Donna knew I was a serious bread lover, and her homemade sweet rye bread was my very favorite. Because we lived in different parts of the country, it wasn’t often I had the opportunity to enjoy this wonderful treat.

On a quick break from a very hectic year, I visited Donna. As a surprise she baked a fresh loaf of her wonderful sweet rye. The first morning of my visit we sat down for breakfast and she brought out the loaf–all warm and fragrant fresh out of the oven.

We ate a large slice along with our morning tea and started to catch up on a year of visiting. Her sweet rye was every bit as good as I remembered. I looked forward to an entire relaxing week with Donna and eating sweet rye every morning.

We got to talking about her garden and stepped out on the the patio to take a quick look. We stayed out just long enough to get hungry for another piece of sweet rye.

But OH MY. We walked back into the kitchen just in time to find Brandy, their crazy Dalmatian, polishing off the last crumbs of the entire loaf.

In retrospect, I guess it wasn’t all that unexpected for Brandy to eat rye bread. After all, she once ate an entire car battery.