Friendship and encouragement

These have been a good couple of days.

My friend, Ellen, sent  me the starter for Herman the German friendship cake. This is a sour dough cake and amazingly, is currently happily bubbling in my kitchen. It has sparked some discussion about from where the yeast appears and spontaneous generation, or rather lack of spontaneous generation.
The idea is that the cake matures and is fed over 10 days. At day 9, the mixture is divided into 4. One portion is cooked and the others can be given to friends as a starter for another round of the cake.

Herman covered in his bowl

The bubbling mixture

If I manage not to kill Herman in the next 8 days, then I shall be looking around for volunteers to take some starter. This is a fascinating cake and might get me working on sourdough bread again.

Today, we went to a Christian home educators' sports day. There were almost 90 children. This was such an encouragement. Sometimes, it is possible to feel quite alone as a home educator. Objectively, there are loads of us, home educators, but sometimes, it seems that almost everyone else has children in school. What does it matter to me that other believers have different guidance,for their children? Nothing but still it was a real encouragement to talk to other Christian home educators and especially those who are further on in the home education journey.

The weather-well, fine for the races then the showers began. I can't say it bothered the children who were busy playing with friends, old and new.