French Toast

Breakfast is the one meal where I don't feel guilty about eating a lot. After all, it's the most important meal of the day, right? When I have time to make a big, sit-down breakfast, I like to go all out and hit my major food groups--meat, eggs, carbs, and coffee. Yup, I think that just about covers it.

The last time I made French toast was before I started med school so I had aallll the time in the world to make everything fancy and gourmet. I even baked my own bread. If I hadn't gotten accepted, I would probably be making my own Nutella and grinding my own powdered sugar in a mortar and pestle. Luckily, nowadays, I doing something a little more productive with my time. The raisin bread I bought from Safeway makes for some pretty darn good French toast, and I don't even like raisins. Maybe it's the power of butter and maple syrup. Other than PB&J's I can't think of any other good uses for this bread, so it looks like I'll be making a few more servings of French toast with the rest of the loaf. Oh, I guess I could make bread pudding!

As for the rest of the breakfast...
Steven and I both love hash brown patties and prefer them over the more homemade shredded potato variety. I'd like to blame McDonald's for getting us hooked on deep fried processed potato in patty form.

Then, we have our breakfast sausage, taking the place of bacon, the usual suspect. What can I say, living on the edge today.

And finally, one of my personal favorites. A fried egg over medium with soy sauce and a sprinkling of furitake flakes. It's way better than plain old salt and pepper, trust me.

French Toast
6 slices of bread (something soft like sandwich bread, challah, or brioche)
1 large egg
1/2 C milk or half and half
1 Tbsp granulated sugar
1 Tbsp flour
1 tsp vanilla extract
pinch of salt

In a bowl whisk the egg, flour, and sugar together until there are no lumps of flour remaining. Add the milk, vanilla, and salt and mix until smooth. Pour into a pie plate or small tray.

Melt a half to one tablespoon of butter in a skillet or griddle, depending on the size of your pan. Dip a slice of bread into the batter and let each side of the bread soak for approximately 3 seconds. Make sure there are no dry spots on the bread. Soak only enough slices that you can cook in your pan at one time. Fry each side on medium low heat for 3 - 4 minutes, or until the bottom is a crisp golden brown. Flip and cook the second side until crisp and golden brown. Repeat for the remaining bread slices.

Serve with powdered sugar or maple syrup.

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Guest Post! Shanghai Drunken Chicken

Shanghai Drunken Chicken at Rasa Malaysia

Yes, I'm still here. No, I haven't forgotten about this blog. I know the crickets have been chirping here more than I've been posting. If only I have more free time because right now it's virtually non-existent.

I can't remember the last time I've been sick but a bug was bound to get me sooner or later. I woke up this morning with the whole nine yards--fever, sore throat, cough, and aches all over. I tried to catch up on my reading but that wasn't happening. I should have known reading about urine and kidneys gets nowhere when you're sleep-deprived and feverish. So, instead of studying, I resigned myself to spending the day in my pajamas with chicken noodle soup, catching up on food blogs and many issues of Bon Appetit (au revoir Gourmet, you will be missed!).

This is long overdue but check out my guest post on Rasa Malaysia! I was torn between drunken chicken or crab cakes; drunken chicken won but I did make some crab cakes after Bee got me thinking about them. This project was 3 months in the making due to a combination of my hectic schedule and perfectionism. The recipe was far more seasonally appropriate when I started it in July. Bee, thank you for being a great host and for being so understanding about my numerous delays in getting this done.

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Heirloom Tomatoes and Bacon

The sandwich of summer, the BLT.

I think my laptop caught me drooling over the shiny new Macbooks because it decided to die last week, two days before classes started. Awesome. After running every recovery, repair, and restore program, the consensus was that the hard drive irreparably failed. I've noticed that Dell computers start having problems after a year, suspiciously only a few days after the one year warranty expires. Luckily, I purchased a four year warranty with this computer but that means three more years before I can finally make the switch over to Macs.

Absolutely everything was on that hard drive-a year of schoolwork, previous work files, blog stuff-everything! And stupid, stupid, stupid me didn't back anything up! Before I launched into a full-blown panic attack once I realized I had lost all of my beloved wedding photos and invaluable lecture notes, Steven was able to salvage everything. Whew! Crisis averted! But boy did I learned my lesson. Always back up on an external drive!

Because I was able to get all my files, I'm taking this as an opportunity to post some old recipes and photos I never got around to. These heirloom tomato photos are from summer 2008. This blog has seen three summers now and there isn't a single post about heirlooms. That's just criminal! Well to be fair, most of the time I eat them plain, no salt, no balsamic-not terribly exciting. I don't cook much with them but they are fantastic in sandwiches, especially the BLT. With so few ingredients, there is absolutely no excuse to use subpar tomatoes in a BLT. I'm one of those people that will add as much as I can to a sandwich (Thanksgiving is the best time for that). I try to show more restraint with the BLT because it's a treasured classic, but more often than not, the BLT evolves into a BLAT (avocado), then that turns into a BLATT (turkey). I always stop myself there otherwise I'll start adding cornichons and furitake flakes.


I love all the funky colors and names of heirlooms.

This really isn't a recipe because who needs one for a BLT anyway? If you're a purist, go with white bread and mayo. I like whole wheat and Dijon instead. Or if I'm feeling extra fancy, some homemade brioche, a rare treat. The bacon weave is no longer groundbreaking but it does make for an extra bacony BLT and who care argue with that?

I'm sure someone will make one blanket-sized one, if it hasn't been done already. Mmm tasty.

Summer is coming to an end and school starting again was quite the rude awakening. I don't think I fully adjusted to being a first-year medical student and now you're telling me I'm a second-year? And I have to study all weekend when it's sunny and 80 degrees outside because I have a test on Monday? Welcome back to med school I guess.


If only I could sleep in the sun all day like Mr. Bunnington.

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