howdy with a sweet poppy seed loaf

Uhhh, hi. I mean howdy. It has been a very long time since I tended to this blog. Remember that time I thought I’d have time to blog during my 3-year MFA graduate program? Yea…that didn’t happen at all. And the very few times it did, my posts were photo-based, so I can’t really call that trying.

Over the past two years there certainly has been P  L  E  N  T  Y for me to write about. It would probably be a thrilling read for you all, as a friend of mine paraphrased it life handed me nothing but “wicked buckets of shit” on multiple fronts. Page-turning stuff indeed, but for many reasons I have decided not to write about it here/now. Maybe look for it in my autobiography.

Anyways, I now find myself in the middle of Texas. Which, like Ukraine is somewhere I neeeeeeever thought I’d find myself. But a promising job in my field beckoned and I followed suit…basically. And I also find myself here–as in sitting down to finally write something–because I was looking for this recipe. It was one of my 18 drafted and unpublished posts.  I’ve said for a while that I don’t know where to pick-up with this blog, or if I even should. I admit I’ve also lost passion for writing with everything that’s happened. Not to mention life in the US doesn’t seem quite as blog-worthy as my village days in Ukraine. But I’ve certainly missed writing and I’m so very grateful I took the time to write/document as much as I did throughout my Peace Corps service. I’ve been back for 3 years now and have forgotten much more than I’d like to admit.

I don’t know which direction, if any, this blog will take. But I wanted to say “howdy from Texas” and share my favorite recipe from my mom with you…4 years later. And now I’ll close with a quote from some fine cinema that is Monty Python, “I’m not dead yet”.

 

my mom’s most famous poppy seed bread
adapted for ukraine:
makes 2 loafs

ingredients: 

bread:
3 cups flour
2 ¼ cup sugar
1 ½ tsp baking powder
1 ½ tsp salt
3 eggs
1 ½ cup milk
1 ½ tbs poppy seed
1 cup oil
1 ½ packets (or tsp.) of vanilla sugar
1 tsp almond extract (optional and if you can find it)

glaze: 
¾ cup sugar
½ packet vanilla sugar
½ tsp. almond extract (again only if you have it)
¼ cup orange or lemon juice (or a lil bit of both if you’re feeling crazy)

· mix all of the bread ingredients for 2 minutes. (yea it’s that simple). divide batter into 2 greased and floured 8½ x 4½ loaf pans. bake at 350ºF (175ºC) for 1 hour.

· mix all ingredients for glaze and heat. pour glaze over hot bread. let cool before removing from the pan.

and that’s it! you can freeze one loaf and eat the other, or be super martha stewart by baking and freezing both for ‘just in case you have guests’. just wrap in foil after completely cooled, place in ziplock gallon bag and freeze. take out day before to let thaw.

it’s super easy and i guarantee your ukrainian friends and co-workers will love it. that is if you don’t eat it all yourself. not that i’m speaking from experience…