That's not pumpernickel!

This visit is to spend time with my parents.

On Tuesday, my mother and I went to the bakery (Strauss? on Middleneck Rd) to buy some bread. It wasn't even close to closing, but they were already out of bread. We were very disappointed, especially since there were tons of calorie-laden tempting cakes and cookies very attractively arranged in front of us.

We really needed the bread for my "pre-fast" meal the next day, before the 9th of Av. So we asked about the possibility of ordering bread, so he'd save it for us the next day. My mother let me choose, and I, with memories a half a century old, getting tastier, like good wine, wanted pumpernickel.

It's one bread I've never found any place else but in New York and I can't remember the last time I had that rich, dense, chewy mouth-watering "fruit of the earth" in my mouth. My guess is that it's a sourdough bread with molasses to make it extra chocolate-brown.

Wednesday, after lunch with my aunt and cousin at that dairy place in Lake Success, we went over. We bought the bread, exchanged pleasantries with the guy working there, and I couldn't wait to eat it.

I should have suspected something when my mother complained that it was soft. All bread today immediately wrapped in plastic will be soft.

OK, you know from the title that it wasn't pumpernickel. It was probably a whole wheat with lots of yeast and the chemicals added to make the bread "light and airy," like whitebread.

So I still yearn for the real thing.