Hot and Crusty

I saw the potential. I thought it might happen. It has.

After two months of resisting, I started shrugging and asking myself, “Why am I fighting the urge to do this?” Now I don’t fight. I just do it. I’ve lost my willpower. I tell myself I should adopt the ways of Senegal. Truth is, I’m addicted.

Every morning, I eat one-third of a fresh baguette. One-third? That’s a huge chunk of bread…with either butter or peanut butter. Giving in to the call of the carbs…I don’t even consider consequences any longer. At home, where there is a staggering variety of opportunities to eat good old carbohydrates, one makes these choices carefully. Here? What would be the worst consequence of eating bread first thing in the morning? Not being hungry?

Right before we moved from the old house, we were buying our morning baguettes from Mama Mia, the new Italian café/pizza place that had opened about a block away. Their bread came out of the oven at 6:30…the bread was crusty on the outside (as it should be) and warm on the inside. It was just so yummy that to resist was impossible. Well, we left Mama Mia behind last week. Now, we walk across the road to the little kiosk, big enough for one person to work behind the counter, to buy our baguettes. They aren’t warm, but they are fresh and sell for 35 cents each.

The baguettes make perfect sense considering Senegal’s colonization by the French. It’s a French tradition to start the day with fresh bread and fresh coffee. But what doesn’t make sense, at least to me, is that in a country where fresh bread is higher in Maslow’s pyramid of needs than malaria medicine, it’s impossible to get a cup of freshly brewed coffee.