Breakfast

I think breakfast is my favorite meal of the day. Maybe it’s because I’m pretty much a morning person. And I like to eat. It’s also the coffee—I need to take it easy with caffeine so breakfast is when I have my one fully-charged cup. Also I’m a fruit-and-bread eater, and many breakfasts feature those two items.

Now that the work on my kitchen is done and I have an official breakfast bar, I’ve been enjoying sitting there in the mornings, one eye on the squirrels and birds in the backyard. It’s winter, which means hearty, filling food: oatmeal, pancakes, French toast. Two favorite recipes of late have been for oatmeal baked in a pie plate (it looks like dessert!) and a fruit-filled pancake baked in a half-sheet (this thing is huge).

Of course, I change things. The banana version of the oatmeal pie is fine, but I’ve made versions with 1 cup applesauce plus a couple of chopped apples as well as four liquified pears–both versions are more moist and rise a little higher.

In the case of the sheet pancake, I pretty much followed the recipe. Lot of berries and bananas.

fruit=studded pancake baked in a half-sheet pan

The recipe states six servings, but I stretch it to eight

Slices of half-sheet pancake topped with sliced bananas

 

In other news, I’m laid up with the stomach bug that’s going around—yea! I feel bad for Gaby, whose pacing around and could probably use a walk. Not for a couple of days, I’m afraid. Temperature’s up into the mid-30s, which means melting snow and mushy backyard. It’s a little early for Mud Season here in northeast Illinois. I’m betting on more cold and snow later on. February’s good at that.

And my iPhone 7 finally went the way of my ancient Air—its processor would no longer handle some of the code floating around in various websites and apps so it would run hot, burn through memory, and occasionally crash. I probably didn’t help matters by using it while it charged—I didn’t realize it was a bad thing to do, but now I do. Anyway, I now have an SE 2022, which handles the same apps and sites with ease. It’s the same size as the 7, so I could use my old case. Not a huge number of bells and whistles compared to the numbered iPhones, but I still balk at paying major appliance prices for a telephone that upgrades so often that it practically falls into the category of ‘disposable item.’.