![\"Barley](\"\/mar13\/di130303.jpg\")
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Barley legal bread! ^_^<\/em><\/p>\n When I was a child and still had all my taste buds, I did not appreciate bread. My mother was quite good at baking, I have realized that later, but bread was simply not something I wanted to taste. If I could taste the bread, it meant I did not have enough butter and jam \/ sausages \/ egg \/ Norwegian caviar (cod roe paste) \/ baked potatoes \/ fried pork etc on it. As far as I was concerned, bread was simply a necessary foundation on which to heap the food I wanted to taste. My parents did not appreciate this attitude, but there was little they could do: They were glad I was eating at all. I could go all day without eating and suffer no discomfort, and I actually lost weight from first grade to third grade. The only reason why I would eat at all was if there was something I liked. It was not until I was around 16 that I for the first time experienced the gnawing sensation of hunger.<\/p>\n My grandmother would remind me that there were many children in Africa who would have been overjoyed to have the food I did not eat. As far as I was concerned, the children in Africa were welcome to it. Bread without a generous helping of spread was definitely in my “for Africa!” category.<\/p>\n Perhaps I was just stupid or weird. Perhaps bread is calibrated for adult taste buds. Or perhaps even my mother, despite her cooking education, did not have the know-how and the ingredients used in bread these days. In any case, lately I have found some surprisingly tasty breads. My favorites contain less common grains and sunflower seeds. The bread this week is based on barley, although it also contains wheat. I am not allergic to wheat – in fact, my staple food for much of my life has been pasta made from durum wheat. But the barley bread just tastes better. There are a few whole sunflowers on the outside, but the sunflowers inside are all ground up and add their taste to every bite. I still don’t eat it bare, but I like to be able to taste the bread as well as the spread (preferably something with a little salt or fat, although I can’t eat more than a little fat in each meal.)<\/p>\n The other favorite is oat bread with sunflower and pumpkin seeds. This bread is even more “juicy”, and has more seeds in it. A bit too much pumpkin for my taste, otherwise it is close to perfect. I could certainly eat daily bread with something like that in the house. Except, by the time I return from work I am already pretty full. Add a box of yogurt and some soda and water, and I am as full as I can be and not get acid reflux. So days may pass where I eat no bread at all, or only a couple slices at most.<\/p>\n I find it ironic that now, this late in my life, bread tempts me to gluttony. Back when I should have eaten it, I did not want to. Human nature can be so contrary, don’t you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This late in my life, bread tempts me to gluttony. Continue reading