Flour, water, salt, yeast, and maybe olive oil

I am deeply in love with Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Here's why:

I made bread for Squidlet's school potluck/fall program, even after working til 3 pm:


And then, last night, Alan and I had a hankering for pizza-esque thingies, so I happened to have some olive oil dough prepped, and here's what happened:





And these little puffy bready things are TASTY all by themselves (I'm sure it varies depending on the flavor of olive oil used--I happened to have some really good stuff around). Then we added some roasted garlic olive oil, diced grilled lamb, wilted chard, goats' cheese, and roasted red peppers for this:

And then, after Squid and the Huz chowed through one of these each, we experimented with a tomato chutney and some sardines for this:


So other than the fact that I'm a rotten photog, I hope you get the gist. And if you've ever been afeared of baking bread, it's not so bad.

Are You Washed in the Blood of the Lamb?

Ok, today's question is: why does gospel music make me so happy? I am pretty decidedly not a Christian. And it is, to date, largely Christian gospel music that makes me happy. (Are other religions'/spiritual beliefs' music called gospel? Or is it just religious music?) Some of the lyrics are particularly gruesome. "By the marks where the nails went in, I will know my saviour" for example. Shudder! And yet I wander around the house singing it all merrily, even perhaps while washing the lamb of the blood before sticking a big hunk of it on a spit to roast. Ah, mystery. Maybe it's all that protestant angst finally released, it's the kind of joy I feel when a jack in the box finally pops up! NOW! FREE!

These last two weeks or so as well we've been witnessing Baby's First Existential Crisis (TM), for which I've yet to find a cutesy frame or scrapbook template. Lane's been dancing around the edges of understanding death and dying in kind of general, out-there-ness ways for a while now, and I guess we knew it was coming, but the night when we had to hold him for hours while he screamed and cried "I don't want to die! I don't want to DIIE, Mommy!" was fairly harrowing. Any tips on handling this would be greatly appreciated. I don't want to lie to him, and I think I begin to see the beginnings of religion: it's how we made mortality bearable to our young.