked
"Will you bring more next week?  We're going to go one more week!".  I smiled and said....."I'm not sure."  Here I had looked forward to a season of rest.  We need the income, how can I not take advantage of one more week?  After wrestling with it in my mind, I decided that I had put other things on hold long enough and that it was time to get back to them. 

As the following week progressed, our 10 year old daughter continued to ask if I was going to bake on Thursday or not.  She couldn't believe I wasn't going to bake anything for the auction.  Finally, she asked me if she could do the baking.  I have to tell you that she has baked along side me for many years and can whip up a batch of cookies and clean the kitchen after herself without blinking, but could she bake a good enough amount of things to take to the auction?  I felt it was time to let her try.  Why not?  The evening before baking day, she took out my recipes and we reviewed which ones she could do that we had the ingredients for.  Thursday morning, she went straight to the kitchen and started making the bread dough for the Cinnamon Swirl Sweet Bread.  She made two loaves of it and then proceeded to start on some Double Peanut Butter Bars with Cream Cheese Frosting. 

The day was wearing on, but she was determined to make a pie.  Now she has never made a pie before, but I thought that it was as good a time as any for her to learn.  I talked her through making her pie crust from scratch and then she whipped up the ingredients for the Pumpkin Pie, which by the way, we make with fresh squash from the Amish produce.  Its much better than what comes in the can.  She had some pie crust dough left over that she decided to use for decoration and then she was done!  As we packaged up the goodies for the next day, I marveled at what she had accomplished.  This Mama was as pleased as punch with her daughter!  Needless to say, her baked goods brought in a good amount and we were more than happy to put it into her savings account, which was a nice surprise for her.