It amazes me what you can convince yourself is ‘nice’ in terms of food and drink.  I like beer (english bitter or stout).  But honestly, it actually tastes like bitter dish water until you ‘acquire the taste’, which essentially translates to, ‘until you convince yourself that you enjoy it and appreciate the differences in taste’.

I think a lot of food tastes are the same, the question is not ‘do you enjoy this’ it is ‘are you prepared to invest in the effort to learn to enjoy this’.  Like blue cheese.  The younger you are when you start learning to appreciate these tastes, the more natural they seem.

So, anyway this post is nothing to do with blue cheese or beer.  It’s about bread (yes, you guessed it).  I like hot buttered toast, sometimes I like a sandwich, I enjoy bacon cobs, I enjoy French bread.  But I’m diabetic which means I have to be careful with bread.  Eventually I found some tesco’s fresh baked bread (Finest Rustic Multigrain) which I actually liked (didn’t have to acquire a taste for it).  It’s nice when it’s fresh and it’s nice when it’s toasted.  I still wouldn’t do bacon sandwiches with it (white bread!) but I could picture myself eating ham and peas pudding sandwiches with it.  I ate it for a while, I’ve no idea what the GI is, but while eating it my blood checks were fine and my average (Hb1Ac) was excellent, so it was ok.

And then our local tesco changed the recipe, or something and it started tasting like cardboard.  Really, it was dry, fine grain inside (instead of fluffy) and just like ash when toasted.  I was gutted, so I stopped eating it.  I searched for something else which wasn’t bad for my blood sugar and found a couple of seeded loafs from various companies which were ok, I could tolerate them but my sugar wasn’t as good.  They were also stocked in pretty low numbers so I was never sure if they’d have any in.  Then I found the Bergen stuff (I’ve blogged about it a little bit, search for Bergen or Linseed).  It’s low GI, linseed and soya bread.

I ate it.  I tried it with sandwiches and I had it toasted.  I managed to acquire the taste so that it was ok toasted (if I let it cool).  Anything else and it was a bit nauseating to be fair, but I got used to it.  Was great for my blood sugar.   I liked it even maybe.

Well no I didn’t.  Because tesco have switched their Finest Rustic Multigrain back to the old recipe, or the old baker is back, or they changed supplier, or whatever and I got some the other day because I was feeling a bit tired of the Bergen.  And it’s delicious.  Nice, enjoyable.  And I realised I don’t like the Bergen, I was just prepared to tolerate it and had convinced myself the taste was ok.

It’s not really ok.  It’s really off-putting.

So I’m happy, the tesco bread is back, they usually have plenty in and as long as this recipe stays consistent I can enjoy fresh bread again.