The Poppy Seed

I baked bread before we left for Tessa's mill on Saturday. I've got this down to an art now where I gauge quantities by eye and feel rather than use the scales. This batch was 95% white flour with a touch of whole meal, splash of olive oil and more salt than you'd think you need because of the way the yeast interacts with it during the rise. Then a hefty sprinkling of poppy seeds which an ignored intuition told me was unwise and would spell trouble later on. Which it did, because when Grace asked for a ham sandwich later in the day I said, 'Of course darling, with some of Daddy's lovely new bread and the ham I bought at the butcher this morning.' Good ham, much better than the supermarket stuff and cheaper too - (later puzzle to solve: why do I now order ham in metric - 200 grams please - but persist with Imperial when buying everything else - 1lb of sausages please, a 5lb chicken, half a pound of mince please?). So Grace says, 'Yes please Daddy', and I make this delicious sandwich, bread cut thin just so, crusts off because Grace neither likes the crust nor the poppy seeds that have sunk in during the bake, cut artfully into quarters, here you are darling... 'I don't like that sandwich!!' Loud whiny tears. 'I hate that sandwich!*!*' Exactly the response to trigger my anger and here it comes, whoosh, rising up inside me - 'I DON"T LIKE IT WHEN YOU TALK THAT ABOUT FOOD PEOPLE HAVE MADE YOU! STOP THAT NOISE!' Then to Tessa, our hostess. 'Sorry about this, I just can't stand waste. Or ingratitude. It's just so damned rude.' But my stupidly angry response just escalates matters and if I'd only paid attention to the little voice that said in a Cognitive Therapeutic kind of way 'Don't respond angrily, it will only make things worse, count ten, deep breath, who cares about a silly sandwich anyway', but I let fly instead and rationalise my anger by saying to Tessa, Lu and Anna - who hates my outbursts - 'Well somebody's got to raise a voice round here. It's the only thing that gets results with this spoilt child.' The trouble is, today it patently has not got a result, just made things worse, because Grace's cry has now escalated into a wail and a choked explanation, finger pointing at said sandwich 'I don't (sniff sniff) like (choke cry) those things...' I follow her finger to a tiny black speck in one of the sandwich quarters - a single poppy seed - defiling dot. 'ALRIGHT!' I'm still angry and pick out the offending impurity, flick it crossly away. Moral of tale: 1) pay attention to intuitions - no poppy seeds. 2) Don't try and deal with 4 year old daughter's vile temper by losing it yourself.