3-31-11 Crust

even the rats know, bread crusts are better as housing than as food

As I was making Sammi's lunch this morning and cutting it on a diagonal, I thought, "I should just use the sharp knife to take the crust off while I'm here."  But then it occurred to me that this would create too much dryness between now and lunch. In Colorado, you leave a piece of bread out on the counter for 5 minutes and you've got toast.

So she'll just peel the crust off when she's ready to bite into it and get right to the soft, yummy, this-is-the-entire-point of the bread straight away.

Like I do.

Like I've done for 40 years.

Like my mother still rolls her eyes at, every time she sees me do this.

But the crust of the bread is the burned part. I don't even like my grilled cheese sandwiches to go anywhere past lightly golden before they taste burned to me. Why wouldn't I peel off the burned part of my bread, where you can't actually spread anything (because it's burned!) anyway?

Flash backward to somewhere around age 4. I'm at Julie's house next door and we are having sandwiches at her house for lunch. Her mom, a nurse, becomes shocked and appalled as I peel away the crust to eat my sandwich. "It's the healthiest part!" she exclaims and stares at me like I've just shown her daughter how to pole dance by doing this at her dinner table.

I wasn't buying it. Healthy? So is tree bark. And I'm not running out and finding that to layer on my sandwich either. I can get all kinds of healthy things into my diet the yummy way without forcing down a dry bit of tasteless overcooked brown bread.

Cue the darn German scientists, who published a report in 2002 (28 years after the declaration by Julie's mom) that in fact the crust was healthier. The chemical processes of the baking pushed the antioxidants and cancer-fighting good things into the crust and all that jazz.

So it turns out I've been giving my dogs anti-cancer crusts all these years. (I do love my dogs.) And they love my crusts. And I seem to be able to find plenty of anti-oxidant rich foods without choking down those dried edges myself.

Oh, and before any of you crust-lovers out there start to feel too smug about my childlike disdain for bread crust, consider this -- eating crust can offer health benefits, but only if it's not overcooked. Then, it seems, the chemicals change into acrylamides, which are carcinogens. Bread crust is like Gremlins -- instead of getting them wet, you just have to burn them to turn them evil.

I'm staying Gremlin free.