Most of you know I’ve been a fan of Paul Gerald since he first started writing for this site. Over the past year or so, with pressure from lots of his friends, Paul decided to self-publish his book: Breakfast in Bridgetown: The Definitive Guide to Portland’s Favorite Meal. I’ve never met Paul, but he sent me a preview copy, and I liked it enough to write a clip for the back cover. I also sat down and read the whole thing. As I’ve said on this site before, his pieces are not really reviews per se, but more portraits of various cafes and restaurants: the atmosphere, the crowd, what the menu is like, prices, and the type of people that go there. This makes it a thoroughly entertaining read.
I asked Paul if I could have a copy to give away on this site, and he was happy to oblige. Here’s the catch: you need to write about a food memory – preferably breakfast but I’ll except anything. It doesn’t necessarily have to be about food; perhaps the people you were with or a bad date, traveling the world. Just a memory that the rest of us will find entertaining. The winner will get an autographed copy of Paul’s book; heck, maybe he’ll even buy you breakfast. Let’s keep the entries to 400 words or less. We’ll narrow down the entries and let our readers vote for their favorites. Email your stories to me, or post them here in the comments.
In the meantime, if you just want to pick up a copy of the book, you can do so at Paul’s website, or over at Amazon.com.
When the movie “Moonstruck” came out, I still thought that Nicholas Cage was cool. I loved the movie, and one of the most memorable scenes was the breakfast that Cher’s character is served by her mother. This was after Cher’s memorable night with Nick, but where she is still planning on marrying Johnny. The plot line is really secondary to the moment where a close-up shot of the frying pan is shown. In the pan is a bunch of butter, two slices of country loaf (ciabatta?) with holes in the middle, and what I always took to be red bell peppers frying next to them. Olympia Dukakis, Cher’s on-screen mom breaks two eggs into the holes in the bread, and the dish fries up. Moments later, they add salt and pepper and are eating away. I was in high school at the time, and remember trying to recreate this meal at home on a Sunday morning. My father – the big experimental chef in the house – was keen to see what I was doing, and to participate/supervise in some way. I seem to remember him leaving me alone on this one, but partaking in the meal. We both enjoyed it, and would talk about ways to improve the dish. Those moments with my dad are some of my fondest memories of high school: warm kitchen, a cup of tea, and bonding with my pop.
I have tried to make this dish several times since then, but I have never been able to recreate the moment with my dad, where we both bit into our toast with eggs, and contemplated the morning.
Confession: I’m not a big “breakfast” person and prefer more of the French route of coffee with a bit of toast or something really light like fruit and yogurt- usually saving my extra calorie allotment for dinner and ah, hem cocktail hour. That generally means I don’t understand Portland’s obsession with waiting in the rain for 45 minutes for some eggs, or the delight in ordering a giant plate of carbs-fats-protein all messed up on a plate with a side of caffeine. So I can appreciate Paul’s book for the simple reasons that when I do go out for the early meal, I can hunt out ambiance, location or whatever suits the situation at hand (like a large group of visiting relatives). Or, I can find the best of what I do like: The best French Omelet, the best bloody Mary , the best grits, the best non-breakfasty breakfast food (like Vietnamese Pho), and so on. Congrats Paul on your book. I’ll be sure to pick it up.
Thanks, CBF! One thing I was happy to find out in researching the book was that there a fair number of good breakfast places with little or no lines, even on the weekends. I’m with you — waiting 45 minutes to be fed is obscene, and some of the places people wait for (like the Cricket) just make no sense at all. I’d rather be at Simpatica when they open at 9.
I’m suprised there isn’t a waiting list for this book.
Growing up, my mom did most of the cooking. But one of my dad’s few but magnificent specialties was fresh buttermilk pancakes, which we feasted on every Saturday morning without fail. The rules were simple:
1. No pancakes until you’re dressed.
2. First one up gets the first pancakes.
When I was young, the pancake trick was a huge motivator. When I was a teenager, I traded the first pancakes for a few more sweet minutes (OK, I mean hours) of sleep…but as long as I got dressed eventually, I still got my pancakes.
