What’s For Breakfast? Such an innocent question! NOT!

Me to Hubby: “What would you like for Breakfast this morning?”

Hubby:  “I don’t know, what are my choices?”

Me: “Well it is Sunday, so I could cook something more complicated.”

Hubby: “I don’t know, tell me what the choices are, please.”

Me: “OK, there are eggs and bread so I could make something like French toast. There is yogurt and granola, or I could make hot cereal…”

Hubby:  “I’ll just have raisin toast.”

Me: “That was not one of the options I just listed.”

Hubby:  “Oh, now you are going to be difficult.”

Me: “You obviously WANTED raisin toast, why didn’t you just say so in the first place?”

This is going to go south fast and I have choices.  I can put raisin toast in the toaster oven and walk away. Or I can continue the conversation. I grab the bag of Ezekiel 4:9 Organic Sprouted Wheat Cinnamon Raisin bread from the freezer. There are four slices, counting the heel of the loaf,  in the bag. Here is another “choice situation” for Hubby. How many slices does he want this morning?

For those who are not hip to the whole “Sprouted Whole Grain Bread” product scenario, this is pretty special stuff. There is a reason it is kept in the freezer. At almost $5 a loaf it is ridiculously expensive and I do not want to have a single slice go to waste! The grocery department at our local health food co-operative is also cognizant of the potential loss of value on the product. The store stocks all of the Ezekiel 4:9 types of bread and other similar short shelf life bakery products in the frozen food section too. This is where I got the inspiration for maximizing the life of the raisin toast in my home.

So you can see the potential for waste of a perfectly good slice of this rather expensive product begs the question I ask; “How many slices?”  We’ve had days when Hubby only wants one slice and I’ve toasted two. He is too full to eat the second slice or in too much of a hurry to get catch the bus, etc. Once toasted, the extra slice moves quickly into the status of a pariah.  It can’t be put back and served up later. Hubby is way too picky for that trick to work.

He hates dry toast. Hubby will not consume any toasted product that has been in the toaster oven too long for his delicate sensitivities to tolerate and consume. Not burnt mind you, just in there a little too long. The inner portion of the slice has lost its soft texture and is therefore no longer acceptable for Hubby to chew and swallow without the possibility of gagging.  It is almost impossible to reheat the “extra slice” rejected by him on a previous morning without his detecting this trickery and rejecting it outright.

So Hubby elects for two slices this morning. After all it is the weekend and he has leisure time to consume it with several over-sized mugs of Organic Sumatra freshly ground coffee which is heavily laced with his favorite Dari Gold Hazelnut flavored creamer.

I leave the kitchen to go work on some laundry needing immediate attention in its cycle. Upon my return I see that Hubby has taken his two slices from the toaster oven at just the right time, slathered them with Sunflower butter and has eaten one slice already.  I have returned to the kitchen and retrieved my two slices from the toaster oven, spread on some Almond butter and taken a seat beside Hubby at the table.

“Oh, oh.” He has grabbed the “end piece” of the loaf from the depths of the toaster without seeing the other two slices further back on the rack. The heel pieces sits on the plate, barely spread with any of the Sunflower seed butter, growing colder by the minute, clearly NOT going to be consumed by Hubby this morning.

Me: “Why did you take the heel? I know you do not like all that extra crust.”

Hubby:  “I thought there were two heels in there and I was trying to be nice.”

Me: “But you don’t eat the heels, you don’t like them. Would you like to trade with me?”

Hubby: after about 2 seconds of hesitation, “Yes, I’d like to trade.”

At least now all slices of that expensive toasted Ezekiel 4:9 Cinnamon Raisin toast will be consumed by the humans in our family and not  by the gaping maw of the In Sink Erator®  Badger 500 garbage disposal in our kitchen.

Hubby used to simply toss his unwanted and uneaten slices of toast directly into the trash can, on his way out the door. I caught him a few times and rather than listen to me complain about wasting food, he became stealthier.  The subterfuge now enacted when Hubby’s toast becomes inedible for whatever reason, is to “disappear” the dried out or over toasted piece by stuffing it into the garbage disposal. Of course running the unit would make noise and give him away. Hubby hopes that I won’t notice the toast hiding in the dark depths. The toast will simply disappear under the onion peelings or other refuse fed to the metal monster under out sink later that day. Kind of like those dead bodies that are hidden in the trunks of cars at the junk yard awaiting their turn on the crusher belt. The evidence of the crime is disposed of and no one is the wiser after the smashed metal hunks hit the smelter.

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