I’m not a baker. I pretend for the sake of this blog that I am the best baker ever, but let’s get real. I’m not very good at it.

Despite this fact, I’ve been baking a lot lately. Sugar cookies for two hockey tournaments and a Nutcracker performance, gingerbread cookies and muffins for post-church coffee hour, and of course the twelve (!!) gingerbread houses that aren’t going to make themselves while I write this post. That may not sound like a lot, but I’ll bet I’ve made 10 dozen cookies and 4-5 dozen muffins in the last month. Oh. And I also made this bread.

I have got to clean up the piles in my house. Seriously, I have piles that have been growing since March when we left the house for the floor/kitchen upgrade. I’ve had my summer issue of Sweet Paul now for almost a week and still haven’t turned a page. My priorities are clearly in need of a reshuffle.

In the interest of getting a start on the clutter, I tackled a pile of magazines on Friday night. One of those magazines, the May issue of Martha Stewart Living, had a great article about updating ten basic family recipes. I’ll admit that few of these basics were already in my repertoire but I am willing to update what I didn’t know I needed. Can’t go wrong with kale and farro salad or walnut brownie cookies. So I started updating on Saturday morning with the baked blueberry pancake.