to be honest

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breakfast, food, honesty, poppy-seed honesty, smiles, stuck between my teeth, teaching

Breakfast is said to be the most important meal of the day, it gives you energy for the day and kick-starts your metabolism into gear, helping you break down those mean calories. Because of this I always make sure to start my day with a large cup of tea and a bite to eat. Normally it’s a slice of toast, a bowl of muesli or now, with the cold season knocking on the door I mostly opt for porridge.

But yesterday I had a poppy-seed bagel, lightly toasted and with some lovely chocolate spread to sweeten the deal. I thoroughly enjoy it and had a happy smile on my face as I left for work. I hurried to the bus, grinned at the bus-driver and flashed my teeth at the handsome chap on my right.

Then I stood in front of my students and tried to impart wisdom in a lively and interesting fashion, smiling, grinning and talking all the time. But when the students left and I went to wash my hands I caught a glimpse at myself in the mirror. I was horrified, right there for the whole world to see was a big, black poppy-seed stuck in between the gap right next to my two front teeth.

Suddenly my whole morning flashed before my eyes, the many smiles, grins and teeth-flashing making me cringe with embarrassment. But then I got angry with all those people I had met, strangers and students alike, after all WHY had no one told me? Where was the poppy-seed honesty that I thought was an unspoken rule of life?

I started thinking about how we always uphold honesty as a pillar of society and hate it when people lie to us. But funnily enough the only time I ever hear “to be honest” it is always followed with some sort of critic or negative statement. But simple honest interaction seems to be not the done thing, sadly and it leaves us all running around with seeds stuck in our teeth, our skirts tucked into our pants, tomato sauce stains on our shirts and toilet paper stuck to our shoes. Not a pretty sight!

So please the next time you see me with a bugger in my nose, something stuck in my hair or lipstick on my tooth please tell me and I promise I will practice poppy-seed honesty when ever I can too!

 

pancakes for breakfast

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breakfast, breakfast food, cooking, food, pancakes, photos, quote

When I woke up this morning and ambled down to the kitchen I realised that I had forgotten to buy bread yesterday. As I stood staring into my empty breadbasket I decided that I wasn’t in the mood for muesli or porridge and baking bread would just take to long for my grumbling tummy. So pancakes it would be!

Whipping up eggs, milk and flour into a creamy batter and melting some butter in a pan only takes minutes and as the pancake turned golden brown I cut up some last strawberries, added a few blueberries and sprinkled them with a hint of sugar.

As I munched on my breakfast I could help but let out a sigh of joy, there is truly something very satisfying about pancakes – yummy comfort food in a flip of a pan.

There is hardship in everything, except eating pancakes

Baptist preacher Charles H. Spurgeon

dead toaster revived

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blew a fuse, breakfast, cooking, food, photography, soup, toast, toaster

It finally happened, I have been expecting, anticipating it for months now, my toaster died this morning. It did so in quite a dramatic fashion. The toast popped and all lights went out, leaving my kettle half boiled and me a  little stunned.

I flicked the switch on my fuse-box and all electrical goods beeped, peeped and bleeped back to life and I put the kettle back to boil. As I munched my toast my mind wandered and I forgot what had happened not 20 minutes earlier and put a new slice into the slots and, no surprise, the same thing happened again. the toaster popped out the lightly baked bread and blew the fuse again.

I resigned to the fact that the toaster had lived out it’s useful life, after about eight years of toasting and popping not a bad investment. Too busy to do anything much about it I left the dead toaster where it lives on the kitchen counter, to be disposed of at a later time

But then the strangest thing happened.

When I came back from lecturing I reheated the leak and carrot soup I had made last night and without thinking popped the last slice of toast into the toaster to dip and thunk. I made my tea, waited for the pop and buttered the toast, when suddenly I remembered the fiasco this morning. Somehow my toaster has revived itself and will live to pop for another day.

revived toaster

 

porridge and tea

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breakfast, Comedian Steven Wright, cooking, food, health, healthy options, porridge, quotes, tea

We all know that “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day” or so they say. I have no idea if that is true or not but I do know that the word break-fast literally means to interrupt those hours of non-eating.

The benefit of that is that this kick-starts your metabolism which in turn raves-up your engine, so to speak,  burning calories and setting the pace for the rest of the day. Of course this does depend on what you have for breakfast, a sugary donuts or a muesli bar isn’t really going to work, but wholegrain toast, sugar-free muesli and porridge, fruit are just a few options that do.

I like a little bit of variety in the mornings but I do tend to tend to stick to muesli or porridge. And especially now, with the weather being so wet and miserable outside, a hot bowl of porridge with some cranberries and cinnamon and a steaming cup of tea always seems to warm my spirits and my tummy at the same time.

 

I went to a restaurant that serves ‘breakfast at any time‘. So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance.

Comedian Steven Wright

sunday morning french toast

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berries, breakfast, brown sugar, cooking, food, french toast, french toast recipe, home, recipe, slices, taskes, toast

After an extremely busy week and a late night I decided I needed a little something special for my Sunday breakfast

So with a few eggs, some milk, a sprinkling of sugar and two slices of toast I made myself some yummy French toast with berries.

It’s a treat I really enjoy but don’t make very often. So as I sat and munched on my late morning feast , enjoying the flavours of sour berries and sweet syrup mixing on my tongue, I decided to continue the day the way I had started it, slowly and with pleasure.

