Yumm-Balls

Yumminess.

Twice a week, and sometimes more, the wonderful aroma of freshly-baked bread wafted through the Stringam home.

Magic.

It was followed, almost immediately, by the sight of children munching great slices of fresh yumminess, thickly spread with fresh butter.

Mmmmm.

I wasn't one of them.

Oh, I loved Mom's bread.

It was amazing.

And I definitely was munching.

But I chose a unique - ie. weird - way of doing it.

Often to be followed by my Mom saying, “Diane! I work hard to make perfectly good, soft bread! Why do you do that to it?!”

She said this because . . . I squished it.

Squished.

Into a tight little ball.

Which I - then - ate.

Really.

Mom would watch, in disgust, as I took my slice of freshly-baked awesomeness.

Quickly peeled off and ate the crust.

Pressed and molded the rest.

Then nibbled.

I have no idea why I did this.

Maybe it was because I had seen the screen cowboys eating little balls of bread out of their saddlebags.

Okay, it looked like little balls of bread.

I didn't realize that what they were eating was, in fact, biscuits.

I wasn't known for my powers of observation and deduction.

Ahem . . .

I no longer eat bread this way.

There are a couple of drawbacks.

The biggest one being that it's rather hard to spread any significant amount of peanut butter and/or nutella on a tightly pressed ball of dough.

And, let's face it, bread is just the medium by which such things are ingested.

And, in a choice between eating balls of dough or getting nutella to the mouth?

Even the cowboys would agree with me.