Good morning!
Do you all get a little supplement with your morning paper called Relish? Relish is one of those throwaway magazine supplements that have proliferated in latter years as newspapers have abdicated most of their responsibility to their readers. This one is about food, and today's issue is about breakfasts. Ours comes out on Wednesday, "Food Day" to the SD Union Tribune...The photography is excellent, and the recipes sound good.
The cover to the magazine today is about bacon and eggs and it adds a side of baked tomato. When I saw this picture I remembered an article I read in the early sixties about Irishmen and Americans and their heart attacks. The Irish ate bacon and eggs and sausages every day and hardly had any heart attacks compared to the Americans. The article, which was in the New York Times, I think, attributed the difference to the fact that these Irish men who were studied rode their bicycles everywhere they went, as opposed to the Americans who drove their cars. Another item occurs to me now. The real English or Irish breakfast isn't just bacon and eggs; it is bacon and eggs and tomatoes and mushrooms. Potatoes too sometimes. But let's think about those tomatoes and mushrooms. Isn't it possible that the addition of this fresh fibrous food to the breakfast converted it into a more salubrious menu?
My grandmother made yummy French Toast. Her method was to use eggs, beaten with a little milk (that is so it will sink into the bread), salt and pepper, and fry. I guess she often fried in bacon grease. If not, Crisco. This French Toast was always served with sliced tomatoes. Nothing sweet. No syrup. No sugar in the eggs. French Toast served with good sliced tomatoes is DELICIOUS. I never even saw French Toast served in a sweetened way until I grew up. Don't you all think that the addition of sliced tomatoes might make the fact that the eggs and bread were fried somewhat less dangerous? Anyway it's an acquired taste that we also see in Mexico where tomatoes are often added to an egg breakfast, along with onions and chiles. A savory combination, and more healthful perhaps than just laying down that sausage or bacon and egg in front of somebody.
The second person plural I have been using in those paragraphs up above is written as you all, but I don't mean to address you all...I mean to say, you-all, which in my Texas childhood was one hyphenated word with the emphasis on the first syllable. YOU-all....Now persons from the more purely Southern states like Louisiana and Georgia and so on, say, "y'all," with the emphasis on the second syllable. I just write it yall in my emails to save energy. But that was not what we said, there in the Central and Southern parts of Texas in my childhood. We always included the "all" in the second person plural of address, but the accent was as I said. "YOU-all," two distinct syllables with the accent on the first syllable.
Well, I could write more, but himself has arisen and is prowling around looking hungry. The bacon is in the pan and beginning to fry, so I will have to terminate this quickly. I was going to tell you about the pleasure of receiving an unexpected gift of wine from an acquaintance at church (now a friend!) after a chat at the Annual Luncheon a few weeks ago...what a kind thing to do, actually purchase the wine we were discussing and bring me a bottle of it!
And there was more pleasure this past week, with an invitation to a mid-day dinner with some old friends whom I've not seen much of in recent years. The food was very very good. The main dish was carne con chile, which is just like chili con carne but the pieces of meat are bigger. Really.
Well, I had to abandon ship and finish up that bacon before it burned, so didn't finish this post without an interruption. I don't mind interruptions except for the fear that I will get blown off the site if I don't stick right with it. But I did go into the kitchen, feed my husband, make myself an egg fried in the same (clean) skillet and wrap it in a tortilla that was toasting over the gas flame next to the skillet. The reason the skillet was clean was that I use Spectrum Spray Grapeseed Oil to grease the skillet and it is such a superior product--it will leave the scrambled egg skillet almost clean. I sprayed a little more and threw in my egg. No tomato today, though. I will go into the pantry and look for a tomato juice to drink. I was going to write about memories of Mexico all this week but it just hasn't come up. I will scatter those memories over a number of days, off and on, soon. Maybe starting tomorrow. YAZZYBEL
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