I Made a Huge Mistake

Sunday evening, I briefly misplaced my common sense.

I was at the grocery store with L, picking up a few necessary ingredients for a big pot of vegetable soup we were going to make for dinner that night. There must have been a hole in my DUH Pocket because somewhere in the produce section was where my sense fell out: I thought, We should get some bread!

And it's not like I was in a Whole Foods or some super vegan- and gluten-free-friendly supermarket. No, no, I was in the most basic of grocery stores, a store that only this year started carrying extra firm tofu and hummus. I should have known better.

But I had a momentary lapse of reason and we bought some French bread. I know, I know: starchy, wheaty, glutenous, poisonous, white-white-white French bread. I think I was possessed. Perhaps it was the lighting in the store.

We get home and set to work on the soup, chopping and peeling and mixing and pouring. I popped that evil loaf of Hell into the oven, still in my This Is A Good Idea fog, and soon the house was filled with that hypnotic scent of baking bread. (You know what I'm talking about. Resistance against that smell is futile.)

The bread ended up being ready before the soup. When I opened the oven door, an amazing beam of light shot out from its depths. It was a piercing, near-blinding light. There also may have been glitter and bluebirds. I removed the golden-baked bread and sat it on top of the oven, my eyes no longer hazel, but a constantly-rotating black-and-white spiral. Reason still had not returned to me. I was under this bread's spell.

In a haze, I somehow ate 4 slices of bread, smothered in melty Earth Balance, minced garlic, and a sprinkle of nutritional yeast. In my defense, this was not a large loaf of bread. In fact, the slices were smaller than the size of my palm. But still! Possessed, I was! And L was too busy having his own *moment* with the bread to be my Bread Tender, to cut me off and take away my Bread Keys. Luckily, by the 4th (small) slice, I started to wake up and return to reality, and I was able to just say no. But the damage was already done, and the torture was just about to begin.

About an hour after dinner, I started to feel the pains. It started in my stomach with a sensation that my entire stomach lining was sizzling on fire. I toughed it out as long as I could, but I resorted to gulping down a generic Pepcid, but by then, the pain had spread. Suddenly I felt a tightness in my back and legs. And then cramps. And then I felt like Violet when she blew up at Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.


This is EXACTLY what happened about 5 months ago, the last time I ate a large amount of a wheat product. Only last time, I ate much more than 4 little slices of bread, so the pain lasted longer that time. Still, this time around, I was really paying for my stupidity. I was in pain ALL NIGHT LONG, and not in a cool, Lionel Richie sort of way.


And really, I felt kind of off all day Monday. Here it is, Tuesday evening, and I'm just now recovering. It's so weird that I even thought bread was a good idea; it's so rare that I crave bread (or pasta, for that matter). I think it was the weather. It had cooled down considerably over the weekend, which is why we were making soup in the first place. Baking bread sounded like a warm, cozy, safe thing to do.

Regardless, lesson learned... AGAIN.

PS. In case you were wondering, the soup was really good.