Easter Sunday

Until we moved here, really far from all of our extended family, we usually spent Easter weekend with grandparents and indulged in and brought home way too much chocolate. Most families we know would still have some really old chocolate left over by the time the next chocolate holiday rolls around, but not us! If it's chocolate, it gets eaten in this house. Anyway, being so far from family and not having established Easter traditions of our own (other than attending worship), it's been a strange couple of years. Hubby decided Easter morning would not go by without baskets of sorts and went out shopping around 7:30pm last night. He found some great stuff for not that much money and everyone had a smile this morning. Because Little Guy is so into Toy Story these days, he got a Buzz Lightyear Pez dispenser. He LOVES the dispenser, but I guess he doesn't like the PEZ candies because he pulls them out and tries to give them to someone else. Then he gets mad when you don't want them!

I actually got up in time to paint my toenails AND make a nice breakfast. I wanted to try another make ahead pancake batter this morning, but I stayed up too late working on other stuff to mix up batter. I was feeling a little nostalgic so I decided on French Toast this morning. One thing I always remember from my childhood is my dad making us French Toast for breakfast. And we didn't have a piece of French Toast, we each had a stack of French Toast--plus eggs and bacon or whatever else we had. In our house my teenager is the only one who could actually eat a stack of French Toast. French Toast was also one of the few things I actually knew how to cook when I got married!

Anyway, I had some sour dough bread in the house (only because it was BOGO at Publix) and plenty of eggs, so French Toast it was. I'm sure everyone knows how to make French Toast, but maybe it wasn't a staple in your house--so here's how I do it, no recipe. First I beat some eggs in a dish large enough to lay my bread slices in. I also add in a little milk or half&half, a splash of vanilla, and some cinnamon.

 I heat my cast iron griddle pan over medium (and later turn it down to medium low) and melt some butter on the pan. I lay my bread pieces in the egg mixture and then turn them over to coat both sides. If you are using a sturdy bread like french or sour dough, you can let it soak up more of the egg mixture for an eggier bread, but if you are using regular sandwich bread, don't let it soak too long or it will tear apart. Then I lay it on the hot pan and sprinkle the tops with more cinnamon or a cinnamon sugar mix.

When they are nice and brown on the first side, turn them over. The second side will brown more quickly. My little one likes French Toast plain dusted with confectioners' sugar, but the big boys like syrup. We all prefer real Maple, but it doesn't usually make the grocery budget cut. This week we happened to have a bottle of blueberry syrup which I bought on closeout at the grocery store, which is also very nostalgic for me because as a child it was something special that we would get on occasion and I loved it so much. As a grown up it's not my favorite, but the boys really like it.

For both of my big boys, having food prepared for them is a "love language." To make this special, I drizzled their plates with blueberry syrup and served their French Toast up restaurant style. They did love it. In hind sight, sugary sweet French Toast probably wasn't the best choice for Easter morning right after they opened their Easter chocolate!