Breaking Bread

You can tell just by snooping around in my freezer how my diet mentality is going.

Notice I said diet “mentality,” not diet. I don’t care for the word “diet,” or the words “popular,” “skinny,” or “fat,” or “smart,” or any other lexicon that point to one extreme over another. I mean “diet” simply as my point-of-view as it applies to my personal eating plan.

At first glance, my kitchen shows all signs of a person who incorporates color into her daily eating plan. Red pepper strips, blueberries, spinach and Greek yogurt in the refrigerator. Fresh basil and red onion and avocadoes and ripe peaches on the counter. Yum yum yum.

And at first glance, my freezer looks healthy, too. Chicken breast and lean cuts of meat ready to be defrosted, frozen vegetables patiently waiting their turn, whole-grain waffles for busy mornings, packets of brown rice at the ready. But if you poke around a bit, and pull the back bins out, the full scope of my psychosis comes to light.

Fine. So I hoard bread products. Got a problem with that?

Listen, I’m no Carb-Denier. I’m not a health-food nut who thinks bread and rice and potatoes are the devil. I just feel better when I don’t overindulge in them. I don’t leave carbs on the counter, or in any location where I can easily grab them.

But that don’t (sic) mean anyone is going to stop me from buying ‘em.

I love to browse in bakeries for lovely pastry. Then I bring them home and freeze them. I hang out in the baked goods section at Wegmans, sniff homemade bread and rolls, then bring them home and freeze them. I go to this bagel place in Philly that I love, buy a half-dozen bagels, bring them home and freeze them. I buy homemade pasta and ravioli, bring it home and freeze it. I just love knowing bread, pastry and pasta are in my freezer, just like I used to love knowing my dog was sleeping in the back room.

Here are the assorted frozen bread products in my freezer right now:

• Assorted full-size bagels
• Italian bread
• Rye bread
• Mini cinnamon-raisin bagels
• Cinnamon-raisin bread
• English muffins
• Banana bread
• Pastry
• Homemade ravioli and gnocchi

I know what you’re thinking.

What happens to all of these bread products if you’re not eating them? Do you end up throwing most of it away?

Well, yes, I guess so, but it’s not deliberate. It’s not “murder by hypothermia” or anything. Some of it we eat, some of it we don’t. There’s just a point where they cease to be edible and morph into, well, breadsicles. Then it’s into the trash they go.

Better in the trash than on my ass.

This is not a post about dieting, or bread, or carbs. It’s about contentment- when you know you have plenty of something you love. Knowing if you run out of it, you can simply reach into a drawer or a cabinet and easily replenish.

What do you hoard?

(Reader note: My new website will invite participation through questions like this, so if you read this blog secretly, think long and hard about coming out of the closet and engaging in conversation threads. I mean, I know you’re reading it. You know you’re reading it. I also know I write some stuff that irritates you, and you’d love to tell me off. Why not go for it? It doesn’t bother me, and it’ll make you feel better. Hell, get a fake email and send your comments in anonymously, for all I care. Also, I am very excited to announce my new domain URL. More to come Friday).

So, hoarding? Fine, I’ll start. Here are more things I hoard. Not like in the television series “Hoarders.” I mean, I don’t need to clear a path through focaccia rolls to get to my foyer or anything. These are just things that I always have extras of just because:

• Printed duct tape (what is it about the phrase “duct tape” that sounds so nefarious? My hoarding of duct tape is quite innocent, I assure you. I’m not, like, binding people).
• Distinctive hand and dish soaps
• Small notebooks
• Pentel fine-point pens
• Altoids
• Print paper and print cartridges
• Envelopes of all sizes
• Colored Post-Its
• Fun stamps
• Mac lipsticks and lip liners
• Different scents of my favorite perfume brand
• Crisp white t-shirts always ironed and folded

Tune in for tomorrow’s discussion of: The Proper Way to Yell at Your Children for High Utility Bills