Posted tagged ‘breakfast’
October 14, 2016
Getting up before the sun appears is getting annoying. Getting up before my papers arrive is also annoying. The only thing saving the morning is my first cup of coffee.
Yesterday was warm. Today it will be much cooler, in the high 50’s. Right now it is windy and damp and quite chilly. I’m glad I put the storm pane on the back door.
Today I am having breakfast out, and I have a dentist appointment, my six-month cleaning. Gracie and I will do the dump later in the afternoon. I’m also thinking Chinese food for dinner. I have a hankering.
My friends and I ate jollof rice just about every evening in Ghana. Think jambalaya. I even got to have it on the plane ride home. It was served with chicken curry. The hotel restaurant served the biggest mound of jollof, and we seldom left any on our plates. We never tired of eating it. I’m thinking I might just have to learn to make it. I do have several recipes. I just ordered my Halloween candy.
I just ordered my Halloween candy, what we used to call nickel bars. I remember how excited we were to get a bar instead of loose candy. Usually it was a Hershey’s. Last year one kid yelled to his father standing by my gate, “It’s a whole big bar!” He’ll be able to yell the same thing this year.
Gracie just scared me. She fell into the table from the couch. I grabbed her and held on for all I am worth. My first thought was she had collapsed. I was set to take her to the 24-hour vet, but she left my arms and got off the couch. She seemed to walk fine. The final test was a treat. She wouldn’t eat the first three choices but took the fourth and then went back for the other three. I figure out she had been too close to the edge of the couch and lost her footing. I have begun to breath.
I haven’t decorated my house yet for Halloween, but I did finish unpacking and putting everything away. I only have one wash left to do. The cloth I bought is in this room in a tall pile. The colors are vivid. My favorite is the black and red tie and dye. It will make a great shirt. The 12 yard bolt is for tablecloths, Christmas presents. I also have a 6 yard bolt of a beautiful blue and black pattern. It too will be used for presents. I brought back a tablecloth for myself. Peg found the material and had it cut in half and hemmed so it wouldn’t fray. Now I just need to have some dinner guests so they can ooh and ah.
Categories: Musings
Tags: breakfast, chilly, cloth, cool, damp, dentist, early morning, Halloween candy, Jollof rice, nickel bar, tablecloth, teeth cleaning, tie and dye
Comments: 8 Comments
October 11, 2016
The morning came a bit later for me so there is progress. I woke up at 5:20, later but still before my paper. I am enjoying real coffee with real cream. I turned the news on but decided I didn’t want to know what is happening: ignorance is most decidedly bliss.
My house was cold this morning, and it seemed a bit strange to feel real cold, not the blast of an air conditioner. Bolga was hot, never lower than 95˚.
Today I will attempt to empty my suitcases. Every time I go into the living room I step around them. It is just that I haven’t had the energy, and my usual compulsion to finish the task seems to have disappeared. It should also be laundry day.
Fern, one of my cats, looks so much better. She is the one who nearly died from heart and kidney complications. She is eating, purring and demanding treats. She is also back to sleeping beside me on the couch and with me in bed. While I was gone, she slept in the other room. I worried about her when I was gone.
I bought lots and lots, yards and yards, of Ghanaian cloth. Some of it is tie and dye. I just couldn’t stop myself. One of the cloths is a 12-yard piece. I’m going to have table cloths and napkins made as Christmas presents. My suitcase was incredibly heavy.
I haven’t eaten breakfast since I got home. Every morning in Ghana I had eggs and toast. It didn’t matter where I was. Other than the lodge, all the eggs tasted the same. They were fried and had no yolks. The toast was always cold. I tried once for French toast but my description produced an egg sandwich with the bread fried on one side. It was good but not what I expected.
The former students who visited brought bananas and oranges for my friends. I did snag a couple of oranges, and they were as sweet as I remembered. We tried sweet apples for the first time. You eat the petals and spit out the seed. They were work but they were delicious.
