On June ninth I woke to the sound of an acetaminophen bottle hitting the dryer and found a large black snake on the laundry room shelf. At eye level. Moments later it dropped to the floor to hide beneath the washing machine. This led to an unwholesome rodeo, with Bob wiggling-walking the dryer away from the wall, then loudly smacking the washer.

Frozen and barely awake I stood by, clutching a bath towel and later, a broom. “Put on your shoes!” I cried, slipping into my Teva flats. Bob ignored the shoe cue and kept banging until the snake came out and then we herded it out the back door. We don’t know how it got in or if it’s come back, nor do we know how many snakes there might be inside our house right now.

I immediately noticed an uptick in nightmares. Bad people doing bad things, with me trying to defend myself and others from murder, rape, and dismemberment. Yes, my Catholic upbringing—all those martyred saints—has proven fertile ground for night sweats.

A week later Tami saw a sizeable Black Bear ahead while riding her bike a couple of miles from our house. She moved to the other side of the road and once she saw that the bear was more interested in eating leaves than chasing her, she pedaled like hell.

So now I am hypersensitive to night sounds, and also self-soothing with sugar which does nothing good for my sleep patterns. I know I’m overreacting, but hey, try telling that to my sympathetic nervous system.

The other night I was awakened by something scratching or bumping against the wall behind my head, and with my high-alert synapses firing away, I nudged my hero and woke him up. Unperturbed, he jiggled the mattress to recreate the sound I thought I’d heard, and then he got up and pulled the bed away from the wall. Nevertheless, I lay there for another hour before falling back to sleep.

When I woke to morning light—arms at my side, stiff as a corpse—I heard something moving underneath the dresser. My mouth was so dry I couldn’t muster enough spit to talk so I got up and got a drink of water before crawling back under the sheet next to my unflappable husband.

Bob has been all patience and fortitude throughout all this snake business. He always comes up with a plan and has not teased me once for waking him up or wimping out. He hasn’t even said, “I don’t know what’s come over you,” even though he must be thinking it. I surely am. All my life, I’ve been unafraid, good in a crisis, always ready to chase down dogs, wasps, and cockroaches. Then suddenly I turn seventy, find a five-foot snake where it’s not supposed to be, and I’m all a-puddle.

After hearing Tami’s story, I asked Bob to set the trail camera up near the compost pile in case a bear shows up to gnaw corn cobs and cantaloupe skin with the possums. But the notion of a bear in our yard doesn’t concern me nearly as much as a snake in our bed.

As I lick the last pretzel crumb and set down my empty mug, a black vulture lands on the lawn between the persimmons. I watch the mockingbird chase it out to the ditch. You badass, I think, and wander towards the road to see if there’s a carcass I need to move before getting out the pitchfork and the wheelbarrow.

Beets, a two-for-one crop, are one of our top five veggies. We love their tender greens, as sweet as spinach, and we pickle the earthy root for eating on green salads or with Cole slaw.

We have never found ourselves with more beets than we could handle. If we have more than enough to pickle, we eat them, steamed beside noodles smothered in a creamy Hungarian sauce. And if we still have beets after that, we make Chocolate Beet Cake.

We planted these Danvers carrots at the end of August and they have sized up nicely just in time to brighten our dark months. They seem sweeter than our summer carrots, have a crisp and tender snap, and are translucent when held up to the sun.

These leeks, started under lights nearly a year ago, have saved many a meal. We reduced our shopping trips after the pandemic swooped in last March, causing us to run short of onions between shopping trips. No need to panic, I tell myself as I unlatch the garden gate, I will find a big, fat leek, and I always do.

As I covered the fallow beds in fallen oak leaves, I realized that 50% of the garden is currently in play with winter crops.

Collards are winter garden royalty. We planted two plots three months apart. The summer pests are gone and the leaf mulch keeps them clean, which makes them the ideal pick-and-cook food.

I started these perennial Purple Italian Artichokes from seed in January, 2020 after after enjoying a pre-pandemic, kitchen-counter seed exchange with Whitney. Bob dug holes in the lawn and we planted them along the front yard fence. We saw their leaves shrivel in the summer heat and are watching their resurgence with high hopes.

