So, now is the time of year when the academic year closes, students move out of the dorm, the campus dining halls shut down, and I'm left to make my own meals ... more or less when my life starts resembling that of a regular adult's just a little bit more than usual. It's also the time of my life when I am doing little else but sitting in my home or my office working on my dissertation, and I'm not doing any very involved baking or cooking at all. And it's also a week when it's been rainy and cold, when hot coffee and warm, buttered toast sound especially perfect. Some of the most delicious things don't require much to make happen.
So here are the two big, fat slices of toasted semolina bread I ate for breakfast this morning, just out of the toaster oven. In the process of getting buttered. With the very cold butter straight from the refrigerator that needs to melt a little on the warm toast before it can be spread.
And here is the very buttery toast ... oops, some of the crust broke off in the process of buttering. And hey, those seeds really make it happen. Check out that sesame on the crust.
And here is the very rich French-pressed coffee with cream and sugar that went along with the toast. You can just barely see some of the silt from the French press in there. I don't mind.
And here is the Swiss black cherry jam that went on the warm, buttery toast. (And which, by the way, I had a devil of a time photographing; here's the best I could do on this one). It's for sentimental reasons, really. I ate a lot of toast during the childhood years I spent in Eastern Europe. In fact, when I'd visit my family on breaks during college it was one of my favorite things to make, especially in the middle of the night when I had jetlag and couldn't sleep. Any neighborhood store sold fresh bread in loaves like the one the toast here came from, and we usually had some in the breadbox. And since it was Eastern Europe, a lot of the jam you'd find in stores was imported from various European countries. This Swiss brand was one of the ones I used to eat at home as a kid, and for those midnight snacks later on. I was pumped when I saw it in my overpriced neighborhood grocery store in Cambridge a while back. And I buy it sometimes. Makes me feel like I've got all the time in the world, the way you feel when you're the only one in the house wide awake in the middle of the night, and you've got nothing so important to do the next day.
Yep, pretty good morning, all in all. Toast is awesome. Now back to work.
So here are the two big, fat slices of toasted semolina bread I ate for breakfast this morning, just out of the toaster oven. In the process of getting buttered. With the very cold butter straight from the refrigerator that needs to melt a little on the warm toast before it can be spread.
And here is the very buttery toast ... oops, some of the crust broke off in the process of buttering. And hey, those seeds really make it happen. Check out that sesame on the crust.
And here is the very rich French-pressed coffee with cream and sugar that went along with the toast. You can just barely see some of the silt from the French press in there. I don't mind.
And here is the Swiss black cherry jam that went on the warm, buttery toast. (And which, by the way, I had a devil of a time photographing; here's the best I could do on this one). It's for sentimental reasons, really. I ate a lot of toast during the childhood years I spent in Eastern Europe. In fact, when I'd visit my family on breaks during college it was one of my favorite things to make, especially in the middle of the night when I had jetlag and couldn't sleep. Any neighborhood store sold fresh bread in loaves like the one the toast here came from, and we usually had some in the breadbox. And since it was Eastern Europe, a lot of the jam you'd find in stores was imported from various European countries. This Swiss brand was one of the ones I used to eat at home as a kid, and for those midnight snacks later on. I was pumped when I saw it in my overpriced neighborhood grocery store in Cambridge a while back. And I buy it sometimes. Makes me feel like I've got all the time in the world, the way you feel when you're the only one in the house wide awake in the middle of the night, and you've got nothing so important to do the next day.
Yep, pretty good morning, all in all. Toast is awesome. Now back to work.
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