Today I have a library board meeting. It is truly back to the usual.
Categories: Musings, Uncategorized
Tags: 95˚, breakfast, cold, later, morning paper, sweatshirt, unpacking
Comments: 10 Comments
June 12, 2015
The morning is lovely. Earlier I met friends for breakfast at a spot on the water. To get there I took the long way around on the road which hugged the seashore. The houses along the sides of the road are big and beautiful with gardens to match. A couple of the bigger houses are well hidden behind high bushes. Some are gated.
As there is no breeze for a change, the water was still. The fog was thick enough to hide the ocean beyond the breakwater. When I arrived at the restaurant, it was high tide, and I could smell the salt water. I took in deep breaths as if to memorize the smell. Boats came and left by way of the channel. One excursion boat was filled with kids in life jackets, a school group we guessed. Good for them! It is a perfect day to be on the water.
The sun is shining, and it is already warm, 76˚. After today, though, the days will be cooler, and even a couple of nights will dip to the 50’s. The weekend will be dry. June on Cape Cod is unpredictable.
Today all is quiet. Not a lawnmower or blower disturbs the songs of birds. This room is still shaded and cool. The sun won’t be here until the late afternoon.
I am barefooted. That is the summer standard in the house and on the deck. When I was a kid, I went barefooted all the time. My feet were calloused and even the hot sidewalks had no effect. I loved the feel of cool grass between my toes. In Ghana I wore sandals all the time, but my feet still each became a giant callous impervious to everything including a lit match. Why a lit match? It was a test, a silly test, to determine exactly how tough my feet had become. The match did not even bother me at all.
I have a couple of places I need to go, but I am reluctant to leave the cool house for the hot, busy road. I guess, though. I’ll just have to bite the bullet.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 76˚, bite the bullet, breakfast, breakwater, calloused feet, channel, cool nights, fog, going barefoot, grass between your toes, natural sounds, quoet day, salt water, smell of the ocean, still ocean, warm day
Comments: 17 Comments
October 16, 2014
Last night it rained and today it is supposed to rain again, heavily. The sun is popping in and out of the clouds. The temperatures of the last couple of days have been in the 70’s with mild nights in the 60’s. My windows are opened and the front door still has its screen. Gracie sits there and looks out for the longest time. I wonder what keeps her interest as my street is a quiet one. I stand with her every now and then just to keep her company.
All my life I have had morning rituals. During my childhood the weekday mornings were always the same. Get up, get dressed, eat breakfast, do teeth then walk to school. For breakfast I always drank cocoa. My mother gave us toast and eggs and in the winter we had oatmeal, the sort which always has lumps. When I was in high school, I had to get up earlier and getting the bus was added to the ritual. In college, I grabbed breakfast on the way out, and every morning my friends and I would sit together in the canteen, drink coffee and race each other in finishing the newspaper’s crossword puzzle. Usually we worked in teams of two. When I was in Ghana, I had the same thing every morning: horrible coffee, two fried eggs and toast. The eggs were cooked in peanut oil, and they were the best fried eggs I ever had. If I had a break in classes, I’d walk to my house and have another cup of coffee and sit on the porch to drink it. Breakfast never varied. I had margarine on my toast as butter was imported and not in my budget. I’d sometimes add groundnut paste, the Ghanaian version of thick, thick peanut butter which needed to be mixed with peanut oil to make it spreadable. The Ghanaians used it as a soup base. Those mornings in Ghana were amazing, every single day.
When I started teaching, I got up 5, had two cups of coffee, read as much of the paper as I could, got dressed and left for school at 6:20. On the way to school, I’d stop at Dunkin’ Donuts for a medium coffee. I did that every weekday until I retired.
In retirement I haven’t changed much though now I get up whenever. I feed the cats, fill the water dish, fill the dog’s dry food dish, let the dog out, put the coffee on and get the papers in the driveway. Sometimes I have toast and sometimes I have a bagel but mostly I just have coffee, usually two cups, one with each paper. I take my time reading the papers. I then check my e-mail and finally start writing Coffee.
