Circle Sourdough and Sweets and The Safety Pin Cafe Spoon, Spice & Herb Shop

 Story and metaphor rise like bread dough ... imagine the potential!

The story growing here on this blog is the metaphoric sour dough making itself real over there in Kaneohe on the Windward-side of O'ahu where fresh-baked bread and sweet goodies are happening in our family --Kawika's and Maleka's-- HOME BAKERY.

Read "ABOUT US" on the new Circle Sourdough and Sweets website, and get the story behind these two delicious photographs of our son Kawika, Maleka Cook his partner and their keiki Carter.

I'm a great believer in medicine story, and the recipe for magic or the magic of a recipe winds itself into a lot of what my writing life is all about. Gina Rae La Cerva writes beautifully about food, recipes and history in her essay "The Life Story of a Recipe," 

"I think of all those bodies full of bacteria, and their genetic recipes migrating from one person to the next. Across the country. The world. Across generations and time. My carnagione, my skin tone, darkens deeply with the summer sun. My wavy hair finds its curl in humid places. I inherited these traits from some Sicilian ancestor, lost to history but alive in my story today."

What I have loved doing by writing story in installments, is to craft a recipe for POTENTIAL, over time. Allowing story to tell me what to add next while paying close attention to the world I imagine being part of. The Safety Pin Cafe (this blog) began as a story with just that sort of attention! 

Another wonderful quote from "The Life Story of a Recipe" is this one

"The pleasure of food allows us to feel the abundance of being alive in this ever-dying world."

This morning I woke early, rested and re-committed to making the adjustments needed to live where we live and be who we are. Tomorrow is Pete's birthday, a really good reason to celebrate the 4th of July. I have a new recipe to try out and I'm excited. Kawika, Maleka and Carter are growing a fantastic new dream where "locally-milled grains meet artisan junk-food" . For the time being, as the new HOME BAKERY gets going, you get to place your order on-line and drove up to their Kaneohe home on O'ahu to pick up your fresh goodies. LUCKY YOU.

I have a story still to finish, and not even I know exactly how that recipe will end.  But as Barry Lopez once said, 

"Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion."