The Toast of the Town
- Mia S
- Nov 28, 2018
- 3 min read
Today's Holidays: Red Planet Day, National French Toast Day
Fact of the Day: The tallest mountain in the whole solar system is on Mars!
Website of the Day: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/16895/fluffy-french-toast/
Food is said to be a uniting factor: estranged friends tell each other about their lives over spaghetti, bread, and wine (and maybe cheesecake for dessert), families gather for the holidays among ham, mashed potatoes, and stuffing, couples fall more in more in love over shared appetizers, and new friends form deeper connections, and perhaps add to their collection of food instagram stories, as they eat grilled cheese and tomato soup. While I strongly believe in the power of food to bring people together, in my personal experience, there has always been something special about breakfast in particular. I have the best memories of my dad cooking elaborate breakfasts, consisting of omelettes, french toast, potatoes, and corn beef hash, on his days off from work.
When I would smell the cinnamon from the french toast and hear the shuffling of pans on and off the burner and in and out of cabinets, I felt some rush of childish excitement, and no matter what I had to do the rest of the day, typically hours of homework and studying, nothing could tear away my joyful anticipation. My dad would make my omelette with just cheese and potatoes and he’d make a special egg white omelette for my mom. The corn beef hash was mostly for my brothers, but the seasoned potatoes were for us all. And then there was the french toast, made of thick bread and coated in sticky syrup, or sometimes the french toast would be substituted with pancakes or waffles. When it comes to breakfast, there’s the savory foods, the eggs, potatoes, and corn beef hash, and then there’s the “Big 3” sweet foods, as I like to call them: french toast, pancakes, and waffles. My allegiance typically lies with french toast (unless I’m at iHOP, in which case I must get the original buttermilk pancakes with strawberry syrup), and so today, on National French Toast Day, I want to take the time to celebrate this third of the Big Three.
First, in a rather unconventional, but delectable way to eat french toast, one of my go to bagels is the french toast bagel. My youngest brother, Sean, introduced me to the wonder of combining french toast into a bagel, as he would always order it at my dad’s store, Bagel Bazaar. Stubborn in my routine, I refused to mix it up from my plain or cinnamon raisin bagels with cream cheese, but then my dad came out with new dessert cream cheese flavors, one of which being oreo cream cheese. I first tried the oreo cream cheese on an oreo bagel, and though delicious, it was a bit too much oreo for me, so I ventured into unknown territory again and ordered the oreo cream cheese on a french toast bagel. The blend of powdery sugar sweetness and hint of cinnamon from the french toast bagel with the smooth oreo cream cheese, resembling that of the Oreo Dream Extreme Cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory, redefined the meaning of both french toast and breakfast.
I take after my dad in that I love fruit toppings on my Big Three, and there is no exception for french toast. My favorite way to eat french toast is with powdered sugar, sliced strawberries, and warm syrup. Throughout high school I ran cross country and track, and after practice, my teammates and I loved to eat dinner at the two local diners: Hightstown Diner and The Americana. I went through this breakfast for dinner phase that lasted months, in which I would order my strawberry french toast every time we ate at one of the diners (which was usually once a week, sometimes twice). I still love the idea of breakfast for dinner; There’s something so thrilling about its unconventionality.
While we may not all agree that french toast is the best of the Big Three, I’m sure that at some point or another we have all enjoyed french toast in our individual way, either with fruit topping, butter and maple syrup, strawberry syrup, stuffed, or maybe even in bagel form!
Whether you enjoy french toast or not, National French Toast Day goes beyond the sweet, toasted bread. To me, it’s about the beauty of breakfast as a whole: the place that it has in my memories, the effect that it had on my friendships, and the rush of excitement that I still feel when I go home from college over break and smell cinnamon from the french toast and hear the shuffling of pans on and off the burner and in and out of cabinets.
Happy National French Toast Day! How did you celebrate? Comment below or send in a picture to nationalholidaymovement@gmail.com ! #FrenchToast #Breakfast #BeHappy
Comments