Pancake kisses, bacon hugs
THE SECRET OF EVERYTHING is out today! To celebrate, a love song to breakfast.
PANCAKE KISSES, BACON HUGS
Why breakfast is the secret of everything
I suppose I should confess upfront that I am a morning person. I wake up cheery, chatty and at the very first fingers of sunlight creeping over the horizon. I know you find this annoying. I know you wish I’d stop humming under my breath as I crack eggs and start the coffee, but I can’t help it. I was born a singing lark. This does, however, offer benefits to all you blinking owls and sleepy headed in-betweens.
Once upon a time, I had a job working the breakfast shift at an upscale diner. It meant getting up at 4:30 am to creep around the dark of my teeny-tiny house so I wouldn’t wake my roommate. I dressed in my uniform with its plunging neckline (an unfortunate feature of many waitress uniforms of the early 80’s), and braided my Rapunzel hair. In the cold dark, I drove to work in my clunker, feeling—yes, I admit it–smug that I was awake before the rest of the world. Here and there, a light clicked on in a kitchen, but mostly, the world slept on. Porch lights glittered against the velvet blackness of mountains on the horizon, the air was fresh. All was newly reinvented, and it was mine.
At work, I dove into the bustle of getting the place ready for the doors to open. It smelled faintly of cleaning supplies from the night crew, of baking biscuits and potatoes grilling. Every morning, I fell in love all over again with the empty stage of tidy, waiting tables, with the clatter of cooks prepping, and the heat of flatware straight out of the dishwasher. We waitresses made pot after pot after pot of coffee, filled cream pitchers; wiped down syrup dispensers and set out glasses of ice to fill quickly with water. We drank coffee by the gallon ourselves, and snitched bacon when we could get away with it. It made me feel important to create a world of efficiency and nourishment for the hungry humans about to stumble in and beg for coffee.
This passion for breakfast arrived in a roundabout way, I must admit. My mother, who is a very good cook under many circumstances, was born an owl, and she finds early morning painful, especially when her lark child rose well before sunrise and was known to dust siblings with flour or lipstick or explore—well, never mind. It was early, that’s all.
Because she loved us, my mother did manage to get up and fix us breakfast. She believed in a hot breakfast, but cooking anything much would have been dangerous considering her eyes were barely open. So she made hot cereal. Endlessly. Malto-Meal and Ralston, Cream of Wheat and a colorless, gluey oatmeal I loathed with the considerable passion of a toddler foodie. Thankfully, she left us to our own devices once we made it to late grade school and we never had to choke down porridge again.
Not the best circumstances to fall in love with breakfast, I know. The happy accident is that my mother briefly took a job at a manufacturing plant when I was about seven. The other three children went to my grandmother’s house for the day while I stayed home with my father and walked to school on my own.
Once in awhile, my father got dressed and took me to a little café downtown, where there were individual jukeboxes along the counter and at the tables, and we ate pancakes and eggs and tea. We sat at the counter on round stools. I flipped through the jukebox offerings as if I knew what they were while he flirted with the waitresses and they flirted back, and there was usually music playing, and cigarette smoke hanging in the air with heady notes of bacon and coffee and frying onions. I loved the food—little balls of cold butter on top of my French toast, glass pitchers of syrup, tiny tubs of jelly—but mostly I loved the time with my dad, having him all to myself. Afterward, my dad would drop me off at school and I’d head up the stone steps feeling warm and special, a girl who had extraordinary experiences.
I fell in love with breakfast then and there. All good breakfasts, but especially a good café breakfast. And from that love was born a book.
At the heart of my new book, The Secret of Everything, is a restaurant called 100 Breakfasts, where a lark of a woman cooks to heal the hearts and souls of the people in her town.
It is to 100 Breakfasts that the protagonist, Tessa Harlow, comes to explore the questions that have been haunting her. She is heart sore and weary, recovering from a freak accident and trying to find answers to questions that have only just now bobbed to the surface. When she sits down at the long counter at the 100 Breakfasts Café, she unwittingly sets in motion a tangled array of connections and reveals secrets that have been hidden for a long, long time.
It is also at 100 Breakfasts that Tessa gets to know widower Vince Grasso, who is trying to heal his own family, including the troubled Natalie, a 9 year old who takes food very seriously, and is working her way through the entire list of 100 breakfasts on the menu.
The Secret of Everything was born out of my passion for breakfast, for the power it has to heal and renew, to nourish and ground. It’s a book that was born out of those days when I was a child hating oatmeal and loving the French toast at the local café; when I fought with my sisters and the mornings when my father took me out to breakfast, just the two of us, because this is, at the heart of it, a story about fathers and daughters and how that connection can make or break a woman’s spirit. Tessa’s father is nothing like my own, of course, but a father who is devoted to his child gives her permission to be as mighty as she can be.
Ironically, Tessa’s favorite breakfast is oatmeal, because in my adulthood, I learned to love great oatmeal. It is my own breakfast of choice most days. Whole grain oats served with butter and my own spiced apples that are cooked to a deep, dark flavor. Because I am that lark, so smugly and cheerfully alert at the first glimmers of dawn, it falls to me to get up and make the tea and start the coffee so it fills the air with its fragrance. I set the water boiling and set the table with cloth napkins and the good sugar bowl and the milk pitcher. I set the stage for my sleepy headed partner, sometimes a child, to come blinking to the table and fill his belly and drink his coffee.
In this small act, I am offering the most solid secret I know: breakfast is the secret of everything.
