I think we’ve found a unicorn. That is if my understanding of what is a unicorn is correct. It means something rare or unique, and that’s what we found.
To understand why what we found is so unique, you have to understand something about my family.
As currently composed, there are four of us. Me, my husband and our youngest (son) and our middle child (daughter). My husband is the sort of person who will eat whatever is placed before him. My son is the sort of person who is extremely picky about what he will and will not eat. Taste and texture are important to him, so what we can get him to eat is limited. Bread is a staple of his diet because he eats a lot of sandwiches.
Then there is me and my daughter. We both have medically restricted diets. Her because of her severe allergies and me, well, I’m supposed to be on a low-carbs, low-sugar, low-salt diet for type 2 diabetes, and high blood pressure.
It was recommended that I eat a multi-grain, whole wheat bread, which we did find but my son refuses to eat. My daughter won’t eat it either because of allergens, which is completely understandable. We did find an inexpensive bread that my son liked.
As for my daughter, due to one of her allergies being soy, and soy is in EVERYTHING, she couldn’t eat commercially made bread. She’d make her own.
But because she has several chronic conditions, such as fibromyalgia, she often finds she does not have the stamina to make bread every time she runs out.
Her brother and I cannot knead anything with activated yeast in it, our hands get very red and sore if we do. But we do have a bread machine, and my son has mastered how to get a decent loaf out of it, so he will sometimes help her out a make a loaf. She has also purchased food grade gloves so if necessary, I can knead some bread, which is something I have not done in decades, but I obviously still know how to do it.
I learned the same time Bonnie did when our dad forced us all to learn how to make bread because of how expensive it was to feed a family of 7 (at the time), especially when one was a teenage boy with a hollow leg. (And yes, even telling dad that it made my hands red, sore, and itchy, did not get me out of it, which is why I’ve avoided it as an adult.)
Now, since we could make a wheat bread, homemade bread could satisfy every family member. The problem with that is my son goes through a lot of bread, and we’d constantly be out, generally when my daughter or I, who don’t eat it that often, wanted some. And, having chronic conditions, making it every week was out of the question.
So instead, we banned all but my daughter from eating the homemade bread and bought me the whole wheat I needed while supplying my son with the type he would eat, which he shared with my husband. Yes, at any given time we’d have three types of bread loafs in our house.
Recently however, we’ve been unable to find the type of bread my son likes so we’ve been experimenting with new types. He is not loving this at all and has actually stopped eating sandwiches almost completely.
Then, needing to find yet another type of bread to see if my son would like it, we picked up a relatively small loaf of organic wheat bread, not whole-grain, but still wheat. I did not have high hopes for it, because he’s never liked wheat bread.
But then my daughter got a good look of the ingredients.
Unlike every other loaf of bread on the market, it does NOT have soy in it. Not only that, but it is low-carbs and absolutely no sugar (some honey, but no sugar). Which means I could eat it.
My son tried it and could tolerate it with bacon (his version of a BLT without the vegetables he won’t eat), but the texture and taste were not up to snuff otherwise.
Since this bread is slightly more expensive than the other stuff we buy, we’ve decided that we’d reserve it for my daughter for when she’s not up to making some of her own.
It’s still a unique find, a unicorn.
Smile. Make the day a brighter day.