I think of my mornings as ritual, as almost sacred.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bad coffee, breakfast, Eggs, fried eggs, Ghana, Ghanaian mornings, groundnut paste, margarine, morning paper, morning ritual, oatmeal, rain, rituals, Toast, up at 5, warm day
Comments: 6 Comments
September 12, 2014
The morning is a bit chilly with a cool breeze. The sun may be bright, but it hasn’t the strength of a summer sun. Soon enough it will merely give us light, not warmth, and will spell the end of bare feet and arms and move us into slippers and sweatshirt weather.
I ordered flowers for the garden. My choices were determined by color. The company sent a $20.00 coupon if you spend $40.00 so I couldn’t resist the half-off. I was going to shop locally, but I saved money, on-line, even with shipping.
I seldom remember the names of flowers. People look at blooms in my garden and want to know their names. My face goes blank and my eyes glaze. I have no idea of most of them. I know white hibiscus is already in the garden so I ordered red. I also can name the seagrass so I ordered rose fountain grass and dwarf fountain grass. If I get asked, I can always remember grass.
As the weather cooled, my mother would sometimes send soup in my thermos for lunch. It was either tomato or chicken noodle. My mother would also pack Saltines for dipping and a dessert. I used to eat a little soup, mostly the chicken and the noodles, then crush the Saltines in the broth. They would get soft and mushy after having absorbed all the liquid. They were delicious.
My thermos generally broke before the end of the school year usually from being dropped while in the lunch box. I’d pick up the lunchbox from the ground, open it and then shake the thermos. I’d hear the dreaded sound of broken glass, of slivers of glass from the thin layer. I knew what it meant, and I knew how my mother would react: she’d get angry and get that disappointed look. I was always a bit amazed by her reaction because the broken thermos was generally a yearly event. Using kid logic, I figured she should have expected it and not gotten angry, but I was never foolish enough to her that.
Categories: Musings
Tags: beautiful day, breakfast, chicken noodle soup, chilly morning, hibiscus, ornamental grasses, perennials for the garden, Saltines, soup for lunch, sweatshirt weather, the sound of glass, thermos
Comments: 10 Comments
August 14, 2014
The White Rabbit and I share the lateness of the hour. My morning has been leisurely. I read both papers and doubt I missed anything happening here or in the greater world. While my English muffin was toasting, I watered the plants. I am such a multi-tasker say I with a bit of tongue in cheek.
Yesterday it poured. I had to shut windows and doors. It was a noisy rain battering the roof and dripping from the eaves. Gracie slept in her crate most of the afternoon. I took a nap, the best thing to do on a rainy afternoon.
Today is another delight. It is in the mid 70’s and will go down to the low 60’s tonight, perfect sleeping weather, and every day for the rest of the week is predicted the same as today though tomorrow night may even get as low as the high 50’s. It feels more like fall than summer especially in the mornings.
Okay, it’s time for a little bit of Ghana here. The trigger was the cool morning, my favorite part of the day in Ghana. Each morning was the same. I’d have my two eggs cooked in groundnut oil as the Ghanaians call it, peanut oil for us, two pieces of toast, wonderful toast from uncut loaves of bread sold from trays balanced on women’s heads, and two huge cups of coffee, bad coffee which I actually got used to drinking. The food was cooked over charcoal on a small round hibachi like burner. The toast was cooked against the hot sides of the burner and needed turning. Boiling the water was first so I could drink my coffee while the rest of my breakfast was cooking. Thomas was my cook. He’d hand me the coffee, and I’d go outside and sit on my porch, no chair, just concrete steps. Little kids would pass me going in both directions. Just outside the front of the school was an elementary school and just beyond the back gate was a middle school. My house was beside that back gate so I could see the students lining up and hear the national anthem before they went into school. The youngest, heading to the elementary school, always stopped to say good morning and stayed a while and stared. A white person in Bolga in those days was still a novelty.
