Tag: bacon

I Love Breakfast

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One of my favorite things about traveling is hotel breakfast. I want two poached eggs, with buttered rye toast, some almost-burnt bacon and fruit salad. I can usually get it, though I’ve only had one place in Miami actually get that bacon to the mahogany and black goodness I enjoy when my husband makes it at home. Once, I asked for extra crispy bacon and got extra bacon. It is a struggle.
The Bacon Provider is not a breakfast lover. He wakes up with his hair swirling around his head like he’s floating underwater, his face newly sprouted with beardlyness, and requires about 40 minutes of bathroom-monopolizing to become his tucked-in and tidy self. I wake up looking like a mess, too, but I always look like a mess, so I can roll out of bed and put on pants and a bra and look about as good as I do after a shower and blow-drying. When it’s cold I like to think about wearing my bra over my shirt so I don’t have to take it off; I can’t be the only woman who wants to do this. Sometimes I have to put a little hotel hand-lotion in my hair; travel means a hotel gym, and the gym means too many showers, and too many showers means big hair problems. But even that takes only seconds. The Bacon Provider sits politely in the hotel restaurant, orders toast or sometimes oatmeal.

When the food comes, it is always offered in reverse. There has yet to be a waiter who thinks the eggs and undercooked bacon is for me, the plain toast for him.

Our breakfasts

How to Make French Toast

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Here in New York, we have had a winter completely unlike last year’s long, lingering, snowy and cold winter.  Despite a freak heavy snowstorm at the end of October, we have had no snow, and only a handful of actually cold days. Many days, like today, it’s in the 20s when we get up, but sunny and into the 40s by early afternoon. 
My husband, in addition to being a Relentless Troubleshooter, is the household’s designated Bacon Provider, and he takes his job very seriously. Whenever I have occasion to be away and he is in charge of feeding himself and the offspring, he makes breakfast-for-dinner or spaghetti carbonara, both of which include bacon.  I have been known to call home and ask if they’ve gotten tired of eating bacon yet, and they always say, “No.”
When you live with a Bacon Provider in a season such as winter, you are often called upon to create things that are eaten with bacon. The house we are renting has a wood-fired cooking stove (in addition to two other woodstoves), and when it is brisk and cold in the morning, an early-rising Bacon Provider can fire up the Waterford and get the bacon cooking. 
There is probably a rule which says Cook Things You Like To Eat. After eggs and grits or pancakes there is of course French Toast, a breakfast staple and bacon side-kick enjoyed by many, but not by me. I do not know if I ever liked French Toast, but I doubt it. I like things like Bread Pudding that are similar in texture and ingredients to French Toast, but I do not like French Toast.  So I do not eat French Toast. But I do make French Toast, because other people like it, including the Bacon Provider and the Offspring.  Not only do I make it, but I like to make it. I don’t know how good it is. They eat it with bacon.

French Toast
Beat 4 eggs and add 1 c. milk. Stir in a dash of vanilla, a pinch of salt, and a couple of shakes of cinnamon. Cut a loaf of quality stale bread into 1 ½” thick slices. Immerse the bread in the egg mixture about three at a time.
Fry in a hot, oiled skillet. Serve with butter, maple syrup and, of course, bacon.
Feeds two adults and two teenaged boys.