I enjoyed many an artichoke during my childhood, unlike others I have queried and discovered have a tepid relationship with the thorny vegetable. Artichokes are a coveted reminder of my Nana’s Sunday table, something I rarely purchase because of their price. How special I felt then — aligned with the jovial adults, my brothers, and my cousins — all of us dipping succulent leaves into drawn butter on our way to the coveted heart.

Our friend Link may have given us this comfrey when we first moved in eleven years ago. Admittedly, we don’t do much with it but we could cut the nutrient-rich leaves and use them for mulch.

We like comfrey’s bell-shaped summer flowers, the plant is very happy growing at the far end of the pool, and if we ever need to make a poultice, we know where to go.

These are fava beans and this is the first year we will grow them. They don’t mind cold weather so we decided to plant in the fall and harvest in the spring.  They’ll come out before the bugs catch on, and we’ll plant tomatoes and tomatillos in their wake.

We’ve got three totes of garlic, planted mid-September, which we’ll harvest in May and follow with peanuts or edamame.

The kale we planted from seed is catching on slowly, but as the days lengthen they should gain ground and eventually take over after we’ve exhausted the collards.

Spinach, also planted from seed and slow to rise and shine.

I am not a fan of winter and I have proven that I am just fine with the endless summer of tropical living. I am not one of those who yearns for sweater weather or who would miss the seasons.

So, I am glad we don’t live any further north than we do. The dead of winter doesn’t feel as terminal when there are crops in the garden. Add seed catalogs and a sunny window, and it seems that summer will be here in no time.

Later, I eye the sky on my way to the woods with a load of okra roots, hoping to get the tomato plants out and the lettuce starts in before those grey clouds let loose.

I picked eight and a half pounds of peppers the other day: heart-shaped pimentos, green shishitos, fat yellow bells, sleek Corno di Toros. Bob dug up ten pounds of sweet potatoes. There are about forty more pounds in the ground. We have not started harvesting ginger or peanuts, but we brought in sixteen pounds of edamame and eighteen pounds of winter squash.

Meanwhile, lab technicians are working around the clock to develop a Coronavirus vaccine, spurred on by $2 billion in government funding. Polling suggests between 50% and 75% of Americans will decline to take the vaccine when it comes out even though we are approaching 220,000 deaths. NC State University opened, then closed several weeks later.

The country is paralyzed by a nasty case of pre-election polarization. Many of us long for sane leadership while many believe they have found it. Some think the virus is an over-hyped construct. Others are out of work and mourning their dead. I feel like the American population has devolved into a cafeteria of plate-hurling youngsters, no authority in sight, medics removing the wounded on gurneys.

I spent much of September watching the hummingbirds fight over sugar water. What a waste of energy, I thought. They wouldn’t behave that way if they were herd animals. I closed my eyes and imagined zebras head-butting, rearing, and kicking over each tuft of dry grass. Maybe the zebras would fight if it were one central tuft rather than an endless savannah. I remembered how hard the horses fought over their grain, remembered how it felt to blunder into the lethal pistons of a red gelding’s shod hind feet at feeding time, and wake later on my back in the pasture, confused and alone.

Some mornings I lay in bed wishing humans were more like zebras than hummingbirds. I wonder if we are hard-wired to fight over resources or if we have out-populated our savannah. Did Stone Age tribes fight over tubers and carrion? Was aggression rewarded by obesity and power? I think about Polynesian royalty parading their calories, lording it over thin slaves and commoners, and I have my answer.

Survival of the fittest is a euphemism for greed. If I can rob you of calories, goods, and services, I should and I will. All the religion in the world isn’t going to fix our dark nature. This is why we need laws. And no one is above the law.

The drums are roaring now, difficult to ignore. I hear a newscaster say, “with 24 days to the election,” and it makes me swallow the wrong way. Turning off the radio, I try to concentrate on the Sweet Jemisons on my bamboo cutting board.

It seems silly to be racing the weather to plant more food when we’ve harvested so much, and when our future seems so uncertain. But I can’t stop. I have already planted garlic, carrots, collards, beets, and spinach, and now lettuce. The fava beans will be the last to go in. This is my way of carrying on. It’s a good distraction. I bury myself in peppers, sharpening my knives, and wait for the rain to water in the lettuce.

I often visit the mix of Rhode Island Reds and golden Polish hens at Judy, Helen, and Ted’s and return home with eggs. The other day I brought home a dozen from my friend Shaine, who took me for a tour of her evolving chicken pen: a roofed shelter so tall I didn’t even come close to having to stoop.

