Friendship=Bread

Last night, I for some reason did not want to go home after work. So I called my friend Danielle and went to visit her, and her new husband. Ahh love! It was really good to see them. To be honest I haven't really seen them since their wedding about 6 weeks ago. I felt that it had been enough time that going over there would not intrude on their newlywed time.

While I was there they invited me to stay for dinner. We proceded to make dinner together. This turned into more of an adventure than I had anticipated. My first job was to make a rue for the cheese sauce to go in the macaroni and cheese. I responeded a what?! Huh?!? How do you do that? This questions were directed at Brian as Danielle really didnt know either, her speciality is microwaved salmon (which is really good) and apparently a new tuna dish that I have yet to try, but I know the opportunity is on the horizon. Anyways I proceeded to make the rue. Now this was a new experience for all of us, even though Brian pretened to know what to do, he really didn't. He told me its equl parts of flour and butter and then add milk and cheese. Sounds simple enough. Warning- its not simple! I asked him how much butter and and flour I need to add and he said umm a cup. Warning- this is too much, unless of course you are making cheese sauce for the army then it is perfect. I got the flour out and the butter and I put it all together once the butter got melted, it took a long time but finally the rue was made, it was time to add the milk. Well we added what we thought was sufficent to go along with our paste I mean rue, and sadly it was not enough so we added more milk and more milk and more milk. Then we added cheese and more cheese and more cheese. Finally our cheese sauce was made. It only took 1 cup butter, 1 cup flour, a gallon of milk and 3lbs of cheese. Maybe not that much cheese and milk. Suprisingly it was very delicious. I will put the recipe for it on here in another post.

As I was leaving (this is the part that explains the title of this entry) they gave me Amish Friendship Bread. If you have never had it you are missing out. It is sooo good! Basically the idea is your friend gives you a start and then for ten days you make the bread either by mixing it or adding stuff. The instructions explain it all. Then on the tenth day you make starts for your friends out of your dough and bake 2 loaves of bread. Its a win-win situation. You get some great bread, and your friends get to feel loved and get some bread starter.

I was thinking about this last night and is it really amish. The answer comes to us from the wonderful world of wikipedia.
"The first time "Amish Friendship Bread" was discussed on Usenet was in a posting on February 5, 1990. It was an
experiment by Girl Scout Troop 15, c/o Emilie Manning in Oswego, NY and was posted by Patrick Salsbury. A similar
recipe, named "Hermann" has existed in Germany since the 1980s."
Way to go girl scouts! What a wonderful experiment. I dont think it is really amish because it has jell-o instant pudding. I just cant see them getting out the buggy to go to the grocery store to buy instant pudding. I could be wrong though, stranger things have happened.

However this thought came to me. It takes ten days to make this bread. Everyday you have something that you have to do whether it is a small thing like mixing it together or a big thing like adding flour, sugar, and milk, there is always something to do. It's kind of like a friendship in the fact that in order to have a long lasting, strong friendship it needs to be culitvate and cared for everyday, just like the bread.