A long, long, long time ago there was a lil' Amish woman who hated her neighbors. So she plotted a way to take over and rule their lives. In a stroke of evil brilliance she created what is now known as "the Amish Friendship Bread" starter: yeast, sugar, flour and milk. She put it in a zip-lock bag (because they used those a long, long, long time ago) and let it ferment. On day 10 she knew her evil concoction was ready, because it smelled like cheap beer and had quadrupled in size. So she carefully put a cup of the starter into 4 more zip-lock bags and set them aside. The lil' Amish woman then added 1 cup of oil, 3 eggs, and a bunch of other stuff to the remaining starter and baked it into friendly little loaves of cinnamony bread. She rubbed her evil hands together and set out to get revenge on the snotty Amish women who never invited her to community quilting bees. She knocked on their doors and then presented them with a loaf of fresh baked bread, a zip-lock bag of starter, and a huge smile. The recipients were all elated...until they realized that their bag of starter would quadruple in size, creating 4 new starters and 10 loaves of bread...then those 4 multiplied and created 16 starters and 40 loaves of bread. The lil' Amish woman sat in her house and cackled her ass off as she watched the yeasty "friendship" starters go from 4 to 16 to 64 to 256 in a matter of weeks. The women of the community became enslaved by gynormous quantity of starter. And the lil' Amish woman lived happily ever after.
Well I'm pretty sure the Amish eventually had so much starter they didn't know what to do with it, so they decided to do as the first lil' Amish woman had done, and to seek revenge. ONly they targeted materialistic white folk like myself.
When one first receives a starter you think it's the quaintest lil' thing you've ever received. But then it multiplies like unsupervised rabbits and pretty soon you are standing in a kitchen with 4 other women baking a million loaves of bread while the starter continues to take over the kitchen.
And that is how I spent my Saturday.
Now here's my favorite part:
We did all of this baking at a Lutheran Church. When it comes to church kitchens, they are the true culinary church. And I guess they also think they beat out their Mormon comrades in the Jello world as well. Mormons are notorious for inventive Jello recipes...but the Lutherans have JELLO POWER!
(anyone have tips on how to fatten up my skeleton hands? They're grossing me out)
I have no idea what Jello Power is but it sounds pretty damn amazing. And when you sing "Jello Power" to the same tune as "Trojan Man" it becomes an all out war cry worthy of a "Utah vs. The Lutheran's jello jamboree".