Most of the time we had ‘regular’ syrup, but every once in a while we would wake up to discover a bottle of Smuckers Boysenberry Syrup on the table. Never raspberry, or apricot, but always boysenberry. And if were really, really lucky, the old-fashioned belgian waffle iron came out…yep, the cast iron kind that had to be heated on the stove before using. To this day, my idea of heaven has to involve deep, crusty-yet-tender squares of waffle with plenty of butter and boysenberry syrup.
But my fondest memory of my dad’s pancakes has nothing to do with eating them.
We had chickens, and all the food scraps went to the chickens. My dad would take any extra batter and cook it up before throwing it to the chickens. But on one particular Saturday, he decided he’d had enough with making individual pancakes. From that point on, he would dump all the batter into the pan, and make one giant “chicken pancake.” I joined him in the trip to the chicken pen, and he let me fling it over the fence and into the yard. Imagine my surprise when one hapless chicken eagerly positioned herself underneath the aerial feast…only to have the “chicken pancake” land squarely on her head! She couldn’t see a thing, and couldn’t understand what was wrong, so she just staggered around the yard until her pancake hat became a poncho. As you can imagine, this was a huge hit, and we began to request “chicken pancakes” every week (or at least until the hens got wise to the trick).
So, dad, thanks for eighteen years of Saturday pancakes, gallons of boysenberry syrup, and one beautiful “chicken pancake” morning. And thanks for still making me pancakes when I come to visit!
My earliest food memory is of eating matzoh brei. My Grandma could do things with matzoh, eggs and butter that would make Mr. Rucker or Mr. Paley doubt their own talents. I can still here the sound the matzoh made when it hit the pan. I can still smell the browning butter. But most importantly, I can still see my Grandmother’s face light up as she watched us devour the fried matzoh. In 1995 she was diagnosed with lung cancer and was given about 6 months to live. In November I flew to New York for what I knew would be my final visit. When I arrived, I found a very different Grandma then the one I had known for 18 years. She was slow, tired, and needed help with the simplest of tasks. On the third day of my visit I awoke to the sound of clattering from the kitchen. Could it be? I listened for a few more seconds. Yup, I just heard a silverware drawer open! How lucky I am. My Grandma loves me so much that she is making me matzoh brei when she can hardly stand for more then a few minutes. I snuck into the kitchen with a big grin, and there was Grandma, stirring her glass of metamucil. No matzoh brei for me that day, but that’s okay. I was just glad to see her.
Scrambled eggs: they are my ulitimate comfort food and the very first thing I ever learned to cook. My grandmother had a wood burning stove at our summer house that would throw off insane amounts of heat, a life saver since summers in Maine are pretty cold. Every morning my grandfather would light the stove a few hours before I got up so I would wake to the sound of popping wood, laughter, the snap of newspapers, clinking dishes, and frying bacon.
By the time I got up most of breakfast had been consumed so my grandmother decided that, rather than make more I would learn to make it myself. And so on that blue speckled stove, in a 6″ iron skillet I discovered the magic of cooking. The incredible alchemy of cracking an egg into a sizzling, butter filled pan, and watching white and yellow opaque liquid turn to a solid mass of creamy, slightly brown, fluff. And then scarfing them down, blowing out as you chew since they are almost too hot to bite into; the sensation of red-hot food sliding down your throat so that you could almost swear you feel them hit your stomach. Amazing.
My recipie has since varied (the butter is no longer) and the cast iron skillet has dissapearred, but the motions are the same and thus my initial reaction to the goat cheese studded or cumin scented scrambled eggs I whip up in my own kitchen, is sheer happiness.
For a long time, there were just four of us cousins, born within a three-year period. The bitterest argument at Grandma’s house was over who got to sit in the two rattan stools at the breakfast bar. The losers had to stand at the counter, between the sink and the cupboard that seemed to hold every single item of cookware neccesary to rustle up grub for 12 hungry people. We each got a cutting board, a sipping cup of milk, and a ball of dough.
Grandpa was at the stove, singing big band hits of his youth and cooking steak ranchero in a cast iron skillet on the farthest burner. Grandma had the other three burners going, bacon in a big frying pan, eggs in another, and in pride of place, the tortilla skillet.
