Four Sticks of Butter

 Inventory of my (teachable) skills:

• Cooking. My "specialities" are as follows:
• crepes
• my Grandma Rhea's eclairs
• cinnamon rolls
• brioche
• soft pretzels
• apple pie
• roasted chicken
• homemade almond roca (it is DIVINE)
• french bread
• scalloped potatoes
• I think it's obvious that I like to cook...
• playing the piano
• cleaning (apparently my mom thinks so...)
• organizing
• all types of shopping (that has to be a skill, right?)

To return the favor of my sister teaching me how to crochet, I offered to teach her how to make a yeast bread. Cinnamon rolls to be exact.  She is a wife now and should therefore be domesticated (I kid, I kid). And how could that kind of offer be turned down?

I started the cinnamon roll tutorial by teaching Megan the difference between “normal” bread (flour, water, yeast, a bit of sugar, and a little bit of oil) and the sainted BRIOCHE bread. It’s pretty much fattening bread. It’s chocked full with eggs and butter- which can only help matters in my mind. It’s super dense and much more flavorful than that squish-able bread some of our mothers stuffed with fake lunch meat and kraft singles (gross…). Anyways. From there, I explained to Megan how to evenly roll out the dough. We then got our hands dirty and spread a whole stick of butter onto the dough, in addition to brown sugar and cinnamon. Now for the hard part… putting the “roll” in cinnamon roll. After the much needed second rise, a little bit more butter (we were baking Paula Deen style), and forty minutes at 350°, we were set. Dolloped with homemade cream-cheese-cinnamon-spiked frosting, we were getting excited.

Surprisingly, Megan (unlike myself and crocheting) handled the cinnamon roll making quite well. Except for the shock of how much butter was included in total. Megan was able to see my passion for cooking and food firsthand- a love of mine that sprouted even more when I moved to Arkansas—which she wasn’t there for. Megan and I differ on many things—which has caused rifts in our relationship—but by setting aside differing opinions and just learning about our passions from each other, we were able to have an enjoyable night of crocheting and cinnamon roll making/eating rather than one full of disagreement.