TUTT + 1, Topic: Daily

This was my theme, I thought it would be fun to have something very open ended that everybody could take in any direction and share something about their every day lives.  I chose this picture:

We bake bread every day - we have this amazing little bread machine and you throw in the wet ingredients, dump in the flour, make a little nest on top for the yeast, set the timer and voila!  At 5:30 the next morning you wake up to the smell of a freshly baked loaf of bread.  It is heaven, especially in the winter when it is cold outside, and as I said to the girls, it is a comforting smell, it wraps its arms around you and helps you to gently embrace the day.  Aaaaahhh.  It is delicious too!  Americans are wonderful at many things, they are kind and giving people, they throw a mean party, and they are action driven - people don't sit about whining, they get off their tails and DO something and make a difference - it is very inspiring.  But they can't bake bread.  Sorry, but it is true.  And I love bread.  It ranks right up there with potatoes. 

I think it is because they add so much sugar to it to sweeten the taste, but it means that the only thing that works is peanut butter and jelly (every line you can think of from every advert and movie is true on this one).  Cold sliced deli ham with cheese and tomato and fresh pepper on sweet tasting bread is, well, gross.  And let's not even go to the rare roast beef and mustard!  But it doesn't even have to be gourmet sandwiches, our beloved Marmite sandwiches even taste horrible.  Plus, they add in all kinds of other junk!  The average loaf of bread from the store has around 12 ingredients so don't ask me what happened to the only five it is necessary to make bread. 

I love my bread machine, I do.  I would say that bread is my daily temptation too!  Linda took a photo of hers:

Linda says she made the mistake of giving the machine her number and now it calls her ALL the time, not as in 'oooohhhhhh Lindaaaa . . . ' but as in literally, on the phone!  Linda, I know he is tall, dark and handsome but really, you are a married woman!  The photo of the nougat is what did it for me, now I have a yearning for Woolies honey and walnut (or was it pecan?) nougat.  That stuff was AMAZING!  And always baked fresh.  Other nougats from less worthy stores were always chewy, but not the Woolies nougat.  If they put that in a vending machine near me I too would have a scandalously flirtatious relationship with it and they could just transfer my salary to it each month! 

Mariette didn't focus on food (that is why she has such a divinely skinny figure I am sure!)  She took a photo of a scene she passes every day on her way to work:

So often she says, we pass things without even seeing them, let alone taking a minute to appreciate them.  She is right, how often I have been driving around with my mind on other things only to stop at a light, look around and think 'where am I?  I don't recognize that big gorgeous old tree' meanwhile I have driven past it a hundred times. 

Lovely theme this week, I am looking forward to next week . . . although 'heritage' is a little confusing when you live in a foreign country!