We have flowers blooming that remind us that the calendar says it is still autumn, but they probably bit the dust last night. Even though I begged the Canadians to shut their windows it appears that the polar vortex has seeped into the south and we're on our third day with highs only in the 40's.

Winter is my least favorite season. I pull out my sweaters and boots when it's 60 degrees. When it dips into the 40's I retreat into the fetal position under an electric blanket and watch Bravo television reality show marathons.

Before you roll your eyes and think how lucky we are to have these relatively mild temperatures...

...in a few days I'm heading to Minnesota. The high there yesterday was in the teens. I couldn't even look at the low temperatures without wondering what my obituary will say.

Moonpie doesn't help when he says things like, "It's not that bad. It's not below zero yet." Then he tells me to go buy some warm clothes. Where? They don't sell clothes down here for those temperatures unless you're shopping for camo at the Bass Pro Shop or Tractor Supply.

Okay...breathe..

I am excited that we get to spend time with family that we rarely see.

It's a positive is that I made myself go ahead and get the Christmas tree up so I won't have that facing me when we get back.

We once loved taking Sunday drives. Moonpie and I would head out with our cameras and no destination. (He called them our "Safaris".) We would just pick a direction out of town, drive until we saw roads with no names (extra points if they were dirt), and stop to snap pictures if we saw something interesting.

Then we stopped doing it. Instead we house-hunted every weekend for a year. Later we moved into a new neighborhood, settled into a new routine, and simply forgot about Sunday afternoon drives with our cameras.

While house hunting we revisited some of our old safari places and found all the trees gone, the roads paved, and none of the old barns in sight. In their places stood brand new subdivisions with nature-sounding names like "Pineview" or "Oakhurst", but they ironically had no trees except the obligatory Bradford pears that had been planted on each lot by a developer's landscaper. (Note: I made those names up so I wouldn't point fingers.)

I hope we will get back into the habit of taking our Sunday drives because somewhere on a back road there is an old barn that is a particularly lovely shade of red. It also has a particularly lovely rusted roof. It is just waiting for someone with a camera to record that it ever existed because chances are it will soon be gone.

I hope that camera gets to be mine.

A long time ago in a far off land before computers, cell phones, and Celiac my friend, Kathy, gave me a loaf of sourdough "friendship" bread, a cup of starter, and typed instructions (typed by a real typewriter) outlining how to feed the starter and make sourdough bread. I still have the original copy even though I'm on my second husband, have moved seven times, and can no longer eat gluten. Looking at that old yellow sheet of paper still brings back the fond memories of my first time actually making the bread. Each time I made it (and fed the starter) I thought about how thankful I was for her sharing it with me.

I was a bit intimidated at first because my usual bread making recipes required adding water and stirring, but I jumped in and was elated (and shocked) when I made the most decadent bread ever. I immediately took a loaf over to my parents' house to show off my newly acquired skills. A few minutes after returning home my phone rang and Daddy said, "I just want you to know that all those years of eating the crap from the Easy Bake Oven has finally paid off." It was evident that this bread was not created by adding water to a mix and cooking it under a light bulb.

For years I made sourdough bread from that original starter, but sadly had to discard it when we moved to another state. Years later life slowed down and I had a huge desire to make that bread again. Unfortunately, no one had any starter to share or knew how to make it. (This was long before I had a computer or the internet and Google hadn't even been invented.) One day I was browsing in our local Waldenbooks (told you it was a long time ago) and came across the book Sister Schubert's Secret Bread Recipes. Inside was a recipe for making a sourdough starter and I noticed the starter's "feeding" instructions were the same as those Kathy had given me years prior. The book came home with me and soon after sourdough was back in my life.

This morning I connected with Kathy on Facebook and we talked about our love of the bread and the frustration of being "starterless". She asked me to share the sourdough starter recipe that I found and I decided to post it here in case others are interested. The instructions sound insanely time consuming and difficult, but it really isn't. Trust me, if I can do it, anyone can do it. .

I'm also including the starter's feeding instructions and Kathy's Friendship Sourdough Bread recipe. (The bread recipe is NOT gluten-free, but the starter is. Who knows? Maybe one day I'll attempt a gluten-free version.) It makes three loaves. Eat one. Freeze one. Share one. Above all else...Enjoy!