Bittersweettoast

I love to bake. For the past five months I have stared at a card that my sister sent me for Valentine's Day to remind me of the benefits of being a good baker. Six words send a powerful message: I am hot & I can bake. Yes, indeed. But good bakers can get into ruts, baking the same old stand-bys, the tried and true they know will delight. And this is the unfortunate state I have been in for way too long. I'm a sucker for cookbooks, and the more stunning the pictures, the more likely it is to lure me in. Next to my sister's card is a cookbook she sent me for Christmas with recipes from the Miette Bakery in San Francisco. The cover is stunningly beautiful as you will see in a moment. Upon opening this gift, I instantly began imagining the spectacular cakes I would bake. Difficult recipes, unusual ingredients and supplies be damned. I knew that someday I would re-create that beautiful cover picture and write all about it in my blog, wowing my readers with my baking know-

The solstice nears. I know this mostly due to my sleepless state, which is caused by our 16-hour long days. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, but it would be nice to sleep in past 5:15 each morning. Unfortunately, our local flock of birds makes that extremely difficult, and so I persist through my mind's foggy state. Nevertheless, I love summer. As a teacher, my battery is drained and in need of recharging. As a Northwesterner, my body seeks to replenish its store of vitamin D. And as a working parent whose life is just a little too busy, I relish the slower pace of life that summer brings. It's difficult for me to welcome summer and not think about Aloha Hive, the camp in Vermont where I spent two summers as a young girl. This was a camp that my mom went to for eight summers and my sister for two. I knew I was destined to follow in their footsteps, but the timing came a little sooner than expected. When I was just 7 years old, my mom needed to have a triple b