With a few practiced flicks of her wrist, she could make the little white balls of dough into large, flat circles. All of us kids tried to imitate her with our rationed ball of dough, but we usually gave it up as a bad job and used it as an edible Play-Doh, building fantastical creatures and bringing them to Grandma to be cooked as best as she could figure on the skillet.
By the time our culinary sculptures were ready to go on the griddle, the adults were ready to sit down and eat. Us kids had been picking at food for about two hours, snatching pieces of bacon from the plate and getting our knuckles rapped for it, and we were plotting to steal the remote control and turn the television from golf to cartoons. Grandpa swooped into the kitchen, grabbed Grandma around the waist, and danced her out into the living room, singing through her protests about flour and his Sunday suit.
We woke up at the top of the island Capri to a beautiful sunrise. No, camping is not allowed on the island. Climbing out of our sleeping bags we soaked in the morning light and packed up our backpack as the memories of the night before washed over us– hiking up the hill with a backpack full of wine, final arriving at the top and drinking and laughing with friends around the campfire until we passed out in our sleeping bags under the stars.
Our stomachs growled with intensity as we made our way back down the hill to Anicapri. Some went shopping for famous handmade sandals or corral necklaces. We were on a hunt for breakfast. As a student living in Florence, Italy for the year and making weekend trips to over eighteen countries, at this point, we had very little money left. But today, on the sun-kissed island off the coast of southern Italy, we treated ourselves – when would we be coming back!? Pancakes, waffles, omelets with juicy, ripe tomatoes – this was not the typical Italian breakfast of espresso and una brioche eaten standing up that we were used to. We spent a leisurely amount of time discussing the highlights of the evening and what the rest of the day might hold. We savored our fresh-squeezed orange juice, ten euro a glass, from an island that is known for citrus!
In our disheveled appearances, having just woken up from a night spent at the top of the hill after an intense climb to the top, we surely enraged the locals and waitstaff. But, the breakfast lingers in my mind as one of the most luxurious of my life and the most excellent example of the freshness, perfection of flavor and vibrance of Capri.
The sun, sinking lower and lower, reflects off the crystalline water a million times a second. Red fades into orange fades into pink fades into blue fades into finally black depths. The castle keeps sentinel over the tiny town this evening, just another night watch in its schedule of thousands over the centuries. A man peeks from within the fortress, which now provides the town with a different form of comfort. From his perch, he tosses stale bread into the glistening sea. It begins to churn white as hundreds of small fish battle for a crumb or two. Slowly the bread dissipates, and when it’s gone, the waters calm. Peace returns and just the hypnotic lapping of waves is audible, like there was never any disturbance at all. A nearby fisherman, his face leathered but content, watches the scene for a minute, then returns his attention to his pursuit. He reels in a small prize and calls out to his companion. “Gatto,” he says melodically, almost in pitch, and the cat ambles over to examine his dinner. He bats at the fish a few times, as if to inspect its quality. Satisfied, he sits and dines like a king. The sun acquiesces and disappears into the water, leaving traces of muted colors. They too fade, and all is quiet.
During college, I found myself homeless for one night. My boyfriend was a couch surfer at the time, so we decided to sleep in the basement of my job. After many tears, we both managed a decent night’s sleep.
We had very little money, but decided to treat ourselves to the Byways cafe. A simple breakfast of sunnyside up eggs, extra crispy potatoes, and enough black coffee to choke a dead horse was just what we needed. We spoke of future plans, the state of the country, the growing threat of Aliens in the farmlands, but thanks to our quiet corner in the restaurant, all worries and fears from the night before were erased.
We’ve been together now for five years, and look back on that time with nothing but happy memories.
My brother projectile vomited at the Original Pancake House when he was three (and I was four). We didn’t go back for a few years. I guess the folks were a little embarrassed. I still love the Original Pancake House, projectile vomiting not so much.