Shelley, too, has re-populated her chicken pen in this time of hunkered-down food insecurity. It’s a smart move, given rising egg prices and a reluctance to mask up and wander the grocery aisles in search of protein.

So, when Shelley’s mornings yield to the demands of a new school year, I suggest we replace our weekly cool-of-the-day walk with some afternoon Chicken TV. Amy joins us, and I bring a bowl of shishito peppers fried in sesame oil and seasoned with tamari.

Amy had brought her lunch, so when she’d eaten as many peppers as possible she tossed one to the roving rogue hen who ate it outside the pen in full view of her envious audience.

Laughing, we threw the rest of the peppers into the pen, inciting a flurry of activity: a race to the finish with the birds gulping down peppers in one bite before picking up another and running off with it.

After things settled down, we dabbed our eyes and resumed our quiet conversation, insulated from the workings of the outer world, tuned in only to the scratch and peck beneath the rustle of Shelley’s backyard shade trees.

Like many, Shelley has been sidelined by the virus. Her grade school music students sent home, private lessons suspended, and the classes at Joy of Movement on hiatus. Yet her protein quotient remains stable, and chickens are a great way to bridge that gap.

For a long time, her coop stayed empty. She’d had chickens in previous years — big laying hens and roosters she’d gotten as chicks — but like most backyard flocks they came and they went. When that happens a couple of years in a row, it sorta takes the wind out of your sails.

There is no need for a rooster if all you want is eggs, and especially if you value quiet. Hens lay eggs with regularity whether they have been fertilized or not. Some find the idea of consuming a little embryo a little hard to stomach.

Others insist the roosters provide essential protection, but I have seen some very scrappy hens as well as timid cocks. But Shelley wasn’t taking sides in any of these arguments and so she ended up with two impressive roosters a couple of years ago.

I enjoyed my role as the chicken aunt in those days. When Shelley was out of town, I crawled through the hen house door and gave the water and feed dispensers a good shake. The birds were friendly and unafraid and sometimes touched my hands with inquisitive pecks. I peeked in the nesting boxes and harvested the eggs. “Keep as many as you want,” Shelley said, and I did, putting the rest in her refrigerator for her to eat and give away.

Shelley’s tuxedo cat, Lucy, kept me company. It has been a long time since I had either livestock or pets and I reveled in the purposeful routine of animal care.

Shelley’s boyfriend Eric had been house sitting when those birds perished. Every last one shredded by what must have been a fox. Mercifully, he was able to remove the carnage before her return, but the episode stunned Shelley and she went a long time without birding back up.

A couple of months ago, when Eric saw a shipment of chicks arrive at the Pittsboro Post Office, he seized the moment and put a reserve on half a dozen pullets.

Covid-19 has put so many out of work and turned grocery shopping into such an ordeal, that chickens have become quite trendy. Our two local feed stores can barely meet demand. The chicks come in and fly out the door. Eric was not taking any chances. If she didn’t want them, he could rescind the hold.

Eric enjoys tinkering with cars and homesteading infrastructure. For example, he turned this blue barrel into a lettuce planter for Shelley’s birthday last year.

But of course, Shelley did want the chicks. She already had the setup and even a little feed leftover. Plus, she was home where she could keep an eye on them. And now she had a rooster to help fend off the predators.

“Look at this comb, and these wattles. I’ve been wondering why they were growing so fast, and now I think I know.” She cradles her little guy and beams. “They’re supposed to all be hens, but this breed is hard to sex.”

Shelley puts the little black cockerel back and reaches for a Barred Rock pullet. It’s obvious she is smitten with the backyard chicken bug and they seem to enjoy being fussed over.

It’ll be a couple of months until her babies begin laying, but she’ll still be ahead of the game. With store-bought eggs approaching $5 a dozen, she will have a steady supply for only $1.50 a dozen.

The virus is not done with us yet and nobody knows what will happen when the weather gets cold and forces us inside. Best to be as self-sufficient as possible.

I picture five strangers in a floating prison with four gallons of water and three weeks of rations, stonily regarding the infinite, blue seascape. Conversation long ago exhausted, their eyes shift from the tarp covering their meager supply to the deepening lines in each other’s faces, and back to the sea of undrinkable water.

