I think I would make an absolutely lovely baker. I have always loved bread - not pauroti - bread! Once I made a banana cake in the middle of the night in a strange land filled with snow and I looked across the window into the dark hued sky and a frozen lake somewhere nearby. I remember thinking how strange it felt; to feel so familiar with the oven, with the mug that I measured the milk with, with the friends I shared the cake with. I did not even take a picture of the cake. It just was. And it will just be. There will never be the need to show, or tell.

My mother makes the perfect chocolate brownie but she does not exhaust the knowledge. She forgets the recipe, consults the yellowed photocopy paper, puts a little bit more butter, does not bother whisking the egg whites till it forms a perfect peak, I don't think she knows what aerating means (neither do I); but when she puts that tub of lovely brown concoction into our old oven which might as well be put into the museum of ancient stuff, and when the smell of the chocolate wafts through the pink walls, we both know that the cake is not going to last as long as we would have wanted to. These moments I only share with my mother not because we make a point to. Maybe also not because we both share a love for baking. But perhaps because at home, no one else bothers to enter the room except for my mother and me.

I usually love to be alone in the kitchen. I think my mother loves that too. Even when I am comfortably seated in a corner with my book or sketch pad or phone, she carries along swiftly and the kitchen has to catch up to her. I prefer cooking for myself. Because I think no one else shares the food-thought that I have. I am a picky eater.

I think I would love to bake some peach stuffed, lemon puffs. Doesn't that just sound gorgeous to you, my dear friend?