I’ve never made Mach Kuchen from scratch this way, by first going into the garden and harvesting poppy seeds. Collecting poppy seeds is so much fun, I’m surprised it’s legal for adults to do it.

Looking at the way poppy seed pods are shaped, somewhere there must an insect that has evolved to live in poppy seed pods. The pods are made of bug-sized chambers with little doors with roofs over the doors, keeping the chambers nice and dry. With the seed pods lifted high above the ground, they’d make great apartments for flying insects to buzz off from in the morning, and return to in the evening.

Mach Kuchen is a simple dish. You start off with poppy seeds, grind them a bit, and make a jam out of them. The usual method is to use sugar, but this time I used honey instead.

You roll out a soft yeast dough into a thin rectangle, spread the poppy seed jam over it, roll it up, let it rise, and bake until it is done. Covering the top with butter and poppy seed is an option.

This may be the first Mach Kuchen made from poppy seed grown in the Skagit Valley. It’s certainly the first one made with poppy seed grown in this neck of the woods. Baking Mach Kuchen may bring good luck. This afternoon, the sky turned a shade of blue, the bluest it has been since the forest fire smoke blew in a week ago.