Bread, rice, and other boring stuff

Cliff and I use about half a loaf of bread a month, if that.  I buy Iron Kids bread for two reasons:  It keeps better than some kinds, and it's only sixty calories per slice.  The main thing we use our bread for is toast, about once a week, so even though bread gets old even in the freezer, it makes decent toast.  I am loving the 1990's toaster I got on Ebay; the toast is hot enough to melt butter when it pops up, and it only takes half as long as the old toaster that my son-in-law or somebody used for target practice.
Sometimes I'll fix something that Cliff really likes to have bread with, and he gets a slice then.  We have biscuits and gravy once in awhile, but I use canned biscuits because of calories, and limit the gravy.  Once we get down to a decent weight, I will fix real biscuits once in awhile.  Presently, Cliff has lost eighteen pounds and I've lost seventeen.  If we could each lose that much more, we would be at a pretty healthy weight.  We do so little physical activity in winter (just our walk), it amazes me that we're doing so well.  
Oh, I was talking about bread, wasn't I?  Cliff's next-door sister, living alone, doesn't use a lot of bread either.  A couple days ago she brought over half a loaf of Old Style Potato Bread that had grown too stale for her taste, asking if I wanted it for my chickens.  Of course I did.  
When I took a slice out of the sack to take to my chickens, I examined it closely.  It was a nice, thick piece of bread, and felt fresh to my fingers.  I pinched a piece from the middle to taste; tasted fine to me.  Looking at the label, I saw that each slice was a hundred calories.  I told Cliff, "We are going to have French toast tomorrow!"  
It was delicious.  I reminded Cliff to eat a piece of fruit at some point this morning, since we had nothing but starch and sugar for breakfast.  
Cliff's weaknesses, it seems, are white flour and sugar.  I sometimes think I should just make a paste of flour, sugar, and water and hand him a bowl of it three times a day.  
I have succeeded in switching to brown rice in place of white.  Honestly, I prefer white rice and I'm sure Cliff does, but we're doing OK with it.  Cliff does not like whole wheat bread and in fact refuses to eat it if that's all there is.  So I've left that alone, since we don't have bread that often anyhow.  
I mentioned a while back that I've tossed out all the Teflon pans in the house except for one big skillet that I like to use for frying fish or morel mushrooms.  I can't believe I ever stopped using stainless steel! No more searching around for a special utensil because metal might hurt the surface of non-stick cookware.  No more worrying about using the wrong scouring pad.  I am especially loving the double boiler for cooking rice.  Yes, it takes longer, but you never have to worry about it sticking to the bottom of the pan.  I set the timer and go about my business, never even peeking at it.  
I cook brown rice, then freeze it in one-cup portions so that when I make one of our many dishes that need rice as an accompaniment, all I have to do is put it in the microwave and heat it up.  I've done that with beans for years, cooking up a big batch and freezing them in two-cup amounts to use in recipes.  Black beans, red beans, pinto... I always have a good supply of all kinds in the freezer for the various dishes we love.  They are cheaper than buying canned beans, and they're unsalted.  
I consider this a boring entry, but there is absolutely nothing going on around here to blog about.  I intend to start some seeds in the house next week, and if Cliff ever gets our plow home from Hamilton, Missouri, it won't be long before I'll be planting lettuce and spinach and peas.  Meanwhile, the weather-guessers say we have a storm coming.  I want snow and lots of it!