I had a table, a couple of chairs and a refrigerator in my dining area. One whole wall was just screening, no glass, and the floor always got soaked when it rained. Thomas would call me to breakfast. Those were the best tasting eggs I’ve ever had. On my two trips back, I had eggs every morning, and they were as delicious as I remembered. The coffee was still the worst. In forty years breakfast hadn’t changed a bit and mornings were still my favorite part of the Ghanaian day.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bad coffee, Bolgatanga, breakfast, delightful day, English muffin, leisurely morning, multi-tasking, Peace Corps Ghana, rain, sleeping weather, White Rabbit
Comments: 10 Comments
March 18, 2014
The world looks different in the early part of the day. The cars are fewer and the lines shorter. People are purposeful with destinations in mind, and this morning Gracie and I were among them. I had an appointment, a destination, so we were out and about before nine, even before coffee and the papers. The appointment didn’t take long so when I was done and on my way home I rewarded myself for the early hour with a stop at Dunkin’ Donuts for coffee and a butternut donut. Gracie got a munchkin. I don’t know which of us was happier. I got home, drank my coffee and read the papers. My day was back on schedule.
I don’t usually make breakfast for myself at home except for brewing coffee though sometimes I have toast if the bread is interesting enough. The other day I had a couple of biscotti. They were chocolate, and they were delicious.
My father never cared for breakfast in Europe except in England and Ireland where he got eggs, a broiled tomato and floppy bacon. In most of the other countries breakfast was cold cuts and rolls, lunches my dad called them. In a lovely hotel on a river in the Netherlands, an egg in an egg cup was sitting on a dish at his place at the table. He was delighted until he found out it was hard-boiled.
My father would have liked the hotels in Ghana. Breakfast is part of the room rate, and they serve eggs and toast, sometimes fruit and always instant coffee which my father preferred. I never understand that. At my parents’ house, my mother had a coffee pot and real coffee for when I visited, but my dad always had his Maxwell House.
Categories: Musings
Tags: breakfast, butternut donut, dunkin-donuts, eggs and bacon, instant coffee, mornings
Comments: 10 Comments
December 30, 2013
Monday means breakfast at the diner. My diner is a small place with only 12 or so booths and some stools at the counter. A few regulars were there and the owners are always at the front of the house doing whatever needs to be done. They greet all the regulars and stop at the booths to chat a bit. It wasn’t too busy when I first arrived but all the booths were taken by the time I left.
The morning is cold. Yesterday throughout the day and night we had torrential rain and late last night the wind began to roar. I imagined the pine trees bending and swaying with loud creaks of protest, and when I let Gracie out this morning, I noticed a few branches, smaller ones, had fallen in the backyard. My outside Christmas lights died around 8, and the back dog lights blinked on and off for a long while. For my neighbors’ sake, I kept hoping the lights would stop blinking. They did and the yard went dark. This morning I turned on the timer for the outside lights, and nothing tripped so I guess all is well.
When I was a kid, I didn’t know anyone who traveled during Christmas vacation, and I didn’t know anyone who skied. Both of those would have been far too expensive for our family and for my neighbors. We had sleds and ice skates, and they provided winter amusement. My friends and I would skate at the swamp or on the rink at the park. That rink was put up every winter and taken down in the spring. The small building at the rink had wooden planks for seats, and we’d put our shoes, tied together, underneath the planks. The building was always warmed by a pot-bellied stove. One man worked there, and he was in charge of keeping the stove going. The skating was free, provided for by the town. I’d skate until my feet hurt.
