Cooking for Crows?

This week we learned to make bread. Gretchen, whose baking is renowned on the island with her cherry pies being the highlight entry at the annual food auction, had offered to give lessons. After the weather prevented the plane from coming for the week, I figured it was time to take her up on her offer. Rob was gung ho to learn as well. What I didn’t realize until Gretchen arrived to teach her class, was that the recipe actually came from Mary Rankin.

Although I can’t actually remember the first time I stepped food on the island because I’ve been coming to the wharf my whole life, it was my dad’s chance encounter with Mary and her late husband Edward Rankin, that cemented my family’s footprint on this island. Edward and Mary were a bonus set of grandparents growing up. We loved spending time at their big, beautiful home. Mary, a transplant from Massachusetts, with her extravagant accent, was always baking biscuits or supplying us with tasty preserves from her root cellar. Edward was plain and simply a character. My parents would soon buy a piece of land on the northside from the Rankins, where the family cottage has now sat for almost thirty years.

I speak of Mary and Edward often, but I was fortunate enough to introduce Mary and Rob last winter before COVID struck.

Although I love eating, I despise cooking and baking, and I’m very bad at both. It is not an enjoyable experience sharing a kitchen with me. So when we added a piece to the cottage this past summer, we specifically designed a kitchen that would be very friendly for two cooks in an attempt to make the experience more pleasant. It turned out as good as we could have hoped, and is a lovely space to work in. Rob has always complained that I am too independent, refusing to ask for help with anything, but I am trying to get better at teamwork in the kitchen.

Bread baking in our home will be a true test for us because as the several hour long process unfolded, Rob and I took turns taking the lead and I don’t think either one of us could bake a loaf successfully without the other right yet. For good measure, we set aside room in our grocery box this week for a loaf of Ben’s in case our unsupervised attempts are less successful.