The Healthy Breakfast for the Unhealthy Man
Your dear Eggsley has ventured into the countryside as yet another bout of hefty rain tumbles down upon us this fine, British month of July.
This breakfast is once again home-made (by yours truly), and special care and attention has been paid to make our nation’s favourite go-to meal for heart failure into something that the arteries can accept a little more readily. It has been a heavy weekend. Uncharacteristically heavy, you might say. Lurvensteen’s impending departure is likely to blame. Unbelievable tristesse is liable to follow.
(please excuse the obligatory trendy iPhone photo)
This delicious breakfast (always consumed at noon on Sunday - another vital rule of Eggsley’s Breakfast Lore) consists of free-range Burford Brown eggs (with an absolutely delicious yolk) fried in a very small amount of salted butter with ground black pepper (remember the Pro Tip), reasonably lean, unsmoked streaky bacon (grilled, not fried), and toasted Poilâne bread. It’s rather pretentious bread, but deservedly so - I have yet to find a bread that so perfectly complements a good yolk.
The blend of flavours is simply gorgeous. The result is a protein-rich, filling English Breakfast that, yes, compromises on beans, sausages (and we all know by now that I bloody love a good quality Cumberland, although have yet to review one) and hash browns, but, as a consequence, feels light on the palate. The eggs are of such good quality that the taste is rich, grease-less and bursting with flavour. The salt of the butter and the pepper combine with the yolk to produce an egg that actually has flavour. Placed on top of the bread (buttered) with a cut of the bacon, and I do honestly believe I might be entering a new circle of comfort food Heaven - perfect on this miserable Sunday.
I really wish I had a newspaper…
I’m reminded that I haven’t bought a newspaper in approximately 3 years.
Suddenly, I completely understand “new” media’s rise to power. Coincidentally, BBC News mumbles along in the background. Brookes has been arrested. Now, News International’s PR disaster (it seems that just about every media outlet wants them to miraculously file for Chapter 11) seems insignificant: it was going to happen, anyway (well, not quite - I sensationalise)… best to have it happen with scandal and fury, though; a gradual demise brought about by withering shares is so dull. Print is not dying, it is dead and has been for about three years. I absolutely could not care less about what happens to Murdoch, but am filled with pleasure at the idea of it being bad and juicy, not for what I will read in the newspaper I won’t buy tomorrow, nor for what I will hear on the television channel I never watch that same evening… No, I am excited to read the masses’ jubilant rapture and the plurality of opinion to be offered on twitter.
A true breakfast epiphany. What exciting times we live in.
Self-portrait with eggs. - Eggsley, 2011.
I note that I should breakfast solo more often and lose myself in thought. I sip at my coffee to wash a good breakfast down. Three days later and I still feel tired. White nights are certainly over-rated.
