Training Day - Part #1: The Big American Breakfast

Our first day on the job at the B&B began the very day after our arrival. It was a training day. Laura, Greg's wife and partner in the B&B, still hadn't returned from working with their boat in the Caribbean but Karen, the intermittent Innkeeper, was there to show us the ropes.

BREAKFAST:

Breakfast prep started at 7am. That wasn't too bad, I had been expecting worse. We did set our alarms for 6am just to make sure we were on time - though it's not like we had to factor in commute time!

The Inn styles itself as a Luxury B&B and in keeping with that they serve a full gourmet breakfast. For them, that usually means four areas need to be covered: there must be an egg, there must be a meat, there must be a bread and there must be a potato. Phew! But before all that, first they serve a fruit plate which we plate up and have ready on the table as a kind of place marker. I really like this idea, and the fruit plates look very smart and delicious.

Immediately I felt a little out of my league. I would have to learn and perfect the Great American Breakfast. For starters, potatoes for breakfast are a VERY new concept for me. I couldn't imagine eating potatoes for breakfast. Then again, Americans would NEVER imagine eating baked beans for breakfast as us Aussie's do. Also for me, breakfast is about grains - and nowhere on that list do they mention a grain. There were also no particularly healthy options, except the fruit plate. But on my outings to Cracker Barrel, a old-style southern eatery, it all seemed pretty customary.


I don't know about how other people in Australia go about their breakfast but in our family, big breakfasts like this were only made on the weekends. What do Australians usually eat? As far as I know, cereal (including the traditional Weetbix) and toast (yes, with vegemite!) generally. The big Australian breakfast consists of eggs and bacon (for Americans, that's more like a Canadian bacon with more meat than fat) or grilled sausages, as well as grilled mushrooms and tomatoes and, of course, baked beans. In Australia it is becoming more common to go out for breakfast, though in America with the multitude of breakfast institutions, such as IHOP, Denny's and the aforementioned Cracker Barrel it's habitual. But it's not just for eating out, the Big American Breakfast, it seems this is pretty much the norm EVERY DAY in most households. I know Chase's dad cooks scrambled eggs and sausages and sometimes even biscuits (scones) for breakfast every day. I'm amazed.


So anyway, while Chase and Greg were organising the fruit plates, Karen and I got started on the potatoes and the eggs. Today we were scrambling the eggs, and "hashing" the potatoes - not quite the patties you see at McDonalds, but instead we diced the potatoes irregularly, skin on after pre-cooking them in the microwave, and added some diced onion before frying it all up in a pan. They'll most likely become mushy but that's part of the "hash". As you may have guessed, Hash is a very vague concept, it's whatever you prefer really. It's traditionally a "leftovers" dish, not unlike Australia's Bubble and Squeak, Sweden's Pytti Panna or, as I understand, Austria's Bauernfrühstück. It seems every country has one. Quite delicious of course - but not for breakfast! Especially accompanied by tomato sauce.

Back in the kitchen, the sausages were taking care of themselves in the pan. Here's another variant in American breakfast: sweet sausages, and in this case, maple flavoured sausages. Americans love their "salty sweet" combination of flavours. Me, I'm not into it at all; I don't mix my sweet and savoury. I have read that that this combination is an important component to cooking; that's what makes Asian cooking so phenomenal, but it's subtle.

I think we did English muffins that day. Ok, I forget as I'm writing this behind schedule (what's new?) but who really cares? Any bread is pretty fine by me, I love it! Especially when it's pre-buttered and toasted in the grill (American's say "broil", I don't like it, that word makes me think of poaching and sounds gross!)! Real bread in America is lacking, like Australia, but the variants on bread, like English muffins, biscuits, cinnamon rolls and bagels, make up for it.

Coffee: Americans love it - but by "coffee", I mean purely filtered coffee. It's probably a better way than the way we do our instant dried coffee in Australia, but unless it's made strong, for me it's not very good. The B&B's coffee is not too bad, and first thing in the morning, it's even better! A key morning objective for us is to keep that coffee jug filled and keep the coffee flowing! That term "bottomless cup" is not just a catchy tagline.

Guests are offered breakfast between 8-8:30am. A pretty short window really but with so many guest rooms it's kind of imperative otherwise you'd be rushed off your feet for hours. As it is, we didn't get finished with breakfast until 9:30 (well, we did stop to eat; a great perk of the job - eating the leftovers! And by then, don't you know I was ravished! Those maple sausages didn't even taste that bad!).

The breakfast room is in the vestibule before you come in the main door. I really like this area for breakfast with all the morning light and the view of the mountains coming through all the big windows. This part of the house is quite new, it was only completed about a year ago. Before that it was just a small portico. Of course, in winter it's a little harder to keep warm but so far it's manageable with a few space heaters.

While I was comparing breakfasts I found a great page on breakfast around the world, with matching photos. If, you're interested, click on this link below (I'm liking the look of the Morrocan breakfast...):

50 of the World's Best Breakfasts