Boiled eggs are there for you when you need them

Boiled organic brown eggs on vintage plate with out of focus toast.

I like them fairly well done.  Peel shell.  Slice in half,  Curl of butter on each.  Salt and pepper.  I end up putting them on the toast.

Boiled eggs are uncomplicated and good when life feels chaotic.  Trust me on this.  Boiled eggs help.

Cold Cereal Rules OK!

Bowl.  Spoon.  Heritage flakes.  Organic flame raisins.  Soy milk.  Hot coffee.  Water.

Pretty nice breakfast.

Waffle House = Mecca

When I arrived in North Carolina for the first time, on Interstate 40 heading toward Chapel Hill through the darkness, I saw a yellow beacon beaming across the nighttime sky.  Black letters against a yellow lightbox glowed with the words "Waffle House".  I cried out, "What's that?!"

It was late and I was weary from my flight.  Within minutes we were seated at the counter of my first Waffle House, and it's been a love affair ever since.  There's something about The House that always works for me.  It's the hot diner style coffee.  It's the great folks who work there.  Then there are the waffles.

Perfectly hot.  A bit eggy.  Not too fluffy.  The fake maple syrup doesn't try too hard to taste like the real stuff.  It's more like butterscotch and it is a harmonious compliment to the waffle.

There's always a narrative component to the Waffle House experience, like those times when the whole staff is fighting.  Keith and I have witnessed some pretty gnarly fights.  Or it's when your server is just a cool person you were glad to meet.  Or maybe it's during an ice storm when you've had no power for days and Waffle House is the only place that's open because they are able to make coffee on the gas burners and cook whatever they can on the griddle.

Oh yes.  And there's one more thing.  Check out the jukebox at any Waffle House.  They always include songs that were written and recorded explicitly for and about Waffle House.  Where else can you eat breakfast to a soundtrack created specifically for the place you're in with songs on the subject of eating breakfast?  I remember the first time I was there in that Waffle House out by the airport.  Keith leans in and says, "Hear that music?  They're singing about Waffle House."

And sure enough, I could just make out the strains of a kind of trucker's anthem: "She pours my coffeeeeee/Like an old friiiennnnd..." 

Now that's good eatin'.

Travel day

Fluffy omelet with feta and spinach.  Rye toast butter strawberry peach preserves.  Red potatoes with onion.  Sea salt.  Pepper.  California sunlight.

I was glad my last meal before leaving Los Angeles was one I prepared for my dad and myself.  My mom helped with the potatoes and I was no help to her ranting as I was about them not getting crispy.  That didn't stop me from eating two servings.

It was a long day of travel - didn't get back home in NC before midnight - and this substantial breakfast made the whole day better.

Welsh Lady Marmalade

Toasted seeded bread with a bit of salted creamery butter.  Chopped mango pieces.  Goat cheese.  Seville Orange Marmalade.  Hot coffee.

I really wanted something nice this morning pickin's were a bit slim in the fridge.  Had some seeded bread goat cheese leftover.  Some frozen mango in the freezer.  And just a bit left of this lovely, delectable marmalade, which, I'm not ashamed to admit to you I had purchased in the gourmet section of TJ Maxx.  It can be fun to see what they have over there in that section.  I probably wouldn't have noticed this unassuming little bottle, but Keith heard I was looking for marmalade and found it for me.

The brand is Welsh Lady and I can't say enough about it.  Aside from being the lightest, most balanced marmalade ever, the verbiage on the jar is written in both English and Welsh.

If the classic question, "Voulez-vous couchez avec moi, ce soir?" were put to me with the promise of such a petit dejeuner the next morning, I might have to seriously consider the offer.

Breakfast and reading - a grand tradition

While breakfast makes for a perfectly delightful shared repast, there is also a long tradition of the solitary breakfast, which is often accompanied by reading material.  Depicted here is beautiful correspondence from my friend elin who is living in Lyon, France.  Right before she left it had come to light that we both adore receiving real live mail, and so we have been sending things to each other transatlantically over the past several months.  Also pictured here:  Cinnamon toast.  Cinnamon toast is the poor man's cinnamon roll, but it is pleasant in its own right.  This particular version incorporates seven-grain bread, Turbinado sugar and organic cinnamon.  The key is to take the toast out of the toaster oven just before it's done, butter it, and return it briefly into the oven, turned off but warm enough to melt the butter.  Generously spoon the cinnamon sugar and perhaps return it one last moment for the sugar and butter to blend.  For me there is an illicit thrill in the crunch of the melting sugar, a pleasure not available in its more refined cousin.

Daylight savings (Sunday breakfast at noon)

Fresh ground almond butter on seeded toast, drizzled with clover honey, sprinkled with a few crystals of Pink Himalyan rock salt.  Sliced yellow apples.  Classical music.  Bird songs.  Hot coffee.  It sure doesn't feel like afternoon.  Daylight savings messes with your head.  At least there's breakfast.

Guest breakfast

My niece Alison came to visit on a school break.  When I asked if there was anything she wanted in the house she immediately enthused, "Eggs!"  Apparently the food service at school only serves powdered eggs and she was dying for real fresh eggs.  She insisted on preparing breakfast for us, an Israeli dish called Shakshuka. 

Ali chopped up onions, peppers and tomatoes and sauted them slowly with tumeric.  It creates a lovely soupy sauce in the pan.  Then with a spoon she makes slight grooves in the sauce and breaks eggs into that, covers the pan and lets the eggs poach in the savory sauce.

The eggs and sauce combination are spooned onto toast with melted cheese.  We used my grandma Nettie's old blue and white dishes and I told Ali a bit about Nettie, her lovely Russian Jewish accent, the fact that she sewed all of her own beautiful clothes, and that once she hitchhiked, wearing a full-length pink sequined gown of her own making, to a family bar mitzvah when she missed her bus.  I love breakfast.

Two item breakfast (and one of them is a beverage)

Met my friend Sally at Foster's Market in Chapel Hill.  Fresh baked orange walnut scone and hot coffee.  My theory of self-serve coffee is to take about a quarter of a cup at a time.  That way it's hot coffee.  There's a reason those old fashioned diners used to serve coffee in those short, shallow cups.  Kept the customers with hot coffee.  The mug thing just doesn't work for me.  It's easier on servers - fewer refills - but for us lovers of piping hot coffee, it's not happening.  Self-serve = hotter better.

Sally had a latte and house-made granola with fresh fruit.  I like the half-and-half strawberries/bananas thing they put together here.  I tend not to be a big granola fan.  But if I have it, it has to be awesome homemade stuff and I pretty much prefer it as a dry snack.  It turns the milk sweet and I find it cloying and unpalatable.  But Sally seemed to like it and we talked about everything and then took a long walk in the rain along Bolin Creek.  I love breakfast.  It makes the rest of the day okay.

I dream about this stuff

Morning sun and coffee, brown bread, dried organic mission figs, brie.

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Morning sun and coffee, brown bread, dried organic mission figs, brie.

Simplicity is the food of the gods

Toasted pecan raisin bread, goat cheese, perfectly sweet strawberries

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Toasted pecan raisin bread, goat cheese, perfectly sweet strawberries

It was inevitable

To say I have a thing for breakfast is an egregious understatement.  I need my first meal of the day to be breakfast, even if that meal doesn't happen until 5 p.m.  I don't need anything elaborate, but there are certain qualities that signify breakfastness.  With this blog I will be investigating just what those qualities might be.

Eggy French toast made with fresh orange zest, warm maple syrup and a sprinkle of crushed Pink Himalayan rock salt. Fresh sweet oranges. Hot coffee.