My browser feeds me news of asymptomatic ballplayers and senators testing positive for Covid-19 while the untested hoi polloi hover in limbo, staring at their kitchen cupboards. A family in Freehold, New Jersey, my childhood stomping grounds, is paying the ultimate price for honoring their Sunday dinner tradition. The matriarch and three of her eleven children have died, while others wait out their infection.

In the absence of community testing, we assume that we and everyone around us are carrying the virus. All are guilty until proven innocent. And, should we test negative, that status evaporates when we touch the next community-accessible hard surface, or pass downwind from someone with a dry cough.

The only rational response is to distance ourselves. Bob and I bang around our little dingy, embracing each time we cross paths. We’ve shrunk our world to house and yard, meandering from our news feeds to the garden, to the refrigerator. We subscribe to a spring CSA and start planting potatoes.

This morning I wake from a dream where I am hugging an older woman in a red dress, a familiar stranger with whom I’ve formed an instant bond. What I wouldn’t do for a hug from an outsider.

The United States took action too late. Our curve will look like most other countries, a hockey stick of terrible decisions, drastic action, overwhelmed health care, and triage. I click on a satellite image of two limed trenches in an Iranian graveyard, while our hospitals draft guidelines for who to turn away. The governor extends North Carolina school closures to mid-May. Many of our friends are now sidelined from work, while friends and family in healthcare, food service, and delivery scramble to keep up.

As the sun bears down, the water lures you from your rubber seat. The cooling relief quickly turns to panic when you feel the first bump of a fish against your dangling legs. You claw your way back into your life raft and watch the salt crust bloom across your arms. The fins appear, and you try not to lick your lips.

~*~

On the weekends, we break our quarantine for a walk at the dam. We’ve altered our route as more people take advantage of the park. We test the breeze, doing our best to stay upwind of other strollers. Like us, many take calculated risks: the occasional trip to town for supplies, dinner with the folks, or a walk beyond the confines of home.

I’ve given up my Tuesday walk with Shelley and Amy. Instead, we text and talk on the phone. I compensate by walking out our back gate and disappearing down the trail into Tami’s woods. At my destination, I stand on the big rocks and regard Stinking Creek, hoping to see a deer come down to drink, or perhaps another human being. On the way home, I stop and sit on Carl’s bench, beneath that stately beech. Sometimes I lie back, staring up at the beyond, thinking about what I’ll do with those peppers when I get home.

On most mornings, I write in my royal blue Challenge Manuscript Book, number five in a series of six. I filled the first one with stories of daily life in Belize in 1997, writing with the help of a kerosene lamp. Some mornings I download flotsam, dream captures, and mental purges to a small paperback notebook that I bought for a dollar.

Caught between thoughts, my pen in mid-air, I look around the room. Although our mattress and underwear are new, very little else in our bedroom is. The bed tables, dressers, even the towering corn plant are opportunistic finds or rescues. A worn Nepalese carpet lies at the foot of our bed, a gift from Bob’s high school friend, Fran Yarbro. I try in vain to picture the silk threads when they were new. I get down on my knees and count five saber-wielding huntsmen leaning forward on their rearing steeds, nine scrambling forest creatures, and one open-mouthed tiger.

Bob and I walk pad across this carpet many times each day without giving much thought to Fran. Sitting here I take the opportunity to picture them, she and her husband Sergei, sitting across the table from us, wine glasses in hand, animated, so obviously in love. It wasn’t long after that day that they perished on the slopes of Mt. Everest doing what they loved most.

I can almost remember helping Bob assemble our bookshelf many years ago. We bought most of the Kurt Vonnegut novels new, but they are well worn now from repeated readings. Ditto for Daniel Quinn. The other books are thrift store finds and gifts. There is a copy of Dead Eye Dick, signed by the author that Nick Meyers gave us before he died. A few books away from it is a 1956 printing of Rob Roy that Bob’s mother was reading when he was born and which inspired his name. And we have a 1951 copy of Marguerite Henry’s Album of Horses, my name penciled on the flyleaf in loopy grade school sprawl.

Our sheets, line-dried in yesterday’s perfect sun, were also previously owned. I stalk the sheet rack at Pittsboro’s PTA Thrift Store for 100% cotton, Pima or Egyptian. When I discover one with the right degree of softness, I drape it over my arm and walk to the counter and, gushing with pride, and invite the clerk to run her hand over the sturdy fabric.

