Star Sessions

butter fingers (and trying to stay in the moment)

Dec 14, 2024

I was rolling out dough into logs, just like I did with playdough as a kid. But this time the mixture was made of whole grain flour, unsalted butter, sugar, a few teaspoons of white miso paste and a sprinkling of dark chocolate chips. I wrapped each log in wax paper and twisted the ends like a tootsie roll. After the logs chilled in the refrigerator, l sliced them, brushed each slice with a slick of milk whisked with more miso paste, then baked the little discs until golden around the edges. A salty sweet shortbread of sorts courtesy of Naomi Duguid’s book, The Miracle of Salt.

Just as I rolled out the third log,1 the needle on the record player lifted off the vinyl. It was time to flip Jenn Grant’s Christmas album. Streaming music from my phone doesn’t require flipping. But it does mean more time on the phone, something I’m trying to do less of these days. But I hadn’t thought about the miso butter smudges on my Christmas vinyl collection. How did bakers of holiday past navigate this situation?

I started thinking about my phone use on a recent trip away with two old friends. It was a nurturing trip, the kind where we ate smoothie bowls for breakfast, took yoga classes, played in the surf and read books on the sand. We also shared a cabin. This meant a thoughtful bedtime routine, where the glow of the scroll (a bad habit before bed and when I can’t sleep at night) would have woken my cabinmates. So I put my phone to bed on the other side of the room and fell asleep without it, like the olden days. And as it turns out, when you’re tired from surfing, you don’t wake up at night.

Early in the trip I attended a sound bath, my first. A sound bath is a meditative experience where you are bathed in sounds. The sound-maker sits in the centre of the room while participants lay on their backs, heads closest to the centre and bodies fanned around the instruments like petals on a flower. I stretched out on the floor, rested my head on a cushion and settled my gaze on the branches of a kapok tree outside the window.

When the crowded room quieted, the sounds began: gentle reverberations from singing bowls, chimes, a flute, a voice. Time passed, the branches swayed and my mind drifted along with the sounds. And just as I was about to fall asleep, the trance was broken by a ringing phone, specifically the Nokia ring from the film Love Actually, the one that stands in the way of Laura Linney and her love interest Karl. The phone rang long enough for pearls of sweat to form on our brows, wondering, worrying, if we had turned off our phones? And just when the length of the ring could not get more painful, an automated voice shouted, “Carolyn Calling!” No one claimed the phone, no one turned it off, Carolyn went unanswered and the sound-maker, almost begrudgingly, began again.

I arrived home determined to turn off my phone more often, to let the Carolyns go to voicemail. It’s not Carolyn’s fault. Once I pick up my phone, I forget why I’m there and just dive in. I need boundaries in order to live in the moment.

Later, after the cookie exchange, I made paper stars with my aunt Sandra. A Danish woman taught her how to make them, so she calls them Danish stars.2 We sat at her kitchen table, candles lit, music on, and folded strips of paper. Sandra boiled water and made a pot of tea. I had brought chocolate cookies from the exchange and put them in a little bowl. I folded a strip of paper and twisted it into place. I couldn’t tell you how to make these stars, but sitting there with Sandra, who has made hundreds of them, the rhythm clicked in and I remembered. And when the paper stars began to take shape, I reached for a cookie. Then I picked up my phone to take a picture of this beautiful scene. But I had chocolate on my fingers. You can’t make stars, eat cookies and take pictures at the same time.

So I put my phone away. I sipped tea, ate another cookie, washed my hands, and made more stars.

PS - I will be on CBC Radio’s The Next Chapter today, Saturday December 14th at 3pm AST, discussing holiday cookbooks with Aparita Bhandari and host Antonio Michael Downing. Shout out to Simon Thibault for lending me Mme. Benoit’s long out of print La Nouvelle Encyclopedie de la Cuisine *Edition Deluxe*.

A replay will air on Monday, December 16th at 1pm AST.

You can listen here.

I was baking for an annual cookie exchange. I needed 8 dozen by last Saturday morning, which, I’m realizing, is the reason why I didn’t get this letter finished last week…

If you too would like to make Danish stars, I’ve found this tutorial on Youtube. The tutorial uses printed, coloured paper, and doesn’t supply dimensions. Sandra recommends beginning with 1/2in wide strips of white paper cut from the long side of legal paper (8 1/2 x14in, a little longer than A4). The length of the paper strips isn’t crucial, you do end up trimming the stars, but you want lots of paper to work with so it doesn’t feel constricted and fiddly.