i did it !!!
march 1, 2011
Salaam Dear Ones,
Well, I did it! I'd been thinking about it for ten years, and I finally did it! I finished my internship at the bakery yesterday and I left there thinking, "Girl, you did it." What a nice feeling to finally do something I'd been wanting to do for so long. As I was getting my papers in order to come here, I found a letter that I had written ten years ago to the "Tortenking" asking if I could do an apprenticeship with him. My time finally came, and now it's over! Honestly, I was a little worried (though I tried not to focus on it and give it energy) because of the language, and the getting up at 4 am, and not knowing these people...blah blah blah (which is what worries sound like). But I could not have had a better teacher than Andreas, and I thank Murshid for teaching me what it is to be a student, so that I could practice adjusting myself to him in the moment, trying to be available and present for whatever the day's lessons would bring. I feel like I learned so much, and not just about baking. My team was incredible in how they worked together, and the attentiveness and caring that they brought to their workers was extraordinary. It was a whole new paradigm. And the differently abled workers gave me a new sense of what's possible in the work environment. I'm really wondering if there isn't a way to include differenlty abled people in the work we do at home. Maybe hook something up through CCS. Dayempur? Or Sufi Park? The Schoolhouse? I can certainly see it in the bakery now, having just lived it.
It sounds a little silly to say I spent a month learning how to make a loaf of bread, but I did, and I'm attaching a picture of the sourdough bread that we made from scratch. It was absolutely delicious, and Andreas' comment to me was, "If you can do this when you go back, you'll be fine." Alhumdulillah.
I was sad to say goodbye to my little team, and I think they were a little sad as well. We had so much fun working together, had some good talks, and quite a few laughs. As a thank-you, I gave them some Majnun cd's and baked them apple pies. To my surprise, Andreas gave me his own personal cake cutter and pastry wheel. It's this little thingy that cuts perfect squares to whatever size you want. I had admired these tools from the start because they make everything look so neat and perfect. Looking neat and perfect is very German and appeals tremendously to the Swiss in me. Unbeknownst to me, Andreas ordered these tools for me a couple of weeks ago, but the delivery got screwed up, so he just gave me his! At first I protested, because he uses them on a daily basis, and I don't know what he's going to do without them, but he said with any luck the delivery will come this week, and if not, whatever...What a sweetie.
I wasn't going to ask him for his recipes because I had already noticed that the couple of times someone asked for the brownie recipe, he was unwilling to give it out. So I thought, he's just not the kind of person who likes to give out his recipes. Me, I don't care because I figure I didn't exactly invent it anyway. But everybody's different, and I didn't want to ask because I didn't want to put him in the position of having to say no. That is not our adaab. And, besides, he had already showed me the techniques. That's what's important. Recipes are a dime a dozen, it's what you do with them that counts. So I had mulled it over, and let the idea of getting his recipes go.
Not ten minutes before I was leaving for good, he said to me, "What recipes do you want?" I could have fallen over....I kind of backed into my answer. "Well," I said, "I don't need the plunderteig recipe because we don't have the machine to roll it out and it takes too much time to do it by hand, and I don't need the hefeteig recipe because we already make a challah bread and that's working. But I would like the other recipes." Meaning the dozen or more breads that they make! So he sat at his computer and printed out all his recipes in quantities of ten, making it easy to bump the quantity up or down. He even gave me his cake recipes, so get ready. I'm going to be able to make you that Russian walnut cake, and it is delicious!
What a sweet note to end on, and the door is open to ask questions, come back for tweaking, maybe even get Juergen to visit and show us a thing or two. We shall see how we proceed from here. Right now I'm just looking forward to putting into practice the things that I have learned, starting small and building on tiny successes.
I've got today and tomorrow to wrap up loose ends. Thursday morning I leave dark and early. I'm looking so forward to seeing all of you. It's been a blessed and wonderful trip. Hopefully good for the Germs too, not to mention the Swiss. Faize and Paul were here this weekend and they seemed better than ever. Alhum.
See you in five minutes.