Sometimes my mother would give us bus fare and entrance money for the MDC rink over the line in Medford, the next town. We had to walk up-town to catch the bus as it was really to far to walk. On Saturdays and school vacations, the bus was filled with skaters. The MDC rink had two fenced-in skating circles and a building with lots of seating and a refreshment stand. We’d skate a while then take a break in the warmth of the building then go back outside for more skating. We’d be there most of the day. I remember taking off my skates and how strange my feet felt. It was as if they had forgotten how to walk. We’d buy a hot chocolate then go outside and wait for the bus. I remember standing on the sidewalk and looking down the street hoping to see it coming our way. We were cold and tired and more than ready to go home.
Categories: Musings
Tags: booths, branches, breakfast, bus, cold day, diner, dog lights, hot cocoa, ice skating, MDC rink, outside lights', pine tree
Comments: 12 Comments
September 9, 2013
Every morning is now the same: cool in the house from the cold nights while the outside air is warm with sun. Last night I woke up chilly and added an afghan to my bed. It’s not yet comforter weather, but we’re getting closer.
The worst is yet to come. Soon it will be shut down the deck time, my final acknowledgement that summer has ended. I’ll leave out a couple of chairs as I am ever hopeful for warm days and maybe enough sun to make me lazy and tired and ready for a nap.
Summer seemed to stretch forever when I was young. I was never mindful of the days passing. I’d ride my bike or walk the tracks or be at the playground throwing horseshoes, playing tennis or softball. By bedtime I was exhausted, and sleep came almost as soon as I closed my eyes. When my birthday came in August, I knew school wasn’t far away. The trip to the shoe store sealed my fate.
I was always excited the first day of school. I liked school and loved learning. It was the getting up early part I didn’t like. My mother always made breakfast. I was a cocoa drinker. Everyone else drank tea. My mother used a china tea-pot. It had flowers on it, and it always made the table look just a little bit fancy even without a tablecloth. We had eggs or oatmeal in the winter. On the warmer days we just had toast and cold cereal. I always wanted to be the first one to open a new bottle of milk so I could scoop the cream. I was a dunker and dunked my toast in the cocoa though graham crackers were always my favorite. It took skill in knowing exactly when to take the graham crackers out of the cup before the end dissolved. I was an expert.
My friend from up the street would knock at the back door so we could walk to school together. My mother would hand us our lunch boxes, we’d grab our school bags and off we’d go.
Categories: Musings
Tags: afghan weather, bike riding, breakfast, cocoa, cool mornings, dunking, graham crackers, lunch box, school bag, shutting down the deck, starting school, summer days, summer stretching forever, tea pot
Comments: 12 Comments
June 14, 2013
Mother Nature seems to have forgotten we’re close to the middle of June. It is 57˚. My house is cold enough that I’m wearing socks and a sweatshirt. The sky is gray and the wind is blowing. It poured rain all night into this morning. Sun is predicted tomorrow so I’ll just have to be patient with today.
I’m late as I met friends for breakfast. We get together once a month. All of us worked at the high school together and we all retired with a few years of each other. This morning there were 11 of us.
When I was growing up, nobody I knew skied or golfed. Those were sports for people with money. Miniature golf was the closest we ever got. I did go to the private golf course in my town but only in winter with my sled or my toboggan. I never even learned to water ski despite living by the ocean. My father only had a row-boat.
Only once did I ever go snow skiing. It was in Colorado when I was visiting my sister and brother-in-law. I got off the lift easily without falling, but as I went down the hill, I started speeding so fast and out of control I got afraid and threw myself to the ground just before I ended up in the trees. It took forever for me to get up and get the skis back on my feet. One or the other ski would slide down the hill by itself. A passing skier would be kind enough to retrieve them for me. One was a little kid about nine. My descent after that was tentative at best, and I still nearly ended up in the parking lot. I had trouble stopping. My brother-in-law, a skier, asked my sister and me if we minded him skiing a bit. Nope. We loved sitting in the lodge and having hot drinks. That is still my favorite part of skiing.
Categories: Musings
Tags: breakfast, cold, Colorado, falling, hot drinks, lodge, Miniature golf, Mother Nature, out of control, rain, skiing, toboggan, Wind
Comments: 6 Comments
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