 |
 |
 |
|
|
The Bread of Life |  |
|
Watch your carbs! Lower your carbs! Eliminate carbs! I even saw a sign the other day that advertised, “Low-carb hearing aids.” No, I’m not kidding. Bread, which is just chock-full of carbohydrates, is essential to life. I know Jesus said that, “Man should not live by bread alone,” but woman could if given a hunk of butter and a jug of wine to go with it. Diet after diet, always starts by cutting down or removing the bread. Around my family, if it weren’t for bread, we would have starved to death long ago. Countless times we would sit down to a special family meal only to see my mother leap from her seat screaming, “I forgot the bread!” Many a time, we would have cold meat, warm salad and curdled milk but the bread would be served on time. My mother makes the best dinner rolls. Homemade, from scratch, the smell and taste are unbelievable. However, there have been many problems involved in the raising process. When making bread, you first mix the ingredients together and then you have to let it rest so that it can rise. The yeast needs a warm, dark place to do its work. It would not be uncommon to enter my parents’ home to see baking pans draped in cloths placed in various sunny positions around the house. When I was dating the man who would become my husband and father to my children, he was unaware of the importance of bread to a meal and was also unaware of my mom’s practice of stashing the rising bread in any sunny place available. So, while he was playing pool with my father, it never occurred to him to watch where he was stepping. Sure enough, his big, ol’ foot planted directly into my mother’s pan of bread. “HE STEPPED IN THE BREAD!” she shrieked, ready to kill him right there and then. My boyfriend was so shocked he just blurted out, “Why in the world would you have bread on the floor?” To which my mother yelled, “Because that’s where the sun is,” as if the boy was simpleminded not to have figured that out on his own. It’s really a wonder they let me marry him after that and to this day, more than 25 years after the incident, they continue to harangue him for his horrendous faux pas. So my sister-in-law to be should have realized that if the dishwasher door was slightly open, she should not lean against it and therefore start the washing cycle. After my husband’s misstep, my mother thought she would hide the rising rolls in the nice and warm dishwasher. No one could step in the bread in there unless they truly put their minds to it. But, when my brother’s wife, in a sincere attempt to help in the kitchen, naively started the dishwasher, she, too, became the target of my mother’s wrath. “WHO STARTED THE DISHWASHER?!!!” she wailed with murder in her eyes. My innocent sister-in-law replied, “Why would the bread be in the dishwasher?” If you think about it, that is truly an intelligent question to ask anyone but my mother took great offense at it. “IT’S IN THE DISHWASHER SO NO ONE WILL STEP IN IT!” she informed all within a five-mile radius. So I’ve eaten squished bread and soapy bread but I didn’t complain either time. I’m not looking for trouble. |
Lynette 2004 All Right Reserved
www.lynetteisfunny.com