“Happy New Year,” a cheerful stranger exhorted last weekend as she strode past me in a parking lot. I was a little startled – surely we were done with such niceties? It seemed as if it had been 2026 for weeks already – but the reality was it was only Sunday, January the 4th. Time flies while all our good intentions have yet to be resolved.
How are you doing with your new year’s resolutions? I haven’t exercised one jot, but I did walk for half an hour yesterday. I’ve been reading more, but somehow that first gold star of the new year isn’t comforting at 4:30 in the morning when I can’t get back to sleep, and I turn on the reading light for more time with Susan Orlean. I have remembered to tidy up the kitchen before I go to bed, but there are still endless nagging moving boxes piled artlessly in three other rooms, and they don’t seem to be unpacking themselves. My mother used to tell me that I would have to learn to take the bitter with the better. And so it goes.
It’s difficult to adjust to changes, let alone embrace them. We have finally moved into our new house, which is bright and shiny and clean, and it’s still not home. I walk up the stairs (I haven’t lived in a house with stairs since 1992!) and I can’t remember if I turn right or left at the top to go to our bedroom. There is a lot to do every day: unpacking, hanging blinds, figuring out how to use the washer, and how to engage with the just-delivered stove. Washington College gave me an excellent education, but it did not prepare me for the brand spanking new appliances of the twenty-first century. Nothing has buttons or knobs these days, but everything chimes or lights up when I do press the keypads correctly. There is hope for me.
Mr. Sanders is adapting nicely. Since he is practically perfect in every way. He knows just what to do now when we set off the smoke alarm cooking bacon. He’ll keep the broom nearby to reach the alarm button tonight when we crank the new oven up to 550º F for the first Friday Night is Pizza Night in this house. Just it case, it should still be warm enough outside (even though it is January!) to keep the front and back doors propped open – in addition to the stove vent and a kitchen window.* The crazy weather will enable us in our pursuit of the familiar, our comfortable homey ritual. Maybe all the garlic will make the new place smell like home, instead of new paint, and cardboard.
Last Sunday morning, a couple of hours before my new best friend greeted me warmly in the parking lot, we made a comforting, familiar Sunday breakfast. Sundays call for a shared, cooked meal instead of our usual cold breakfasts: bran cereal with half a banana for me, and some overnight oats with chia pets and yogurt for him. On Sundays we like something warm and sinful: pancakes, or biscuits and gravy; something that drips butter or swims in syrup – like croissants, frittatas, a Dutch baby, omelettes, French toast. Or a breakfast that has just too many calories to count, like pain au chocolate. Yumsters. Just writing about it makes me yearn for a fistful of crusty French bread, split and spread with a thick impasto of creamy, salty yellow French butter, paired with a heavy china mug full of tongue-scalding thick, hot chocolate. If these breakfasts don’t make me get out to exercise, nothing will.
Have a calorie-rich, warm breakfast feast on Sunday. Be kind to yourself this new year, and remember to greet a stranger in a parking lot. Monday and good habits are coming soon enough. Don’t burn the bacon. Or the pizza.
Weekend French Toast – for two
Ingredients
1 cup whole milk
1 pinch salt
3 brown eggs
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 generous dollop rum
1 tablespoon brown sugar
8 1/2-inch slices day old French bread
Whisk milk, salt, eggs, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla extract, rum and sugar until smooth. Heat a lightly oiled and buttered griddle or frying pan over medium heat. Soak bread slices in mixture until saturated. Cook bread on each side for a couple of minutes, until golden brown. Serve with maple syrup and powdered sugar.
No Fuss Bacon
Preheat the oven to 425° F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil. We like to use thick-cut bacon these days, otherwise we tend to incinerate the bacon, and that new smoke alarm is very, very loud. Plop the bacon sheet in the oven for about 10 minutes. Keep checking every 2 or 3 minutes after that, to ensure even cooking. There are no fat spatters on the stove top if you cook the bacon this way. The aluminum foil helps, but isn’t perfect so there is still a certain amount of denial about cleaning the cookie sheet, but you can sneak it back into the cooled oven for a little while, at any rate…
“Okay, this is the wisdom. First, time spent on reconnaissance is never wasted. Second, almost anything can be improved with the addition of bacon. And finally, there is no problem on Earth that can’t be ameliorated by a hot bath and a cup of tea.”
― Jasper Fforde
*Go check your smoke alarm batteries. It’s a good time of the year for maintenance.
Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.
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