Sending all my love,
fattie
Well, I did it! I'd been thinking about it for ten years, and I finally did it! I finished my internship at the bakery yesterday and I left there thinking, "Girl, you did it." What a nice feeling to finally do something I'd been wanting to do for so long. As I was getting my papers in order to come here, I found a letter that I had written ten years ago to the "Tortenking" asking if I could do an apprenticeship with him. My time finally came, and now it's over! Honestly, I was a little worried (though I tried not to focus on it and give it energy) because of the language, and the getting up at 4 am, and not knowing these people...blah blah blah (which is what worries sound like). But I could not have had a better teacher than Andreas, and I thank Murshid for teaching me what it is to be a student, so that I could practice adjusting myself to him in the moment, trying to be available and present for whatever the day's lessons would bring. I feel like I learned so much, and not just about baking. My team was incredible in how they worked together, and the attentiveness and caring that they brought to their workers was extraordinary. It was a whole new paradigm. And the differently abled workers gave me a new sense of what's possible in the work environment. I'm really wondering if there isn't a way to include differenlty abled people in the work we do at home. Maybe hook something up through CCS. Dayempur? Or Sufi Park? The Schoolhouse? I can certainly see it in the bakery now, having just lived it.
It sounds a little silly to say I spent a month learning how to make a loaf of bread, but I did, and I'm attaching a picture of the sourdough bread that we made from scratch. It was absolutely delicious, and Andreas' comment to me was, "If you can do this when you go back, you'll be fine." Alhumdulillah.
I was sad to say goodbye to my little team, and I think they were a little sad as well. We had so much fun working together, had some good talks, and quite a few laughs. As a thank-you, I gave them some Majnun cd's and baked them apple pies. To my surprise, Andreas gave me his own personal cake cutter and pastry wheel. It's this little thingy that cuts perfect squares to whatever size you want. I had admired these tools from the start because they make everything look so neat and perfect. Looking neat and perfect is very German and appeals tremendously to the Swiss in me. Unbeknownst to me, Andreas ordered these tools for me a couple of weeks ago, but the delivery got screwed up, so he just gave me his! At first I protested, because he uses them on a daily basis, and I don't know what he's going to do without them, but he said with any luck the delivery will come this week, and if not, whatever...What a sweetie.
I wasn't going to ask him for his recipes because I had already noticed that the couple of times someone asked for the brownie recipe, he was unwilling to give it out. So I thought, he's just not the kind of person who likes to give out his recipes. Me, I don't care because I figure I didn't exactly invent it anyway. But everybody's different, and I didn't want to ask because I didn't want to put him in the position of having to say no. That is not our adaab. And, besides, he had already showed me the techniques. That's what's important. Recipes are a dime a dozen, it's what you do with them that counts. So I had mulled it over, and let the idea of getting his recipes go.
Not ten minutes before I was leaving for good, he said to me, "What recipes do you want?" I could have fallen over....I kind of backed into my answer. "Well," I said, "I don't need the plunderteig recipe because we don't have the machine to roll it out and it takes too much time to do it by hand, and I don't need the hefeteig recipe because we already make a challah bread and that's working. But I would like the other recipes." Meaning the dozen or more breads that they make! So he sat at his computer and printed out all his recipes in quantities of ten, making it easy to bump the quantity up or down. He even gave me his cake recipes, so get ready. I'm going to be able to make you that Russian walnut cake, and it is delicious!
What a sweet note to end on, and the door is open to ask questions, come back for tweaking, maybe even get Juergen to visit and show us a thing or two. We shall see how we proceed from here. Right now I'm just looking forward to putting into practice the things that I have learned, starting small and building on tiny successes.
I've got today and tomorrow to wrap up loose ends. Thursday morning I leave dark and early. I'm looking so forward to seeing all of you. It's been a blessed and wonderful trip. Hopefully good for the Germs too, not to mention the Swiss. Faize and Paul were here this weekend and they seemed better than ever. Alhum.
See you in five minutes.
Sending all my love,
fattie