I thought about the kitchen. I wrote about the kitchen. I tried to avoid thinking about the kitchen. And then I went down to the kitchen.

Onyx followed me down, hoping that I would open a can of cat food at 4:20 PM. Not happening. I tell her it isn’t time. I tell her she has to wait. I don’t know how much of this she understands, but after watching me for a few minutes she disappears up the stairs. I turn on the oven for a commercial frozen turkey pot pie for dinner: when I am doing production baking I don’t cook meals — it will be muffins for breakfast, quesadillas or roasted yams or a bagel with peanut butter for lunch and whatever I can find for dinner for the next few days.

I put the glass bowl of molasses, butter and sugar back into the microwave. I just set it in there to get it out of the way while I sift flour. Three and a half cups into a metal bowl that held flour earlier in the day. When I bake more than one thing in a day I reuse cups and bowls without washing them whenever I can: a cup that only contained flour can be used for flour again; a teaspoon that has only measured dry ingredients can be used for more of them, sometimes with a quick wipe with a towel to remove dark-colored coffee or cocoa powder or cloves. I see that I will have to get flour soon, but I have enough to finish this recipe. The half and half I prefer in coffee has gone blinky, but I do not want to go to the health food store tonight — I want to finish this dough. I’ll open a can of evaporated milk tomorrow morning because I will have coffee long before the store is open.

I measure the flour, rescuing spilled flour from the counter and cutting board when I can to make up the last half cup. I have left measuring spoons out, so I measure a teaspoon of soda and eyeball the salt. Then I turn to spices: cinnamon, ginger. The nutmeg is on the counter where I have left it. Hmm. Pie spice. What’s in it? A quick read of the label reveals cinnamon, vanilla sugar, ginger, nutmeg, mace, cloves and fennel? None of those things will hurt the spicy molasses dough. Neither will the white pepper I just bought for pfefferneusse. I measure a scant teaspoon of cinnamon, a generous teaspoon of ginger and a level teaspoon of pie spice and whisk them into the flour mixture. I tap the last flour out of the measuring cups. Then I pour the molasses mixture into the flour and start stirring and folding with a rubber scraper. I scrape the dregs of molasses from a measuring cup and from the Pyrex bowl into the forming dough.

The dough turns a lovely mahogany color and smells spicy. Yum. It is very soft, but it will firm up some from chilling. This is the hardest dough I work with at Christmas (Molasses is like that, especially if you want thin, crisp cookies without excess flour). I will make use of both a chilled marble slab and a silicone mat and will probably do some unChristian swearing the day I roll out the ginger cookies. Into a bag goes the dough, still warm, but destined for the refrigerator.

I am done with doughs for the day. Getting three done is pretty good. I might have done the fourth except for the flour shortage. One result of having a smaller kitchen than my mother had is that I can’t stockpile ten or fifteen pounds of flour and fifteen pounds of sugar — there is nowhere to store them — so I have to shop more frequently. I will get more flour and a carton of eggs tomorrow. I have enough molasses to make another half batch of ginger dough, plenty of brown sugar and a big bottle of vanilla, at least three forms of ginger, pounds of butter in the freezer. I have the ingredients for another batch of cocoa shortbread and for more maple butter cookies.

Since I scraped all of the flour I could into the half cup measuring cup for the ginger dough I am able to run a damp dish cloth over the cutting board and counter to clear the rest. I wipe the flour container and close the sifter into its box. I gather the glass bowl and the metal bowl and the glass measuring cup and put them in my dishpan with detergent and hot water. I wash the pasta bowl to get it out of the way, put a cookbook away. I won’t clean the floor until I am through messing with flour several days hence.

I am thorough about getting all of the ingredients out of mixing bowls and measuring cups, off whisks and scrapers. This is respectful of the ingredients and it also makes the bowls, cups and utensils easier to clean: they are not swimming in molasses and butter or crusted with sugar. When I can no longer get more out of a bowl with an implement I use my index finger and get a lovely taste of a finished dough. Part of me wants to eat spoonfuls of it, but these stolen tastes are enough to assure me that I have made good stuff. I wash my hands thoroughly and frequently and dry them between uses so I can’t really explain the floury fingerprints on the microwave. I wipe them off.

I pop open the can of food that Onyx craves, mash it up and take it upstairs to her. Then I take my pot pie out of the oven. She will get some of that, too, but not until I am done. Onyx comes back down to get me — she wants company while she eats. I turn off the oven, the heat and the lights downstairs and go upstairs where I eat, serve the cat a torn up cube of turkey, and compose this post while listening to rain fall on the roof.

To be continued.