extraordinarily ordinary

There is nothing more satisfying then leaving the oven light on to watch pita bread steadily puff and brown before your eyes. Unless it's noticing the first tiny sprouts peak up from the seeds you planted five days ago. Today was a good day; it included both. The radishes, lettuce, and peas began to push through the soil, which made me so delighted - so giddy - that when I called a gardener friend to tell her the news she nearly didn't recognize my voice. "I've never heard you so excited," she said.

Then, I decided to try my hand at baking pita bread to accompany our spring-inspired dinner of lemony asparagus and chickpea salad and a bottle of rosé. I recently discovered Bernard Clayton's Complete Book of Breads, a massive Joy of Cooking-esque baking bible that has everything from vollkornbrot to Chinese steamed buns (bao, or "bread with a heart"). I can't get enough of it, which is too bad for the rest of Portland; I've shamefully had it out of the library for the past five weeks.

Last week, we used some of our Square Peg Farm pork chops to make our own version of Char Siu Bao. You know, the steamed buns you get at dim sum restaurants filled with delicious bbq pork? Yes, those are the ones. They happen to be P's favorite, so I felt I was doing him a favor and getting to make yet another of Clayton's breads at the same time. Two birds. One baking stone.

The bao went so well, that I looked to Clayton to help me through another bread I'd never tried. Pita bread is one of those things that seems so mysterious and difficult, and yet in parts of the world thousands of people are making it every day. In that way, I suppose it's a little like gardening for me. I am not known for my green thumb; in fact, I am notorious for letting even the heartiest, lowest-maintenance plants slip away for lack of attention. I have always imagined that, for me, an edible garden would be the same. Millions of people garden - far fewer today than did fifty or a hundred years ago - and yet I was sure I would be the one-in-a-million who would be utterly and completely hopeless when it came to growing food.

I know it was this skepticism surrounding both the pita and the seeded edibles that heightened my excitement when both seemed to be behaving as they should. It's amazing that something so basic can be so thrilling, but I suppose it's not really so surprising given how far we've strayed from knowing how to feed ourselves. Cooking, baking, and growing my own food has made me feel very special and very ordinary at the same time. Each time I take a loaf of bread out of the over, I feel this extraordinary sense of satisfaction at what I have made. Me. And each time, I also feel connected with thousands upon thousands of people that are doing the exact same thing: feeding their families and themselves with their own two hands. It's not so unusual after all, and yet it's still quite extraordinary; we can plant a tiny seed and watch it grow into a garden, we can roll out a lump of dough and watch it puff into dinner.