The great “Southern Phenomenon” begins. The “milk and bread” rush.
I have been a Southerner all my life, but I have yet to discover the origins of “Milk and Bread Survival”.
What great event happened to our ancestors that programmed our triggered response to frozen water? I have found no archives that proclaim “Entire City Wiped Out During 2 Day Road Closing Due To Ice”, or “Family Survives 3 Days On Milk And Bread!”.
What secret lies behind the “Milk And Bread” instinct? Does Southerners have an extra gene that just programs us to the perils of being without milk and bread?
I must be lacking that extra gene, (or, been born a Yankee and adopted by Southerners) as given the choice of surviving on milk and bread, or the other wide variety of food staples available, I would choose a few more items. My first instictive thoughts when faced with weeks of being stranded are: "Do I have enough rum and cigarettes"?
Do Southerners not keep supplies of anything else? Say, frozen pizzas, canned soups, Kool aid, crackers, chips or Pop Tarts? Even in the most severe of cases, a can of potted meat or Vienna sausages would at least add variety.
And when we do get ice, does it last longer than a couple of days before it turns 50 degrees again?
Anyway, a quick search of the internet has shed some light on what might possibly just save your life, and get you through a couple of days of ice, sleet, and snow...
but first...you must stock up on “milk and bread”!!
1) We can drink the milk or eat cereal. We can make sandwiches out of the bread. Place one piece of bread between 2 pieces of bread and ....you have a bread sandwich! Add mayo, mustard, or maybe salad dressing for a "Gourmet Sandwich". This is the most obvious answer. And yet, it leaves me unsatisfied; hungry for some other answer, so to speak.
2) When the wind is stiff and the house poorly insulated, we can mix milk and bread into a paste and caulk the walls for warmth.
3) When mixed into paste, milk and bread could also be used to write HELP, NEED CHEESE PUFFS! (or LORTAB or XANAX) onto the sides of our houses. Unless they’re already white, or too snow covered for the letters to be visible.
4)) If we really are forced into near starvation, we can use the milk and bread to lure animals like squirrels, rabbits, black bears and stray cats onto the porch, then drop cartons of frozen milk onto them, or snare them with nets made of plastic bread bags. We can then make breading to use whilst cooking them. Also applies to gerbils, guinea pigs, hermit crabs and large goldfish.
5) Milk and bread may be combined with sugar ( you did remember to get sugar?) to make some sort of winter confection to satisfy our need for something to eat besides milk and bread.
6) Milk and bread can be bartered on the black-market in extreme cases, and exchanged for more exciting things like Oreo‘s, Cousin Willie popcorn, or maybe DVD‘s. Except that everyone else also has milk and bread.
7) If one has purchased enough bread, it can be put under the back wheel of a vehicle stuck in the ice and snow to provide traction, so that the driver can venture forth to find… more milk and bread.
8) When the children are bored from being stuck inside for the 4-5 hours that snow actually lasts in the South, we can play games like ‘dunking for bread’, ‘pin the cap on the carton’, ‘cover baby sister in milk’ or ‘bread frisbee’. And our children can entertain us for hours asking ‘Mama, can we have something else besides milk and bread?’
9) Because we always get milk and bread but always forget dog food, we can mix the milk and bread and give it to the dogs (who will roll their eyes and eat it out of duty, but who will have already torn apart the trash for chicken bones).
10) We can make hot chocolate and toast until the sun shines again. Unless, oh, you forgot the chocolate, didn’t you? Well, it’s back to milk and bread for you.
11) Milk and bread can be used in some sort of odd, Southern fertility ceremony. It must be true, considering the number of children born 40 weeks after the happy couples stocked up.
12) Milk and bread can be substituted for pseudoephedrine and ether in the manufacture of methamphetamine. Well, not really, but it’s much less dangerous and way more healthy.
14) It gives Southerners something to laugh about that people from other countries, like New England and Miami, don’t understand.
Anyway, I hope these suggestions will be remembered, and applied should you find yourself in dire straits...as for me, I need to go get milk and bread...NOT because I am programmed to, but because I am almost out.