Now with the Sun still warming the afternoon air I can finally finish my window sills (I didn’t get around to them yesterday) and maybe, in a little while, I’ll make myself a cup of cappuccino and drink it while sitting on my blue bench and let the sounds of the city wash over me.

For those who’d like to try here is my french toast recipe (for 2-4 slices):

I whip up two eggs with some milk (maybe 200ml but I just pour at will, it needs to be a nice runny mixture, more milk means less eggy), add a little bit of brown sugar (about 1-2 tablespoons) and some cinnamon.

When the mixture is nice and mixed I dip one slice of toast into it and let it lie while I melt butter (much better than oil) in a pan.

I make sure to turn the bread, but carefully because as the toast soaks up the batter it turns really soft and tears. Once the butter has melted I place the slice of bread into the pan and let it cook. I make sure to turn the bread in regular intervals as I want both sides to be equally crispy.

While the first slice is frying I dip the next slice and keep going until all the batter has been soaked up by slices of toast and fry them up.

Place the toast on a plate, dribble syrup over the slices, add some sprinklings of vanilla sugar (others just use plain powdered sugar) and add fruit., my favourite are berries but any kind give s a nice yummy contrast to the bread.

attempting almond milk

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almond milk, breakfast, cooking, food, ground almonds, health, healthy-living, milk products, miscellaneous, random

A friend of mine recently went of gluten and most milk products. And when I saw her eyes sparkle and face light up when she talked about how good she felt I decided to give at least the almond milk a go. I had tried the gluten thing in the past and it made no difference what so ever, but almond milk sounded delicious.

Like all good housewives of today I ‘googled’ almond milk and how to make it. So I soaked my ground almonds in water for two days and because the recipe told me I could flavor it I added some vanilla. After about 48 hours I blended the whole lot and then it was done.

Now I have to admit that I wasn’t impress, my porridge didn’t taste great, quite watery and the milk didn’t work in my tea at all. So after a few days of attempting almond milk I switched back to the mundane ones from cows.

However now I am stunned at why so many rave about almond milk, and I was even more perplex when I saw that a liter of almond milk costs  €2.30.  Maybe I didn’t do it right, maybe I got it wrong somehow. So puzzled and willing to give it a second chance I am asking can someone tell me how to do it better?

pop-tarts and parties

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american goodies, breakfast, flappers, food, friend, frosting, party, pop-tarts, poptarts, roaring 20s, strawberries

I was at a roaring twenties party last night and with whiskey sours, gin gimlets and highballs on offer we definitely were defying the prohibition, taking full advantage of the speakeasy in my friends living room. With light jazz bringing out the inner flapper in us we chatted, drank, danced and some even smoked cigars till the wee hours of the morning.

It was past four when I crawled into bed, my head and limbs a little bit heavy but with a happy heart and a prize sitting on my kitchen counter ready for me to devour this morning: pop-tarts, the frosted strawberry kind!

The birthday girl and flapper instigator is American and a good while back the two of us were in a specialist sweet shop in town, which was stacked to the rafters with American goodies. At the time I remarked at how in films or sitcoms people always seem to eat pop-tarts for breakfast and that I had no idea what they were and that I was curious what the whole hype was about. Sadly the shop only sold ones that my friend didn’t approve of declaring that if I was going to try them they had to be the right kind: frosted strawberry.

Time has past and I have to be honest I haven’t really been losing sleep over my pop-tart inexperience. But last night my lovely, quirky and very special friend presented me with a box of pop-tarts imported all the way from the USA. So this morning my palate has enjoyed the sweet stickiness of pop-tart delights.

I did what I was instructed to do, try them in both the toasted and un-toasted variety and I was warned that they are quite sweet. But I have to admit pop-tarts taste better than I thought they would, even if the sweetness does make your teeth crawl and a sugary aftertaste lingers on the back of your tongue, stuck there no matter how many sips and gulps of tea you take.

The un-toasted variety seems to be less sweet but also less strawberrish, although I would argue that there probably aren’t any real berries in the pastry, just more brightly coloured and highly flavoured synthetic look-a-likes. But then when has that ever bothered the American food industry?

So with a new day starting off with a new experience I think it is safe to say that it has not been wasted, even if I decide to stay at home and not do much. And while I enjoyed my excursion to pop-tart-ville today, for tomorrow I think I will revert back to good old toast and jam, the more traditional and less sweet breakfast of choice.

The art of breakfast

Tags

breakfast, family, food, health, love, pyjamas, ramblings, thoughts

Since my sister and her kids have been staying I have been making breakfast the old-fashioned way … boiling eggs, setting the table with napkins (even if they are the brightly coloured, paper kind) and having a selection of cereals and bread ready for every taste, want and need. I even make herbal tea and normal black tea and I have both apple and orange juice ready to be poured.

We sit (still in our pyjamas), chat and take our time in getting the day started. No rush, no pressure just people sitting together in (more or less) harmony being a family and enjoying each others stories, squabbling over who gets the last piece of toast or dropping jammy knifes onto laps and floors.

I love these little comfy family session, possibly because as a single meals can be a lonely time and more often than not I will put on the TV to keep me company. I love the warm feeling of community and love that sits in my tummy while I chat, eat and just enjoy the people around me.

Interestingly enough studies do show that by sitting down as a family, children are less likely to develop bad eating habits or even disorders, they also learn manners and how to interact with others. But what really is surprising children who have regular family meals are also less likely to smoke or take drugs … who knew?

So as I remove the remnants of another lovely breakfast, I am happy about how my day started and it looks to continue in the same way

 Family Dinners

Eating Together