When I tell my husband “We don’t need bread with that” you’d think I’d just suggested that his mother was a satan worshipper or that Smallville was being cancelled. Somewhere in his upbringing he was convinced that every meal absolutely must have some sort of bread with it.
In the almost-three years we’ve been together there hasn’t been a single grocery shopping trip that hasn’t included him wanting to raid the bakery aisle for bread. “What for?” I always ask him and his answer is always “I don’t know, dinner?”
Perhaps it’s just a sign of our very different childhoods. When I grew up we had bread with pasta dinners, Thanksgiving, Christmas, sometimes breakfast if it was a weekend and occasionally with other ’special’ dinners. In my mind the only meal that really required bread was lunch, and that’s because it was normally a ham and cheese sandwich.
My husband, on the other hand, must have bene raised in a household where there was toast, a baguette or a basket of rolls at every single meal, no matter what. In his mind a meal, even breakfast, isn’t complete without that honored bread product, lathered in butter, jelly, peanutbutter or honey sitting next to the rest of the food.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m as much of a bread addict as most of the world, however for me it isn’t a deal breaker. If there’s no toast to go with me eggs and bacon, oh well. No skin off my back, it just means I can throw on an extra slice of (turkey) bacon or another egg to offset the missing calories. Unfortunately for my hsuband it means that everything must come to a halt and we’ll just have to grab something greasy and fast-food like on our way to work, because you can’t possible have bacon and eggs without that slice (or three in his case) of buttered toast.
Needless to say there were unhappy noises made this morning when I discovered that our lack of bread, and not lack of eggs or bacon, was why he wasn’t going to make breakfast and I wound up having a breakfast of oatmeal that doesn’t agree with my stomach instead.
I wish I knew some way to get it through his head that we don’t have to eat bread with every meal and if we don’t, it doesn’t mean we’re not eating enough or getting the right ‘nutrition’. In fact, I really need him to realize that skipping that bread once in a while is actually a good thing.
Or I suppose, I could try walking through a solid brick wall – it might be easier.
