B is for Brood

We have three bakeries within a five minute walk from the apartment. Two are Dutch bakeries, which traditional Dutch treats. The newest kid on the block is a French bakery, which has been getting all of the attention for the last six months. Of course people still go to the good Dutch bakery and people somehow buy from the other Dutch bakery, which is closed more often than not. But the new French bakery gets almost all of the business at lunch time. A line out the door every day, seriously.

The part of my brain that is in charge of coming up with analogies for everything is picturing two pretty, but average, American girls. Then a va-va-va-voom French girl comes along and all the boys are focused on her. Sort of sad, but...who can blame them?

Anyway, my second picture in my ABC year of pictures thing is of bread, or brood as they call it in The Netherlands - pronounced "brote." I've never eaten so much bread in my life as since I moved here. When I was a child, my grandmother, may she rest in piece, used to put out slices of white bread - possibly even Wonderbread - with dinner, which I always passed on.

Then, in high school, the mother of my girlfriend Patty (the best girlfriend a future gay guy could have had) would buy rolls and sliced roast beef for us to snack on. (Hi, Cathy! Thanks for the snacks!) That was a totally different bread experience. It was actually good. We would also use mayonnaise. That was when I was introduced to mayonnaise. Before that I thought that Miracle Whip was mayonnaise. Seriously. I'm not even sure my parents knew the difference.

Totally off the subject, but when I was young, I would ask my mother, "Why does your chocolate cake taste different than other people's chocolate cake?"

She would answer, "It doesn't." I asked a few more times during my childhood, then gave up.

Then years later, she said, "That's why my chocolate cake is always moist."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because I use Miracle Whip instead of butter, which makes it stay moist and it gives it an extra zip so it tastes better, too."

My whole life I thought I was "just tasting things" when I bit into her chocolate cake that had a strange zip. It's things like that that make me trust myself and not listen to people who say stuff that I know isn't true. Can't think of a good example right now.

Trust yourself is today's lesson. That and "only eat good bread." Even if you don't have three bakeries in as many blocks. Find good bread. Life's too short to eat to eat crappy bread.