–mcz
Egg-In-A-Cup. If Gramps knew how to cook anything else, he never let on. When his grandkids slept over at his house there was always something better than the usual cereal and milk for breakfast. He was a regular Ford Motor Company production line of egg cookery, as there was usually 3- 5 of us sitting there at any time. Soft boiled eggs, buttered white bread in a fancy-shmancy grown up china soup bowl, seved to hungry, adoring grandkids He brought each bowl seperately, so we could watch him scrape the egg out of the warm shell onto a bed of torn white bread. The yolk broke into the bread and we stirred it gently so as to get both bread and egg in every bite. Never has food tasted so good as when made with love. Thanks Gramps.
When I was a child I was woken up nearly every Sunday morning to my dad flipping the switch on the giant, jet engine of a wheat grinder. Sunday was cottage cheese pancake day!
I grew up in a tiny 2 bedroom, so the kitchen was about 2 feet from my bed. It was literally shake us out of bed. My dad would pour in a mix of wheat berries, rye, and whatever other grains struck his fancy into the machine and a lovely, speckled flour would be the result.
By this time, all 4 of us would be in the kitchen. My mom making the coffee, my little brother underfoot, and I would climb on the counter and start to whip the egg whites. When they were whipped my dad would gently fold them into the batter.
Soon we would all be gathered around the table piles of cheesy pancakes, jars of homemade jam, local honey, and the Sunday paper to start our day.
Christmas Bagels
One might not associate the high Christian holiday celebrating the birth of the baby Jesus alongside that quintessential Jewish baked good with a hole in the middle: the bagel. Yet, that’s exactly the holiday tradition in my multi-generational Southern with a capital Confederacy, Episcopalian household.
I can’t really pinpoint when the tradition started, or why. I have a hunch it had something to do with some very TIRED parents who, after a night of midnight church pageants and choir activities then having to put together this bicycle or that playhouse kit gift from SANTA with nothing but a confusing hand tool at 1 in the morning and a set of DIRECTIONS IN CHINESE wanted nothing to do with overly excited children AND having to make a big breakfast first thing Christmas morning.
Besides, in my suburb, filled with a large population of Orthodox, Conservative, Reformer and other Jewish denominations, the only damn thing open on Christmas were the Jewish bakeries. Unless Christmas fell on Saturday, the Sabbath day of rest of course, in which case we were screwed and had to buy our bagels the afternoon before. Yet what bakeries they were! The scent of fresh Challah or rye bread stacked one upon the other, tempting sweet treats like fruit and nut filled rugeleh or hamatashen, or if were were lucky, those addictive black and white cookies. But the real prize was the unmistakable yeasty, malty scent of the fresh bagels themselves and their cousins, onion filled bialys. The bakeries almost always had traditional deli counters too, featuring cream cheese, big half sour pickles and what seemed to my wide eyes a thousand different kinds of smoked fish – from the pink glistening nova lox, to chopped white fish spread, to the velvety skin on sable, and the dead eyes staring straight at your own, whole smoked chubs. These were real Jewish bakeries, the kind rarer than rare on the west coast, but ones that were nothing but the natural ritual and rhythm of my childhood with large old men screaming at each other in Yiddish and always somebody’s Bubba pinching my cheeks while we were standing in line waiting with our little numbered ticket.
So the tradition of Christmas bagels was born sometime before my memory can grasp it. The first kids to wake up drove with my Dad while my Mom stayed home to prep OJ, coffee for the adults and get the table set. If you were up, but the other kids weren’t, you went. No discussion needed, bundling up against the cold rust belt winter and listening to booming Christmas music jingle belling all along the way in our big old boat of a car, the Mercury Montego MX. This trip to the bakery as a kid was mostly because, as any child knows, waiting even 15, 10, 5 minutes to open your Christmas presents is just sheer torture for both you – and certainly your parents who have to listen to you whine and watch you fidget until IS IT FINALLY TIME TO OPEN THE CHRISTMAS PRESENTS FROM SANTA? Getting in the car, driving, picking up the bagels and then driving home was a fun distraction for everyone.
Bagel choices at the bakery were always the same, they always seemed to be still warm from the oven, and we always picked the same ones: plain, a few onion, a pumpernickel just in case, a sesame or two for my sister who was the only one that liked them, and a whole bunch of poppy seed. We rarely bought the garlic ones for some unknown reason, and heck no, these bakeries never offered anything like blueberry or jalapeno flavors. Pfft.
