I won’t go into details, but I can’t really leave the house today. Tomorrow was going to be a baking day, because we have a band concert and a marching band event coming up this week that I promised baked goods for (yes, I know that was bad sentence construction. . .). Well, since I’m going to have to put off ’til tomorrow what I can’t do today, I’m baking.

I’m almost done with the white chocolate chip macadamia cookies, and the regular chocolate chip cookies will follow. I was going to just bring those to both functions, but then it occurred to me. . .Saturday is a Saint Patrick’s Day dinner, and I have a killer Irish Soda Bread recipe!

I’ll have to make it either later tonight, or tomorrow depending on whether I can leave the house later, because two double batches of cookies have put a serious dent in my supply of flour, butter, and sugar. It’s OK, though. I can also pick up aluminum pans and bake several soda breads at once. Both cookies and breads freeze well, which is a good thing since I won’t be able to do anything Thursday, Friday, or Saturday morning.

Now, I just want to squeeze this one little thing in. . .I love baking in an electric oven. I never thought I’d feel that way, but after all the years of throwing burned things away when I had gas ovens, it’s wonderful to know that there’ll be almost no difference between the stuff baked on the top rack and the stuff baked on the bottom one. I think I’d still rather have a gas stove, but only for cooking, not cleaning. I have one of those ceramic cooktops, and I had to get all new pots and pans that would work with it. It’s more consistent than an electric coil, but it takes a long time to cool down. Ah, but cleaning it. . .whenever I get irritated about it being electric, I just try to remember having to disassemble a gas stove to clean it, and the hours it took to get all the gunk out because I was the first one to think about what might be under there. . .

You know what else I love? Cookie scoops. I have five or six different sizes, and I use them for cookies, muffins, cupcakes, even ravioli and samosa fillings. And my KitchenAid stand mixer, I’ve loved that for years, even when I have to hammer the hinge pin back in. And commercial bakeware that doesn’t have that stupid nonstick surface that sticks to the food but not the metal. Yeah, I need more of that stuff.