Basic Breakfasts
Olive Oil Toast With Fresh Berries, Breakfast At Its Best
What I’m enjoying most about the summer is being around my family, close to the sun, with access to the beach. I love our shared meals, the fruit we always have in the house, my long post or pre-breakfast bike rides. Making breakfast for the family feels like less of a chore and more of a gift, dinner is more of a chore - if I’m being really real. I’m used to cooking for one, cooking for four every night is some parenting stuff I’m not trained in - so I’d like to believe I’m doing my best. I’m also in a spiral of thinking about why it is I don’t want children and never wanted any, but that’s beyond a basic breakfast post and best reserved for therapy - the therapy I cannot afford right now.
Moving on …
My parents always made it a point to keep fruit in the house because we were fruit eating machines for breakfast, snacks and post dinner. When I was heavier I ate an abundance of fruit and fruit pies, delicious. Mom also worked in a bakery so there was bread, there was always bread. Olive oil? Hi, we’re Italian, olive oil courses through our veins with wine and the two undoubtedly commingle in our arteries to keep us plump and alive. And, so, when I think of summer breakfasts, I can close my eyes and picture my Uncle Tony making olive oil toast - whether it was on grainy, leftover Italian bread or a bialy. Olive oil and a bialy where the Jew and the Italian meet. I can see Uncle Tony standing in the kitchen of their summer house in Riverhead, Long Island - close to the toaster and waiting with his plate on the the kitchen island, the island always crowded with placemats, baskets, bills, bread and olive oil. When the bread was hot out of the toaster oven he would freestyle pour the olive oil a top and would walk to the kitchen table with his serving. The simplicity of this act that I’d watch him perform and enjoy, because whether we were ready to eat or not, Uncle Tony made his toast for himself.
I stood close to the toaster and waited with my plate on the kitchen island, much like Uncle Tony, drizzling olive oil on hot toast and then slicing fresh berries on top. Strange? Maybe, I don’t know, I can be strange. If Panera is selling strawberry poppyseed salads with berries and balsamic, I can certainly smoosh fresh berries on my olive oil toast and sprinkle them with salt.
No recipe needed here, simply toast some grainy @daveskillerbread like I have here and drizzle with olive oil and top with a few fresh berries and a sprinkle of salt. Wanna be a protein machine, like the guy I went out on a date with two summers ago, he used to lift, and asked for MORE PROTEIN ON THE PIZZA, MORE CHEESE. So, you too can cheese it up. Add a tablespoon of fresh ricotta or farmers cheese to this toast for a breakfast game changer. A happy balance of hearty carbs and fiber from the bread and fruit, some fat from that olive oil and SOME PROTEIN with that cheese - for you folks that think you may pass out mid-morning if you don’t eat something that comes from an animal.
Happy morning from my parents kitchen in South Carolina, where I’m currently cooking and contemplating life choices, which is both scary and delicious.