My Dad however, despite my mother’s warning not to, along with the block of cream cheese, would always buy some of the smoked fish, and often the most expensive stuff. Like clockwork every year standing at the counter while they were finishing our order, he would suddenly say, “just a little Sable too and sure, why don’t you add some whitefish and we might not have enough lox, please add a 1/4, no, a 3/4, no better make it a full pound please.”
The bagels were never, ever packaged in plastic, nor should they ever be since the steam in the plastic bags ruins the beautiful toothsome exterior. No, these bagels always came in large paper grocery bags and although we were only a family of 5, sometimes 9 tops with visiting relatives, my Dad would buy at least 2-3 dozen. He’s like that about food.
By the time we got home, the table would be set, everyone sleepy eyed but awake and our family got ready, saying a little prayer beforehand such as, “rub a dub dub thanks for the grub, yeah God!” Or, our standard, “God is Great, God is Good, Let us Thank Him For Our Food, Amen.” Episcopalians like to get to the point. Then my Mother would scold, then laugh and always say, “Honey, you are Gilding the Lilly,” in that proper clipped Southern lady voice of hers when she saw the bounty of smoked fish he had bought alongside the bagels. That was the cue for the start of our Jewish Christmas breakfast.
The only twist? It wouldn’t be a Southern Christmas without ham. Where some Southern families might be eating ham and biscuits, or ham hash, or creamed ham and toast or Eggs Benedict for their Christmas breakfasts, we were having ham, cream cheese and bagels. Sacrilege? Who knows, but mighty tasty indeed.
My mom moved the 3 of us kids in a U-Haul truck from Los Angeles to Oregon in the late 1960s after my dad ran off for good. We had very little money and my mom was somewhat overwhelmed with the transition from stable family to single parent household. She was lucky enough to find a source of free USDA surplus cheese, powdered eggs and powdered milk, a trinity of ingredients that became the backbone of all our meals for a while. Breakfast was always scrambled eggs with lots of black pepper and a tall glass of reconstituted milk. Occasionally, we’d get day-old bread from the Oroweat outlet store in Salem for toast. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to keep us going and as a family, we were doing ok even though it was quite different than what the other kids at school would eat every morning. Today, whenever I have scrambled eggs for breakfast, I think back to those times, reflecting on the past 40+ years of life and feel great knowing that my brother, sister and mom had our own unique way to starting each day.
Some GREAT entries here! I think we’ll leave this open a few more days, and then close it. Paul Gerald and I will pick our favorites, and then let you vote for the winner.
On a trip through Italy in 2000 with my girlfriend, her brother and my best friend in college, we found ourselves in the small town of Monterosso on the coast after taking an unplanned detour. We had decided on only staying one night, but after meeting 3 Irish “gypsies”, a couple from Australia and a bloodthirsty gang of Italians at the bar that night, we decided to stay a little longer. Our days were spent waking up to the sound of people “hooking up” in the hostel at all hours, pouring ourselves wine in the hot sun on the beach, drinking like our lives depended on it at night and best of all…eating foccacia bread from the local bakery every day. You had to get it before 1 PM, because siesta time was on after that, but when you got it…damn. Olives, rosemary, cheese and sun-dried tomatoes were just a few of the things we would find on a warm, fresh morning/afternoon snack. Simple yet refined. Hands down the best bread I ever ate. I ate fantastic food in Italy (Florence being another incredible place), but none of it could beat that bread on those three days in a little town on the coast. I will probably never be in that same place again, and that’s ok, you know? That way, the bread and those three days will never diminish in intensity in my mind. I will never have to compare that time to another time that I went there. For me, that will always be the best bread and the best 3 days of a vacation that I have ever had.
Some of my earliest (and best) memories involve breakfast at the Grandparents.
