Whaddayamean, no peanuts???

So Jerry and I flew back to the bay area today. We were so ready to be home. We got up at what was the equivalent of 3 am California time. Knowing there would be no "real" food on the plane, I raided Len and Lisa's refrigerator so I could fix us peanut butter and jelly on bagels.

No sooner are we seated than we hear an announcement that someone on the flight is allergic to peanuts, so anyone who has nut products with them-- you're out of luck. So, we had Doritos munch mix and persevered. We ate our bagels as we waited for our luggage.

This was an interesting trip for me. Interesting is part euphemism, part, I can't think of the word for how I really feel about it, mostly because I feel so differently about different aspects of the trip.

I am now pretty sure I don't want to move back east. I really hate summers there, and on a more difficult note, I'm not really sure I have a home there any more. True, I own a condo in Baltimore, but I'm just not sure the area means to me what, at least in my mind, it has meant for many years.

That being said, there are some people there I truly love and wish I saw more of. But perhaps those stretches of time between seeing people has really changed my relationships with them. I'm going to give this a little more time to percolate, but right now, I'm just not all that sure where home is.

My time baking for 300 hungry Balkan music and dance students and teachers generally went pretty well, though in the heat it felt more tiring this year. At least once I skipped lunch just so I could get horizontal for a while before returning to the kitchen. But most of the desserts were quite successful. No failures, but nothing much new either. And one of the new desserts-- a blueberry cobbler with a biscuit top was far more work than what it yielded, in addition to it not making enough, despite producing 12 hotel pans' worth. If I do go back next year, I'd like to come up with some new desserts that challenge me and delight the recipients.

This year's recipes, as usual, were heavy on chocolate. If people don't get chocolate at least once a day, they threaten to riot. So, I made brownies, blondies with chocolate chips, chocolate espresso cookies, chocolate peanut-butter fudge, chocolate chip cookies and a few other things I'm forgetting. Non-chocolate desserts included my favorite ginger cookies, almond crescents and apple crisp.

My consistent help in the kitchen was Barbara, a camper who volunteers most afternoons for a couple of hours. I've known Barbara since we were kids, so it's fun to talk and also wonderful to have someone who knows what she was doing.

The kitchen was full of kids who come from other places for summer jobs, the majority being from Turkey, with a few from South American and one from Hungary thrown in. They were enthusiastic, hard working, and the Turks and the Hungarian were thrilled to hear music from home.

Now I'm home with a kitty on my lap, and so glad to be here. I'll figure out the future another time.