Breakfast is love.
What is your favorite breakfast?
I love breakfast, but rarely eat it. Even though I’m up to see the husband off to work (he doesn’t eat it either), I don’t have anything but coffee until usually noon. Sometimes later. I’m just not hungry until then.
Unless, of course, we’re on the road, for vacation or work, whatever, and then I love breakfast in diners and cafes. One of my favorite offers, in addition to hash browns or grits as a side, refried beans. They’re fresh, creamy, spicy, and I love them with eggs.
I completely agree! Breakfast is love! Even through the turbulent teen years, my daughter will sometimes come down on Saturday mornings and say, “Daddy, will you make me waffles”, and then they make them together from scratch.
This is going to kill me, but I’m waiting to get the book until your signing!
One of my favorite breakfasts on lazt Saturday mornings with the family is a batch of fluffy, golden, homemade waffles with pat of butter and a drizzle of real maple syrup, along with sides of scrambled eggs and crisp bacon. Nothing like it! When I was a little girl, my mother taught me that her secret for fluffy waffles is to separate the eggs and beat the whites to a whipped cream consistency. Then she’d gently fold the egg whites in, right at the end, before dolloping big, creamy spoonfuls of the finished batter onto the hot waffle iron. Yummy!
BTW, Barbara, just used one of my Christmas B & N gift cards to order The Secret Of Everything. Can’t wait to read it!
My favorite breakfast is cinnamon roll french toast and bacon. I don’t eat it very often but it’s a big treat for me.
Speaking of oatmeal, that was the breakfast my Mom fixed most often. I still love it too.
My former sis-in-law and I used to get a craving for German pancakes around 1 o’clock in the morning, which completely confused our respective husbands as they never understood the fun of eating crepes with fresh-squeezed lemon juice and powdered sugar at that hour. I’m an owl and would much rather eat breakfast for dinner. Or second dinner. Or third dinner
Refried beans are one of my favorites in all cases, Alison. Mmmm.
Oooh, Shanna, there’s a restaurant in the mountains nearby here that serves cinnamon roll French toast. It’s unbelievably sinful–and wonderful! Hikers gulp it down and hit the trails.
Beautiful, Liz. That’s it. Love and waffles. (It will be a treat to see you at the signing, so thank you.)
Great secret, Mary. I’ve never been very good at waffles for some reason, and finally gave up on them. That makes me want to invest in a good iron and try again. CR would love that!
I don’t think I’ve ever had German pancakes, Inkgrrl. Sounds good.
B&N.com tells me my copy is on the way, so it’s shipping. Happy new release day.
I worked for a while as a baker’s assistant, so I can relate to greeting the world before the sun did. I always felt the need to whisper and tiptoe around, even when I was the only one in the kitchen. It seems wrong somehow to be loud at that time of day. (Not an easy feat for a klutz like myself).
Southern girl that I am (born and raised in Myrtle Beach, SC) I have always loved grits and eggs with plenty of butter and a shot of hot sauce. We made a super tasty grits casserole at the bakery that I worked at that was full of all kinds of deliciousness. Very good with
I worked for a while as a baker’s assistant, so I can relate to greeting the world before the sun did. I always felt the need to whisper and tiptoe around, even when I was the only one in the kitchen. It seems wrong somehow to be loud at that time of day. (Not an easy feat for a klutz like myself).
Southern girl that I am (born and raised in Myrtle Beach, SC) I have always loved grits and eggs with plenty of butter and a shot of hot sauce. We made a super tasty grits casserole at the bakery that I worked at that was full of all kinds of deliciousness. Very good with hot coffee and some fruit.
Anxiously awaiting my copy of your newest book! Thanks so much for sharing your stories with the world!
Whoops! Sorry about sending that one twice. Told you I was a klutz!
Danielle, I have Southern connections, so I’m with you on those southern breakfasts. I love grits with butter, and especially love gravy with biscuits….gravy with hash browns….gravy with oranges…..
I love breakfast! Morning… night… it doesn’t matter when! The worst part is trying to decide: savory or sweet? I love it all!
Believe it or not, but having just finished my bowl of rolled oats (not as refined as oatmeal) porridge with sliced banana & topped with plain, unsweetened yoghurt, I am hungry again after reading your wonderful essay & readers’ comments!
I drink with it Chinese green tea (buy the leaves, not teabags & steep them in a proper teapot. You cannot compare the two. Leaves are a totally superior experience. Try it, readers. I dare you!)
Thinking of pancakes, lemon & sugar for an early lunch … Looking forward to the book, Barbara. It sounds terrific.
I see it’s 4.11pm yesterday up there! In which case my b/fast wld be a wee bit late! For confused readers I had a late b/fast way down here in the south — New Zealand, where it’s now 11.01 tomorrow (to you).
Like Alison, because I’m not hungry in the morning, I don’t eat breakfast, & have lunch around 12N. However, when I was in Portland, OR for Celebrate Romance ’08, a group of us ate breakfast (somewhere around 10 AM) at Mother’s Bistro, & several, including me, had plate-sized oatmeal pancakes which were wonderful: hearty, flavorful & filling. Even a non-breakfast person like me was applauding these
Glenda, that green tea sounds worth trying. I am a tea person, but haven’t yet developed a taste for green tea. Is there some secret I should know?
Oatmeal pancakes…that sounds perfect.
The Secret of Everything came in the mail today. I can’t wait to read it– I adored The Lost Recipe for Happiness!