Their farm is near Coos Bay on the Southern Oregon Coast. Driving from Portland we’d arrive there fairly late at night. The last twenty miles of the trip would be through heavily wooden forests and farms that were homesteaded 100 years ago. Dinner was most likely a late stop at the A&W just outside of town, or more often cheese, crackers and peanut butter consumed on the drive in.
But in the morning, without fail buttermilk pancakes would be cooking. The recipe handed down in the family came across on the Oregon Trail. Or maybe the back of a Bisquick box. The origin changed, but they were always cooked from memory.
We’d eagerly wolf down a dozen of the silver dollar sized cakes each. Smothered in syrup and peanut butter then washed down with a glass of fresh milk no one left the table until stuffed to the gills. Of course there were always left overs. Rarely did we even make a dent in the plate.
The grand parents could never say no to any animals given to them. Living on a farm it just felt natural, so breakfast would be finished off by feeding the multitude of animals. The dozen or so dogs would line up expectantly, and we’d take turns throwing left over pancakes to them, more would be given to the pigs and chickens as part of their breakfast. Some would even be left for the cats, although more frequently the raccoons got them first. Dishes would be licked clean by both children and dogs then washed and put away.
After wards was the excitement of starting in the daily farm chores. Breakfast like that made even the youngest of us feel ready for them, no matter how dreary and rainy the weather was.
Almost thirty years later, those pancakes still appear on the table every morning. Secretly, they remain the highlight of breakfast and will elicit a “quick” 400+ mile trip to get some. We could make them ourselves, all the grandkids have the recipe. But none of us ever will.
true, sappy story:
i had just moved to portland after fleeing san diego and was spending a beautiful summer falling in love with a new city and a new boy. after discovering the charming eaterie known as pix had a brunch option, we somehow managed to drag ourselves out of the house on a crisp september morning to eat the finest brunch i had ever had. looking out the window at the yellow leaves against the bright blue sky, i suddenly became overwhelmed with joy and gratitude. my eyes filled with tears. “i’m so glad i’m not in san diego anymore,” i said.
Through the restaurant window I can see the parking lot. I can see the sun encasing the tables for two by the ceiling high windows and their thick fire engine red curtains pulled perfectly aside. There is a dusting of crispy leaves jumping around now and then out there where I left my car before I came in here to eat lunch. I am licking a silky sweetness from my lips that I was not prepared for. First, the crunch, the burnt sweetness, then I begin to feel it in my eyes. They throb a little, they take in the outside, the parking lot, the leaves and I will never forget. They take in the beautiful mess that is left encased in frilled white porcelain. Much like a three legged puppy chasing a toy, it is misshapen but still beautiful, this ‘crème brulee’ as they call it. The burnt sugar topping is mostly gone, as I quickly crunch it away, sending more shivers to my eyes and then my fingers and yes, finally toe bound. Vanilla flavored pudding’ness, the last little bit of bites that keep the lucidness of the moment going. I am smart enough to know not to admit that I’ve never crossed paths with such a little dream of a dessert. I keep my moans softly to myself; they are nothing compared to the ear caresses of Sinatra softly serenading us all as we eat. Makes me think of Christmas. Makes me think that 1998 will be a very good year.
In a word “breakfast” makes it all too clear
that we should be so hungry with sleep still in the air.
We stumble to the kitchen, The coffee stirs our mind.
Memories of the night before are now all left behind.
The eggs sit in the pan, for now they are still goop.
The pancake batter ready to make it’s first kerploop!
The butter starts to fry, the eggs are turning white,
The batter starts to bubble to the syrups rapt delight.
The plate comes from the oven, warming up the hands,
and the smells that follow get my attentions full demand.
Biting into pancake and then that syrup comes along. It makes the
heart and head want to break out in a song.
To sing the praise of breakfast, the beginning of the day
with anyone you cherish, it makes you want to stay.
You eat too much, it’s lovely, but then sadly it is true, that the biggest memories
of breakfast come mostly from the conversation – not the “chew.”
Here’s to breakfast! Here’s to conversation! Here’s to the start of a fresh new day!
The big joke in our family is that my dad can’t cook. My mom is is an excellent cook but that’s another story. Every so often my mom would leave something in the oven for my dad which he usually managed to not get right. I think the problem stemmed from my mom leaving notes such as “remove when brown but make sure it’s cooked through” which were much to imprecise for my dad, the chemist. However, there was a time that my dad came through in a big way.
