Breakfast & The Battle Of The Wills And The Won'ts

In my ideal world, my ideal breakfast would be waiting for me at my table at 7 a.m., but since little about my world is ideal, next best will have to do. I wake up at around 7.30 and get out of bed an hour later - the hour between is spent willing myself to go to sleep; willing the doorbell not to ring; willing work chores to not crowd my mind; willing The Spouse not to make even the slightest noise as he moves around the house on his way to work; and sometimes even willing S, who helps me with the work around the house, to not turn up on time so I could sleep a little longer, and willing the world not to crowd into my consciousness during the extra time I hope to sleep after 8.30.

Naturally, all this willing needs an extraordinary amount of will power which won't happen if I sleep, so needless to say, I rarely go back to sleep, and am groggy, tired and unhappy when I finally open the door for S. Then we load the washing machine if The Spouse hasn't already done so and I set about the cooking. So you see, amidst the vegetables to be peeled, chopped and diced, the dal to be soaked and all this to be done before S leaves in the next couple of hours, there's very little time for breakfast.

One of the breakfasts I've come up with is a cheese slice melting over a fried egg. It's that simple. Spray some oil onto a griddle. Heat it and crack an egg on it. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Turn it over - I don't like runny yolk. Then put a slice of cheese on top and add a wee bit of salt and red chilli powder.

You can add an egg to this too. I haven't tried frying an egg atop a piece of bread - it will probably cook due to the heat on the bread and the heat underneath the bread if the stove is still turned on. Or you could take the less adventurous way out and simply top the bread with the egg and cheese assemblage.

breakfast Eggs Humour

In a Pearing Hurry!

My creation for AFAM-Pears looked like sludge, though a rather pinky, pretty version, and it held great literary possibilities for my blog. The dramatic sentence that was supposed to be the opening line of this post crumpled and withered under the pressures of the day, and I had reckoned without that great leveler and humbler – the Internet.

The Net seems to beat you to every smart, original thing you wanted to say or write or cook up. If Slush can be something edible, so can sludge, I told myself, thinking it was a sentence with great potential that would develop during the day. Sludge, I thought, was my creation, the name, at least, but Google ‘Sludge Recipe’, and voila, there’s a multitude leaping out at you.

This was intended to be a pear-apple-oats-and more smoothie for breakfast but I was too lazy to reach for the oats, so I cored a pear and an apple and whizzed them in the mixer with four tablespoons of curds/yoghurt and a spoon of honey.

Once I tasted it, I decided it needed more texture and added a few broken walnuts to it. (I didn't whiz it then - the broken walnuts stayed whole, if you know what I mean.)

Then I photographed it for a while.

Then I slurped it up with a spoon.

AFAM-Pear Curds/Yoghurt Honey Apple Walnut Sludge recipe Breakfast

Nutty Beginnings!

Hi, my food blog's finally cooking! I thought about the name for days and it came to me in a flash, then I got caught up with work and a holiday and then with several thoughts about what I should feature in the first post. I wasn't inspired to write about the everyday food I was making either because most of it was turning out brown, thanks to a certain masala I got from my wanderings last week. And everyday brown is such an uninspiring colour, and I wasn't sure it would reproduce well on the blog either!
So, here's a very simple, no-fuss breakfast I sometimes have and like to recommend - curds/yoghurt with nuts and dry fruit! It can double up as dessert as well, with a sprinkle of sugar or jaggery if you have a sweet tooth. And you can add any dry fruit you want - the dish in the picture contains raisins, walnuts and toasted sesame seed but other breakfasts have seen a mix of dates (makes it really sweet), pista nuts, almonds, cashews, peanuts, maybe even a slow splash of honey, though I've never tried that. My folks have a mixture of honey, ripe bananas and curds for dessert in a silver bowl; indulgent, but not for me. I tried it with a bit of nutmeg for a touch of the exotic, still think this nutty creation's better. There are no proportions, though I find it tastier when the nuts don't swamp the curds.
Bon appetit!