I screwed up. All I wanted to do was to make some delicious French toast for breakfast for my family. It didn't work out. Here is a public service announcement for how you should not make French toast.
We are staying at a bed-and-breakfast. At this bed-and-breakfast we have the opportunity to gather eggs from the chickens every morning, as we did this morning. What could be better than to cook up some French toast with farm fresh eggs? But you said you're staying at a bed-and-breakfast. Why on earth would you be making your own breakfast?
Ok fine. We are staying at a Bed. No breakfast provided, but our place has a kitchen that is stocked with the basic essentials. So we cook our breakfast.
I don't have all of the ingredients on hand that I would normally use, but I'll make do, especially since, after a morning of doing farm chores, I can actually hear my family's hungry bellies growling in three-part harmony.
I crack the fresh-from-the-hen eggs into a bowl. Ok now, let's see... where is the cinnamon? Oh there is no cinnamon. Ok, I manage to find some nutmeg and add that instead. This is going to be all right.
All right now it's time for the vanilla. Oh wait no vanilla either!? All right all right. I find an orange and juice it into the bowl instead. Ok so we have orange-nutmeg French toast in the making. This is surprisingly shaping up to be a recipe I might want to repeat someday, and I feel pretty good about it until...
No. Maple. Syrup!
Theres no way that my family will eat French toast without maple syrup. There's got to be a way to save this meal. I search through the cupboards and I finally find an unmarked container filled with sugar and I decide that I will sprinkle the sugar on the French toast so it will form a sweet crust while it cooks that will leave the desire for maple syrup a thing of the past. I am a culinary genius. I mentally give myself a high five. And a hug.
I start frying up the French toast and Magnanimous Mom that I am, I let the kids have the first two pieces to come off the stove, and I cut them into neat little squares. The sugary crust didn't much form on the kids' pieces, so I decide to amp it up by pouring even more sugar on the rest of the batch. While the rest is cooking, I tend to the kids to help them but they tell me they don't want to eat any more. But I thought you were all near starvation, why aren't you eating this fabulous gourmet breakfast? Then I realize that the other pieces are getting close to burning, and pop them off the stove and plate them up for me and my husband.
I am so ready to tuck into my Iron Chef-esque creation and we dig in.
Hmm...I think maybe the bacon grease that I used to oil the skillet added a disturbing amount of.....saltiness!?!
What is going on!? ::Gulp::
I look up to see my husband still slowly chewing - but not actually eating - his first bite, with a very confused look on his face, and that's when I realize.
I hope that this public service announcement may lead to both the labeling of containers and the verification of a food's identity before you dump it onto your meal.
All images by @jaymorebeet unless indicated otherwise. Captured on my iPhone 6s on 7/1/2017.