May 9th

Ellen and I decided to bake today; things did not really go according to plan. We tried to make beer bread. The bread did not rise. We cooked it anyways. It was quite dense. Each slice weighed as much as a small child. We ate it anyways. Then we tried to bake a cobbler with canned apricots and pears. Someone may have put baking soda instead of baking powder into the dough (that person shall remain nameless). We were also missing some key ingredients such as eggs, butter, and milk so we switched water for milk, soy bean oil for butter, and extra sugar for eggs. And yes I do know that sugar is not a substitute for eggs, but we were hoping that if it was sweet enough we would not care. I don’t think all the wishing, hoping, or praying in the world could have saved this cobbler, but we ate it anyways.

Trying to restore a sense of accomplishment Ellen and I decided to do something productive that we knew we could not screw up; we limed her walls. This involves taking lime (not the citrus fruit) and mixing it with water then taking a cloth and rubbing it on her walls. It is slow, messy, mildly caustic to your skin and a few spiders may have lost their lives, but now a larger portion of Ellen’s hut has white walls.