A Sign of the Times

Recently a cookfriend shared something with me which I found startling. She is a veteran teacher, 37 years to her credit. At the start of this school year, she asked middle schoolers to raise their hands if they had ever licked the beaters from their mother's cake  baking. Out of 71 students over the course of the day, the responders were 3. And all 3 of them had licked beaters of GRANDMOTHER'S baking, not from mom. This touches me deeply on so many levels that I am nearly without words to type. It makes me so very sad for those students and their entire generation because so much love has surrounded my baking and probably yours, too, if you are a blog follower here. Cooking is therapy for me and also an avenue to demonstrate love. So what am I going to do? Bake a cake - even trying a new recipe from my favorite Cake Mix Doctor... Susan's Lemon Cake... at the recommendation of my bestie from sixth grade whose large family gave it a big thumbs up. Maybe we should start a grass roots movement for a Lick-A-Beater Day.