When I learned that my brother John, and his wife, Darla, were coming to visit, I stripped the guest room bed and hung everything in the sun. And then I made a loaf of bread, the dough so irresistibly plump I could not stop kneading. I harvested okra, figs, cherry tomatoes, squash, and peppers, thinking with each pluck how wonderful it would be to have my family here. About the walks we would take, and about how, together, we would roast chestnuts and make them into soup with sherry, onions, and squash.

Later, after putting the bed back together, I entered the guest room to place a few pieces of dark chocolate on a scuffed night table and noticed how the whole room smelled of crisp fall sunlight and golden breezes.

I don’t think you have to sit still underneath a fig tree for forty-nine days to reach nirvana. I also don’t think you can buy it. Enlightenment, for me at least, is about manifesting my values, and I am fortunate that I can do that. My nirvana is time to think my thoughts, family visits, home-grown food, thrift store scores, heirlooms, treasured books, and line-dried sheets.

My friend Shelley wished someone had informed her that one of her “Grannys” had passed. How unsettling to walk into her nursing home room and find a different face. Although it would be nice if a family reached out to their loved one’s caregivers, I imagine this is low on their priority list when faced with funeral arrangements and estate management. An emailed obituary notice would have given Shelley some warning.

In a similar situation, I was able to help my mother search for a childhood friend. She hadn’t heard from Ann in months and was worried, so I set up an alert and eventually Ann’s story was revealed.

It’s easy to set up an alert. Type your search into Google, and click on the “News” tab. Refine your search to your liking, then scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on “Create alert.”

One of my 2019 goals is to increase comprehension and retention, particularly in regards to current events. I took out a subscription to The New York Times, signed up for some of their newsletter with links to dozens of stories, and began taking their Friday News Quiz. I also get newsletters from the The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, and The New Yorker. I had a lot of catching up to do, but the big picture of world news is finally coming into focus. No more getting left behind in adult conversation.

However, I’m definitely ready for something innocent after immersing myself in the top news stories. This is where my google alert on Pittsboro steps in and provides relief.

Small town news is a refreshing break from deposed cardinals, economic disparity, global warming, nuclear armament, despots, war, and hunger. In fact, I’ll go it one further. I’ll keep the good news flowing with an alert on some of my favorite things, beginning with:

I would love to hear what topics bring a smile to your face. Which news stories make you happy?

Bob set down an armload of wood and inhaled the vapors from the pot hanging over the cook fire.

“I love the smell of beans in the morning!”
“You ain’t smelled nothing yet, Mr. Man.”
“What are the girls up to? We could use a bucket of water.”
“Oh, they’re off playing hide and seek with the chanterelles. Maybe they’ll score a lion’s mane.”
“Speaking of water, turn around.”
“Uh oh. Shit.”

The predicted high water event was creeping up the meadow below our camp, spreading towards us like a disease. We would have to leave and leave now. Twenty yards uphill, I regretted my haste.

“Dang, I should have brought shoes!”
“We aren’t going back.”
“What about the girls?”

Silence. I knew the answer. We had prepared them for this moment and had to trust they would also be heading for higher ground. Still… I stopped and yelled for them, trying out a couple of one-note pitches until I found the loudest one, and repeated it twice more. Wishing I had time to stand and wait for their answer, I ran to catch up with Bob.

We arrived at a large pavilion in the center of town and were greeted by the staff. Two of the first, we chose seats on an old sofa with spotty, blue upholstery. I stretched one foot behind me and folded myself into the heavenly soft cushion, leaning into the warmth of my distracted husband. The place was filling with murmuring refugees. Second tier refugees. We’d already evacuated once.

All had mentally rehearsed this moment, this banding together, this test of our collective mettle. We all knew that our lives would never be the same. Together we would create a new, possibly nomadic reality in conjunction with other roving bands. Big government wasn’t going to save us now.

Bob got up and moved around the room. I yielded my cushy seat to a young family, a little self-conscious in my bare feet and baggy cream-colored flannel nightshirt smothered in frisky ponies, a remnant from our online shopping days. I scanned the room for our kids but didn’t see them. I thought I caught a whiff of vanilla and before I could talk myself out of it, dared to hope for something sugary and fried in fat.

