On the Proper Way to Eat Bread

The supermarket is now baking fresh baguettes.  The ovens are shrewdly located by the deli section as you come into the shop, so the smell of freshly baked bread getstyour salivary glands going before you even have a chance to pick up a cart.  Even if you're just dashing into the shop for toothpaste, are you really going walk by a paper bag of piping hot baguette?  No.  No, you're not.

I usually carry a loaf of bread in my arms as I shop, munching away on the crusty top.  Well-bred people glance my way, appreciating the appeal of crusty, hot bread, but refusing to succumb to such behaviour themselves.  And that's the great thing about being an adult.  You can chose for yourself how you want to behave, rather than having behaviour prescribed for you.

Having said that, my mother, who otherwise demanded proper behaviour from me when I was a child, understood that certain pleasures lie outside of the realm of propriety.  My memories of the car ride home from the supermarket in Brasil were of this: sitting in the back seat, surrounded by paper shopping bags and biting off the top of a hot baguette so I could pull out the soft, fragrant insides.  I'd go as far into the baguette as I could reach or until we got home: which ever came first.  My mum always acted horrified when she caught me, but I knew that she knew that I knew that she didn't blame me and she not-so-secretly was envious.

I got home from the supermarket today with three warm mini baguettes and stood at the kitchen counter, devouring most of one with a ridiculously expensive and delicious piece of soft cheese.  Then I turned my attention to the other two mini baguettes and because I am a grown up and I make my own money and don't have to share my food with anyone, I methodically denuded the baguettes of their crusty bits on the lengthwise folds and happily crunched away at them.

My mum would have yelled at me, but I would know that she knows that I know that she doesn't begrudge me the pleasure.