Pain Perdu

I can’t talk about how we made pain perdu without talking about the dinner we had the night of our arrival.  Well it was typically what people consider french: baguette, cheese (camembert), wine (because I’m legal to purchase and drink alcohol here! responsibly of course), strawberries, and chocolate.  It was deliciously low-key, something much needed after 12 hours of non-stop travel.

The next morning, when we were contemplating what to have for breakfast, I finally understood.  With the bread we had leftover from the night before, which had now become considerably drier and harder, we would make french toast.  Pain perdu, if you will.  With the revelation of this plan for breakfast, the reason pain perdu exists struck me to the very core of my being.  And as I mixed together an egg, milk, sugar, and vanilla extract and soaked the slices of bread, I felt a deeper connection with my breakfast than I ever had before.  I kid you not.

The bread that was thought to have been lost, had been found.  Within our stomachs.

Pumpkin Crepes

This fine and lovely Saturday morning I awoke dark and too early at 5:45 am.  Alas, these are the sorts of thing one has to deal with when your bed time the night before was 7:40 pm.  But I would never complain, especially since it gave me the chance to make some pumpkin crepe batter, let it rest for a generous hour, go through the ceremonious first couple of faulty crepes, and have a small stack ready just in time for my family of early risers.

Being pumpkin crepes, they came out thicker and moister than their non-pumpkin counterparts.  This made them perfect for folding, drizzling with maple syrup, and a handful of toasted pecans.

 If only I woke up at 5:45 am every day.

Pumpkin Crepes

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups whole milk at room temp
• 4 eggs at room temp
• 3/4 cup pumpkin
• 2 tablespoons melted butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, freshly ground if possible
• 1/2 teaspoon ginger

Preparation

1. Mix together the wet ingredients in a bowl (one with a little spout for pouring if possible!)
2. Mix together the dry ingredients in a small bowl so that the spices are evenly distributed.
3. Mix the dry into the wet a little at a time with a whisk.
4. Cover and let rest for 30min-1 hour.
5. Preheat a non stick skillet over medium heat.  When hot, season the pan with butter and then pour 1/4 cup of batter, swirling around to make an even and thin crepe.
6. Cook for 1 minute, then flip over (careful!  since they’re moister they’re more fragile) and cook for another 30 seconds.
7. Continue cooking the rest of the batter, seasoning the pan with butter before each crepe, and stacking the cooked crepes on top of each other on a large plate.
8. Enjoy with whatever fillings/topping your taste-buds desire!

The most delicious meal of the day.

For the love of all things delicious, I would like to take a moment to speak about the most important meal of the day (or so they say).  Whatever “they” say, I am a firm believer in a gloriously decadent and delicious breakfast.  I believe cereal should be banished to a moldy, dark, dank dungeon as soggy and disgusting as itself.  Toast is boring unless supporting a generous layer of good quality salted butter.  Pop tarts are for gastronomically uninspired sugar addicts.  Frozen waffles are a mournful representation of what a waffle really is.  Frozen french toast is a crime against breakfast food.  Oatmeal from a packet is mushy, textureless, artificially flavored, shameful shadow of what a bowl of oatmeal can be.  And supermarket muffins are an oversized, over sweetened, over artificially flavored excuse for a carb.

Now that I’ve laid all my breakfast food prejudices out on the table, let us move on to what a breakfast should and can be when one isn’t wasting calories and taste buds on bland and boring breakfast items.

There are many a breakfast that would transcend any of the ones aforementioned.  However, the one I had just this morning did just fine in terms of transcending pop tarts.

This is the kind of transcendental breakfast I’m talking about.  The kind that includes a piece of Niman Ranch canadian bacon, one egg scrambled in the remains of the bacon, and a freshly baked pumpkin muffin (or three).

The kind of breakfast where you transcend social norms and the limits of your stomach by eating three muffins with a nice helping of salted butter on each.

Yeah… that happened.

All I’ve got left to say is:

Respect your breakfast.

French Toast

Forget the toast that comes from the freezer and dares to call itself french.  I know, it’s tough to end such a long relationship, but there are so many more frenchies in the toaster, real frenchies.  And none of  them come from the freezer.  Sure, he could be if front of you within moments of you calling his name, but how happy was he to be there?  In fact, often times he even acted cold.  Especially once you though you had warmed him up but then he ended up getting cold towards the middle.  Really, it’s time to end this relationship.  It’s going nowhere but the crumb tray.

 

Meet French Toast.  He’s crispy and sweetly caramelized on the outside with a pleasantly fluffy and light personality on the inside.  Take a bite out of this one, and I assure you, you will fall in love instantly.  He pairs well with anybody.  Banana person?  He’s bananas for bananas too.  Powdered sugar kind of person?  Even better, he loves those.  Like to go swimming in maple syrup?  He’d love to take a dip with you anytime.  Do you have a crispy outer shell?  Sometimes he feels like he himself is covered in cornflakes.  A little nutty?  Meet your perfect match.

You no longer need to eat breakfast alone because within minutes, French Toast will be ready for breakfast.  What a great guy.

French Toast - you are two slices of bread, a couple of eggs, a splash of milk and vanilla, and a few moments away from meeting the wonderful creation that is French Toast.

Ingredients

• two slices of whatever bread-like substance you have lying around (one day I hope to try banana bread french toast, I know, I have such admirable aspirations)
• two eggs
• 1/4 cup whole milk.  Add more if you would like your french toast less eggy, less if you like it more eggy.
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• a pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• any other spices you would like to add/ cornflakes/ sugar for extra caramelization.
• additional toppings (bananas, toasted nuts, powdered sugar, maple syrup, honey, etc.)

Preparation

1. Melt butter in a skilled over medium-high heat.
2. Mix all ingredients except for the bread slices in a shallow bowl.
3. Soak the bread for about 2 minutes on each side – how long you soak will depend on the thickness and type of bread you use.  Just use your best judgement.
4. Fry the slices of bread on the skillet – about 2 minutes per side.
5. Top with whatever you desire.
6. Love french toast.

Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal

You know those little brown packets filled with over-processed oats and pathetically, dry, shriveled up dehydrated apples, and stale cinnamon?  Well, this isn’t it.

Take the flavor of instant oatmeal and multiply it by 100.  Then take the the time it takes to make instant oatmeal and multiply it by 10.  Flavor outweighs time by 90.  Therefore, if you wake up just 10 minutes earlier you can have a delicious, healthy, hearty breakfast that will start off your day better than a pathetic little packet of dry oats and apples could.  And that is the extent of my mathematic abilities.  Here I come SATs.  Especially if I have this brain-fueling oatmeal before, those SATs are going down.

Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal

Ingredients (serves 1)

• 1/2 cup dry, rolled oats
• 1 cup milk (any kind you have)
• tiny pinch of salt
• two pinches of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and ginger
• 1 apple cored and diced into small cubes
• 1 Tablespoon ground flaxseed
• 1 tablespoon chopped pecans
• 1 Tablespoon brown sugar (divided in half)

Directions

1. Put oatmeal, milk, and pinch of salt into a small saucepan over medium high heat.
2. Once it boils turn it down to medium and simmer.
3. While oatmeal simmers, heat canola oil (or butter) in a small skillet over medium high heat and toast pecans in toaster oven at low temp (200-250) until lightly browned.
4. Toss the cubed apples with a pinch of the spices and 1 1/2 teaspoons of brown sugar.  Sauté apples until caramelized (about 5 minutes).
5. When almost all the milk is absorbed add a pinch of each spices, ground flaxseed, toasted pecans,brown sugar, and apples.  Mix until combined, spoon into a bowl, and enjoy your well-earned breakfast!