Mmmmm bread

I have a fascination with food. To me, food is my best friend. It has absolutely nothing to do with guilt, depression, or any other ailment you could conjure up. I just love food, with the exception of mushrooms, that is. Every type of food that I can think of brings to mind specific memories, but the one item that brings the most emotion is bread. Bread?! Yes, indeed! You see, my mother always had the innate ability to burn bread. When I say always, I mean ALWAYS. From the time I was old enough to operate a clock I have been instructing my mother on the proper cooking times of bread, but somehow she would still manage to ruin it! I honestly still do not understand how she does it! Her affliction is not just with a particular type of bread, it is with ANY bread that must be toasted, baked, warmed up, or grilled. The woman is an amazing cook, she taught me everything I know about cooking. Except for the poor bread! I always thought that it was funny growing up, but what amazes me is that twenty years later, she still has the problem! Who does that, seriously? I never ate an entire piece of bread until I moved out of my mother's house. We always had to cut the burnt bottom half off of the poor roll to begin to make it edible. It has always been perplexing to me how this woman could make from scratch anything you could imagine, but could not toast you a piece of loaf bread to save her life! It is a funny story that will stay with me forever. As an adult I have learned to keep my mother as far away from bread at the holidays as I can get her, everyone knows the consequence of mom cooking the bread! You can never really appreciate bread until you have had a whole piece. Trust me, it took 18 years to get a "proper" piece.