Lauren's Bread Circus

It's super nice spring weather out here again today. Thank goodness! All the snow from last week is melted and little violet crocus flowers are blooming in peoples' yards. Marco and I took a walk around town. It was warm and there were lots of birds chirping. There were also lots of people out on their front porches, many starting up their barbecues. There was even someone practicing classical violin on their porch. Earlier we went to an arts & crafts fair downtown with my Mom and walking back up the hill we saw a crow trying to chase a hawk in the sky. It kept diving at the hawk and circling but the hawk didn't really seem to care.

Yesterday was a big event for my friend Lauren. He is a baker, trying to revive baking for a younger, more food-savvy generation. He came up with an idea a year ago to create an event to try to pull together the baking community in the Twin Cities. So yesterday was finally the big event. In addition to the presence of many local bakeries and baking exhibitions by a famous baking author, there was also a kids dough-playing area and a baking-related art contest. Since I am an "artist" he asked me to help out with the art contest.

When Marco and I got in the car accident on friday night, we were actually on the way to pick up the baking art from the Rogue Buddha gallery, which belongs to a friend of ours. There were something like eleven artists. The winner that the four of us on the "arts committee" chose was a really fine traditional oil painting of a loaf of bread with a bottle of beer. It was pretty well done. I was surprised to see at the end of the day that the artist was a guy in his twenties, pretty hip and young looking, because the technique in the painting was really refined and I pictured an old man with lots of experience doing it.

Lauren's event got great crowds and he seemed pleased and satisfied. Way to go Lauren! I know he put a ton of work into this. I'm happy it paid off.