At a Glance: Sugar-Coated Cake Doughnuts

I was scrolling through my phone this morning, and lo and behold, one year ago I was visiting my mom, and we were testing the last leg of recipes for the cookbook, including this doughnut recipe.  At this point last year I was so close to being done my manuscript I could taste it, and yet had about 20 recipes to go.  A bit of bakers fatigue was setting in, as I suppose it would after going hard for 4 months, testing/baking about 8 recipes a week.  Flash forward to one year later, right here, right now, and I'm so happy to hold my very own copy of All the Sweet Things.  It arrived in my mailbox on Valentine's Day.  Fitting, as I put all of my heart into this project.  To finally hold everything I've worked so hard on, well, it's an indescribable feeling, but something along the lines of joyous and awesome and freaking fantastic comes to mind. 

Befitting: Baked Doughnuts, Two Ways

"I suppose this is what I mean when I say we cannot possibly know what will manifest in our lives. We live and have experiences and leave people we love and get left by them. People we thought would be with us forever aren't and people we didn't know would come into our lives do. Our work here is to keep faith with that, to put it in a box and wait. To trust that someday we will know what it means, so that when the ordinary miraculous is revealed to us we will be there ... grateful for the smallest things."  ~ Cheryl Strayed

That quote really is a kick in the pants, isn't it?  (By the way, if you haven't read any Cheryl Strayed, by all means you have my permission to leave this blog immediately and go get your hands on her books.)  Of course she's right.  And now that I've gotten a year older, ahem, I'm finally starting to understand what she means.  In my late twenties, I would have been:  Whatever.  I'm sad, leave me be.  In my thirties I was almost there, but not quite.  But now that I find myself firmly planted in my forties, I see the wisdom in the leaving and being left behind.  The down-right necessity of faith.  That holding on means just that.  Hold on.  You never know what will manifest in your life.  One day it will all make sense.  Each experience means something.  You'll be grateful for all of the bumps in the road that landed you where you need to be today.  

Difficult Days: Sugar Coated Cake Doughnuts

Maybe you've noticed things have been quiet around here.  I wish I could tell you that I jetted off to Jamaica for a two week stint of sunbathing and drinking.  That would have been nice.  And a helluva lot better than the truth.  The thing is, my handsome man ended our relationship in the early hours of this brand new year.  It came without a great deal of warning, so you can imagine how majorly my little world has been thrown off its axis.  Life is still very raw, very sad, but somehow I'm carrying on through these difficult days.   He was a huge part of my life, and I was convinced that the right man had finally come along.  Turns out some of the best things simply are not meant to be.  Life can be quite beautiful, but it can also be incredibly unfair, dumping terrible circumstances on those who deserve it the least.  The hard part now is picking my heart off the floor and trying to fill the hole the handsome man leaves behind.