A kindly-faced man cleared his throat and everyone turned toward him. “It’s time to announce the election results.” I dug around my brain and remembered voting months ago for a contingency leader should rising water force us into an apocalypse. “And the winner is, Bob Armantrout!”

No one was surprised. Bob feigned a tired smile. In his heart of hearts, he would rather have dodged this bullet. I beamed, excited for the challenge. I went to his side, hoping to slide in beside him, but the green and yellow webbed lawn chair wouldn’t fit the two of us.

I re-entered consciousness beneath a down comforter in our opulent pre-fab master bedroom and watched my dream melt away in rivulets. I listened for rain but heard none. I was comforted by Bob’s quiet breathing and noticed hints of dawn spilling around the edges of our dun-colored wooden blinds. No tarps, no apocalypse, no exodus; just another easy day in paradise.

I’ve heard Bob say that BLTs are the perfect food so often, that I’ve come to believe it. The health benefits of lettuce and tomatoes are obvious, but news stories about mayonnaise are a pleasant surprise. I remember one about a plane wreck survivor who stayed alive by eating mayonnaise snow cones, and another about Creme Puff, a cat who lived to be 38 on a diet of broccoli, asparagus, bacon, and mayonnaise.

BLTs on sourdough bread bump Bob’s theory into sacred territory. This morning Bob made himself two sandwiches, one on sourdough, and one on the last two slices of ordinary bread. The toasted sourdough made the better sandwich, he said, because it was “more interesting; tangy!”

Bob’s history with the ultimate sandwich goes back to his childhood years in Ghana, when the family cook pampered him with BLTs. We celebrated our first three or four years together with frequent servings of his perfect food. I remember the can of bacon grease beside the stove. I kept it because I’d heard that bacon grease would heal any equine wound, but I don’t recall ever using it on our horses. We’ve since replaced the bacon with tofu, tempeh, and Morningstar Farm bacon strips.

Bread is so fundamental to our diet that we’ve been baking our own since forever. Bob has such a preference for sandwiches, that I’ve nicknamed him “Sandwich Man”. He will find a way to turn nearly any meal into a sandwich. When faced with a bowl of beans and tortillas, he makes burritos. Tofu scramble and toast become “egg” sandwiches. I love the ease of a sandwich, and so we have them for dinner two or three times a week: Cheezsteaks, Sloppy Joes, Grilled Cheez, Cheezburgers, and Rubenz.

We’re especially attracted to sourdough because it tastes so darned good. As an added bonus, its leavening we don’t have to buy. I love the idea that such an essential ingredient makes itself. Sourdough tastes like independence.

More than a flavorful way to rise bread, starters are heirlooms, cherished pets that won’t die until you stop feeding them. Many bakers name their starters. I love that idea, and I’m leaning towards Stinky, or Homer (as in Homer Simpson, “D’oh!”).

It had been at least six years since I baked a loaf of sourdough bread, and I was a little nervous about test driving Linda’s starter. But, with the rich flavor of that BLT lingering in my mouth, I’m happy I plunged in. If we keep eating the perfect food, I may be feeding our new pet for another thirty years. And after that? Well, don’t be surprised if I leave Homer to you in my will!

Here’s my sourdough bread recipe:

Day 1 morning: Feed 50 grams of starter 50 grams each of water and flour.
Day 1 evening: Feed what is now 150 grams of starter with 150 grams each of water and flour. Split off 50 grams and refrigerate until time to feed again in a week. Add 1 tablespoon salt and 1 1/2 cups of water to the remaining starter. Mix well, and add about three cups of flour, enough to make a very wet dough. Let the dough rise in a covered bowl on the counter overnight. Note: you can rise it in the refrigerator for another day or two if you don’t have time to bake the next day, but it will take longer for it to warm up and start rising.

Day 2 morning: Knead another cup or two of flour into the risen dough and let rise until double.
Day 2 afternoon: Knead briefly and put into a proofing bowl until nearly doubled in size
Day 2 evening: Bake at 410 degrees Fahrenheit in a covered Dutch oven for 25 minutes, uncover and bake another 15. Note: make sure the Dutch oven has been heating in the oven since you turned it on. Cool the loaf on a rack. After the bread has cooled, wrap it in plastic to make the crust easier to slice. If you prefer crusty bread, leave it unwrapped.

Day 3 morning: Slice and eat!