Breakfast - the most important meal of the day
I grew up in a nice middle class neighborhood called Don Mills, which was a suburb of Toronto at the time. We moved there from Montreal in 1970 and my parents remained there until 2005. There were five of us - my parents, my brother David and my sister Donna. In the beginning my mom felt like a refugee from a foreign land. She never let us know it but she felt very alone in our new town. I am pretty sure that her long distance telephone bill paid for the Bell Centre in Montreal. In fact there should be a plaque at the front door thanking Ruth McCarthy her contribution.
Our house on Avonwick Gate would be the scene for many great occasion and some of the best meals I will ever have. In the following chapters you will read more stories of events at Avonwick but if I didn’t start with breakfast recipes I would be forgetting who Ruth was. “After all, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” I am not sure she would agree later in life on the importance of breakfast but when we were kids and later with the grandchildren, breakfast was an event. As my best friend once asked with disbelief after a breakfast when we were 12, “So she does this every morning?” I know people will find this hard to believe but my mom had just asked my friend Pat McEleney what he wanted for breakfast. He politely asked, “What is there?” And as only Ruth could say, “That is not what I asked you. What do you want?” She meant it. So I chirped in with, “Can I have French toast with bacon?” “Sure. And you?”, said Ruth looking at Pat. “Can I have bacon and eggs?” “Of course you can. Now that wasn’t so hard was it she said laughingly and then it began. With the pace a greasy spoon strives for, pots, pans, toasters and griddles were a glow with action. When I think back on it, I am not sure, but I think there might have been a bell on the counter top. I swear I can still hear a bell. In just a few minutes we were fed, told to brush our teeth, given the “listen to the teacher” warning and sent on our way. The whole event had taken less then 20 minutes for her to pull off. Later when it was the grandchildren’s” turn to be waited on, it only seemed to get more elaborate. Tessa, if you ask your cousins, they would agree, Nanny pulled out all the stops for breakfast.