The Forgotten Magic of Bread and Butter Dinners
You forget how many nights you just had bread and butter.
Not because you were poor. Not really. Not the Centrelink kind of poor. Just the sort where dinner wasn’t planned and time had slipped away. Where it was too late for shops and too early to admit defeat. So you reached for the thing that didn’t ask much. White Tip Top. Maybe Helga’s if someone felt fancy. And a slab of Western Star that never fully softened, no matter how long it sat on the counter.
There was no ceremony. You just sat. Sometimes in silence, sometimes with the telly humming some trash in the background. The light was always too yellow. The kind that makes everything look worse, like a 7-Eleven bathroom. But there was something about that first bite of bread and butter dinners. Cold butter, warm hands, starch and salt doing exactly what needed to be done. It was like saying, alright, world, you win. But not tonight.
Mum Always Had a Loaf
We didn’t talk about feelings. We talked about what was on telly. Or what the neighbour did. We talked around things, like most families with a tight budget and too much memory.
But she always had bread. Always. Even when the fridge was mostly air and half an onion, somehow there was a loaf. And butter. Never margarine. That was where she drew the line. You could be tired, broke, or pissed off, but you didn’t have to eat chemicals.
That quiet act — making sure we could butter bread — felt like love. Not the loud kind. The kind that lets you be a little broken and still fed.
The Nights That Taught Me How to Cope
Later in life, when things cracked — marriage, job, sanity — I didn’t crave a steak. I didn’t want someone’s idea of self-care or to “treat myself.” I wanted a slice of bread. I wanted that dull little ritual. Unwrap. Slice. Butter. Eat. Repeat.
There’s something sacred about food that expects nothing from you. No recipe. No prep. No performance. Just presence.
That bread never solved my problems. But it reminded me I was still here. That survival doesn’t have to be cinematic. Sometimes it’s just starch and fat at the right time.
I Still Keep a Loaf in the Freezer
Just in case.
Not because I’m nostalgic. Not really. More because there’s comfort in knowing if everything falls apart again, I won’t need to explain myself to a meal. I can just pull something from the freezer, flick on the kettle, and get through.
We romanticise food too much. Turn it into identity, performance, health, status. But bread and butter doesn’t care who you are. It just waits.
That’s real comfort. Not the flashy kind. The kind that sits with you in the dark when no one else does.
