Bread Wars

I made a huge mistake this week I ran out of white bread.  Instead all I had in the freezer was an assortment of ‘seaweed and snot’ varieties of bread, such as quinoa and red chia seeds, sunflower seeds with added LSA (I don’t know what that is, but sounds healthy) and gluten free pureed vegetable bread.

I buy these fancy breads thinking it will be good for me, and my children.  However the kids won’t touch any of them with a 10 foot barge pole.

‘I hate the seeds’ says one of them. ‘It’s crunchy’ says another. Despite all my very best intentions to fill them with grainy goodness and some much needed fibre, they would rather slather their own hand with butter and vegemite and lick it off than eat the ‘birdseed’ bread.

I can sympathise with my boys though, those grains and seeds end up everywhere once you open the packet. Not only do they get stuck in your teeth and at the back of your throat, they usually add a big texture change to the end product in the toilet bowl if you know what I mean! Funny, you’d think little boys would love something that added character to their poo…..go figure!

But I find myself in a battle of the bread wars, as white bread makes be bloat so much I look like I’m ready to give birth and gives my husband the green apple scours.  It ain’t pretty.

Anyway I ran out of white bread so the only thing I could do for the school lunches was to tackle the only thing resembling ‘white’ bread I had in the house; the gluten free variety.  It still looked reasonably ‘white-bread-ish’, so I thought I was onto a winner. If you have never tried gluten free bread before, it is delicious when toasted, however comes out of the freezer like a solid brick.

I removed it from the packaging and started using my tuck shop lady arms to pull the pieces apart, no cigar.  I tried to warm it up in the ding oven for a minute, but then the outside of the bread was hot, and it was still frozen in the middle.

I left the loaf on the kitchen bench (ie. gave up) for 30 minutes before realising school was starting soon, and I can’t send them with just a muesli bar and poppa. And dang it, it wasn’t tuck shop day.

Out came the huge mumma bread knife and I meant business. The knife got stuck. Think about King Arthur trying to remove the sword from the stone, albeit ungracefully, and you get the picture. So I turned to more dangerous measures. I got another knife and inserted it into another slice (yes two knives in one piss ant loaf of bread) and tried to ‘pry’ the loaf apart.  It was about this time that I was cursing myself for not having the super-mum foresight to pre-purchase multiple loaves of white bread, considering throwing the bread across the kitchen in an effort to smash it apart, and racking my brain for an acceptable substitute to fill my boy’s lunchboxes.

What a sight I must’ve been when hubby walked in; a fully grown woman beaten by a piddly lump of bread (sans gluten to add salt to the wound). Thinking I would do myself a nasty, and probably accurately so, he took control of the situation, broke off four slices of bread in two seconds with his ‘manly guns’ and walked away with a wink. And I’m pretty sure the boys threw their sandwiches away at school, judging by how ravenous they were on their return home.

Gluten free bread 1, Jody 0. Hippy bread, you win this round. I’m off to buy an electric bread knife…..or a chainsaw.