Umpleby's Bakery & Café

Come by and have lunch with Al today,  Al fresco that is!  Enough snow and ice has melted on the patio to open it up for lunch.  Have a sandwich and catch some rays!

Sometimes I get the opportunity to get away from the bakery and the business.  This weekend was one of those rare times.  Three old school friends of mine  (when I say old school I mean I’ve known them since the second grade in elementary school) went hiking in the white mountains and climbed Mt. Adams.  Here is a pic of the four of us on the top.  That little thing in the background is the Mt. Washington Observatory.  We got lucky and had a beautiful, clear, sunny day.    Today, I’m back in the bakehouse doing some baking.

My family and I have lived in Vermont now for about 14 years and it is finally now that I understand what the locals mean by mud season.   We moved to Tunbridge last summer and so missed last year’s mud season. HOWEVER, this year, I get it.  We live on a 1.5 mile dirt road on the top of a hill and now that the temp is above freezing the snow is melting and going, among other places, on the dirt road.  So I now have first hand experience what happens when dirt road meets snow melt-off.  Mud, mud, mud, mud.   I drive a VW beetle and when the temp is above 34 degrees I have to take the back way to my house as I cannot get up the muddy hill.  I found that out a couple weeks ago when I tried when it was in the 4o’s.  I got half-way up the hill and then the VW could go no further.   The kids got a kick out of that.  We had to back down the hill using gravity on our side until we could turn around and try the back way.

But what does this have to do with baking?   I think I have to make a seasonal mud cake or something in honor of this unique time of year in Vermont known as mud season.  And they’re not kidding! I understand now…….