A TOAST to TOAST

WELCOME TO BUT FIRST BREAKFAST

Greetings one and all! This is the first post of But First Breakfast. I’m leaving Lonely Kitchen Chronicles behind to focus on breakfast, why eating breakfast is an absolute must for me, and how much I enjoy mornings.

If you’re new here, a BIG WELCOME! If you’re a returning reader…thanks so very much for your continued readership and loyalty.

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Breakfast used to be my least favorite meal. When I was young, I woke early but never felt hungry before school. Weekday breakfasts were fraught with pleas from my mother begging me to drink a glass of milk at the very least before leaving the house for school.

She meant well, my mom. She was a really good mom. Mom always knew what to say when things were tough, rarely raising her voice when she would have been right to do so. She was also somebody who showed her love through food.

She is the direct link to my love of food, my love of cooking. I too am one who shows my love through food.

Mom was probably itching to scramble up a couple of eggs for me on those mornings when I couldn’t face the thought of eating. Sometimes, she suggested a piece of toast, but the thought of eating anything made me kind of queasy.

But Mom knew if I went to school on an empty stomach, I would be too hungry to concentrate. She was right. Most days I could barely make it to lunch. By about 10:30, my stomach growling, I was solely focused on the clock, waiting for the bell to signal lunchtime.

And those glasses of milk she made me drink? I poured half of them down the drain when she wasn’t looking.

I’ve written of this before, about pouring those breakfast-y glasses of milk down the drain. But in case you’re new here, I thought I would mention it again. You should know just how much I used to hate eating breakfast.

It’s so crazy to me that now…I love eating eggs and toast for breakfast. Again, if you’ve been reading my posts, you know that I eat toast most mornings. Rarely a day goes by that I don’t have a piece of toast for breakfast. And there’s something about the mid-morning, when10:30 inevitably rolls around, my stomach still rumbles, telling me it’s time for a second breakfast.

I don’t know exactly when or why my hunger shifted to the morning but shift it did.

Today’s breakfast: Leftover blue corn veggie enchilada, beans and potatoes with a serving of trout. And my ever present morning toast with butter and raspberry jam.

I am someone who usually eats a first breakfast around 7:00, followed by a mid-morning second breakfast, and then lunch. My calories are front-loaded at the beginning of the day. Dinner is often snack-sized, probably the amount of food most people eat for breakfast.

Sometimes, because I’m just not as hungry in the evenings, dinner is a bowl of popcorn.

When I was in my mid-fifties, I moved to Vienna, Austria. The apartment was furnished but lacked a toaster. I bought a stove top bread griddle contraption that I used on the gas stove. It proved tricky, requiring more attention than just popping a piece of bread into an electric toaster. Admittedly, I burned quite a few pieces before I got the hang of using my new toast contraption.

Brustolina stove-top toaster from Fantes.com

Burning those pieces of stove-top toast kind of killed me. Not because I’m a former caterer and chef, or because my morning hunger made it difficult to concentrate. Burning those pieces of toast killed me because the quality of the bread in Vienna was, and still is, epic. Austrian bread, the kind you can’t get here is this country, is dense, sour, bold, and hefty. Austrian bread is a nation baked into a loaf.

Man, oh man, I miss that bread.

I’ve been back from Vienna for five years. Since then, my digestion has shifted too. Now, I have to be careful about how much gluten I eat. It’s really messing with my toast addiction. The work around is eating sprouted bread since it’s easier on my stomach. Sprouted bread is okay. Honestly, it’s not my favorite. It makes decent enough toast, but sometimes I want a piece of toast made from a bread I can really sink my teeth into. When that happens, I throw caution to the wind and open the gluten gate.

Like I did last weekend when I craved a dense, brawny bread, preferably with rye. A local bakery, Ihatov, had just the thing, a crunchy crusted sourdough rye. For two days in a row I ate that bread, toasted, slathered with whipped butter and my favorite raspberry jam.

On the third day, toast was my second breakfast at–you guessed it–10:30. But this piece of toast was a bit more substantial. I’d roasted some red grapes that were stashed in my refrigerator. If you’ve never roasted grapes, I highly recommend trying it. Their natural sweetness combines perfectly with a drizzle of olive oil and a bit of freshly ground pepper. After about 20 minutes in the oven, (I used my toaster oven), the grapes were not quite split in two, but they were wrinkly, like your skin when you’ve lingered in the bath too long.

Wrinkly, roasted grapes

The roasted grapes paired so well with Taleggio cheese, just one of the many options in my well stocked cheese drawer. My cheese drawer at the moment also contains English cheddar, Parmesan, Brie, mozzarella, and Gouda.

Anyway, the Taleggio and grapes made a just right snack.

Once my mid-morning hangries were alleviated, I patted myself on the back a few times. Roasting the grapes gave them a second life, another purpose.

Sourdough Rye bread with Taleggio and roasted grapes. A perfect pair.

Roasting fruits and vegetables that are less than perfect is a great way to bring them back to life. Roasting not only concentrates flavor, but their oven-induced wrinkles look intentional rather than a result of neglect.

I love that.

I love that cooking is sometimes a metaphor for life. That re-invention, re-purposing, acknowledging my appetite, my desire for good taste and things that taste good to me, is the ultimate way to fill myself up.