Back when I was in junior high and high school, my mom and sister would inevitably have to leave for a week during the summer for some big baton competition. This left my dad alone with me and my brother. On one of these occasions, he asked how us boys would like pancakes for breakfast. We exclaimed that pancakes would be awesome while looking at each other and thinking, “Can dad really make pancakes?” He then reached for the Krusteaz pancake mix only to discover there was none left. Uh-oh! He promised us pancakes and there’s no mix. Somehow he managed to find a recipe in one of the many cookbooks and magazines that my mom owned (no internet in the early 80′s). Whew! As he’s gathering the ingredients, my brother and I give each other another incredulous look as he’s grabbing sour cream. What is he doing? He proceeded to put all of his years of experience as a chemist to work mixing the batter and making the pancakes. What resulted were a batch of the best homemade pancakes that my brother and I ever tasted.
Everyone in the family still thinks that my dad can’t cook (including himself), but my brother and I know better.
It was one of those late October crispy Saturday mornings and I was happily asleep under the flannel quilt my grama and grandpa made me. I sleep with the windows open so that awesome Portland smell of freshly rained on streets and doug fir and a bit of sun would have woken me up in a few minutes anyway if he hadn’t.
I smiled as he sat down on the edge of the bed, his coat still on over his pajamas, and announced, ‘I brought breakfast!’
He placed a cup of lovely Stumptown coffee in my hands and as I took a sip and told him he was the best guy in the Universe, he grinned and held up a hand, ‘But wait! There’s more!’
I got up and followed him out to the dining room table. He’d even put flowers on it. I sat down to covered plates and asked him ‘And what do we have for breakfast?’
With a flourish he lifted the covers and there, wonder of wonders was a feast!
‘Our menu today,’ he said in his best snooty waiters voice, ‘includes the following: Eggs Benedict from Zells, Biscuits and Gravy from Mothers, Oven roasted potatos from Genies, Coffee from Stumptown, Fresh squeezed orange juice, and I squeezed them myself, Blintzes with sourcream and home made raspberry preserves from Cup and Saucer, Fresh fruit from the Farmer’s Market, Toast from the homemade bread at Fullers.’
We sat and conversed and drank and ate and played footsie under the table in our pajamas. Obviously it was so much more than we could finish but it was incredible and one of the best mornings I’ve ever had.
And then….
I woke up.
ps: ok, its not a memory but I wish it was! :)
Breakfast when I was a kid was a weekend event – cold cereal before school didn’t count. And every weekend it was pretty much the same thing. Daddy would get out his cast iron skillet, place it on the gas stove and start frying. Always eggs. Sometimes bacon, occasionally ham – and if it were fishing season there would be fresh caught rainbow trout from his 4 am jaunt on the lake.
But the thing I remember most was his fried potatoes. If I were really lucky he would grate them, then dump them in the hot grease and make them oh so crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. I’ve tried forever to duplicate that. 4 out of 5 times I almost get it. That 5th time is heaven. Makes my arteries harden just to think about it…
Daddy grew older and ended up having a triple bypass. But he never lost his love of fried potatoes. When he reached the age of 88, I moved to Tucson and lived with him and my stepmom. Over the course of 16 months I perfected the fried potato. Not the grated wonder that my dad turned out; but a thin sliced, perfect circle of crispyness. With a soft center that melted in your mouth.
I would get up at 6 am when Daddy came out of his bedroom to get the newspaper, and we would have a cup of coffee together while I peeled a couple of small potatoes. Then I would slice and fry them up – using that same cast iron skillet and a gas stove. When I served them to him in his recliner, he would eat them with his fingers – savoring every bite.
My stepmom always said that I was spoiling him. But I like to think that I was feeding his spirit – transferring the love that he gave his baby girl right back to him, by way of a fried potato.
Thanks to everyone who entered! I’m closing the contest at this point. Paul Gerald and I will sit down this weekend and pick our favorites. Then it will be up to readers to vote.