Lazing on A Sunday Afternoon

Life has been rather hectic as of late. Some of you know I purchased a home a few weeks ago and to say it's been keeping me busy is putting it mildly. The house, is quite old (a very handsome Craftsman style home, built in 1915 as best as we can tell) and requires a lot of love and attention including completely gutting the kitchen and re-doing it from scratch (yea! new expensive range coming my way!). Even more so than it first appeared and my brain has been swimming with the rising costs of the repairs, let alone the coordination required to put this all together. Ghosty has been at the house daily overseeing the construction since I need to be at the office, and he too, is overwhelmed. To make matters worse - we had to shut down the job this week when I learned I'd been given incorrect information from one Building Department official several weeks ago on how to proceed. Seems that in my town they want all of the sub-contractors submit for their permits at the same time (and; this includes yours truly as I found out that new drywall needs a permit as well - but this was my fault for not finding this out).

So, I now need to have plans drawn up to present to the D.O.B. (thankfully, my prior boss will help with this), go to the Building Department, drop them off, get applications for everyone, get them signed, bring them back, and pray that everything looks good to the powers that be and I get my work order in, well, short order. They say "3 to 4 weeks" but the guy said usually it only takes about 5 days, but they say that long so they can "look like heroes" when it takes shorter. Whatever.

So, we are dead in the water and I am stressed and a bit concerned "someone" may find out about the work done to date (including having the air conditioning installed already). I will just have to keep my fingers crossed on all of this but, I haven't been led to believe anyone is going to be crawling around peeking in my windows either.

So, the reason for the tangent is frequently my impetus for cooking (other than my obvious love of it) is to do something special for Ghosty. And, since he's been working so hard at the house (aside from just being there for coordination purposes, he's been stripping the old woodwork, taking care of the lawn which is in dire need of attention, dealing with other landscaping problems, etc.) and not eating well frequently (both of us in fact, cooking dinners at night has been difficult) I wanted to make some special breakfasts for him, which I know is probably his favorite meal of the day.

Yesterday, it was soft boiled eggs, with toast points and artisan breakfast sausage which I had picked up at Union Square Market in NYC Pretty hard to follow up (I did, however, mess up the eggs on my first try - overcooked them - and had to start all over). Today, was the pretty picture you see above, a Vanilla Scented Brioche French Toast with fresh Strawberries - both of which also came from the Greenmarket. Those berries beat out anything from any local supermarket this time of year. Bursting with flavor, ripe as can be.

There is no real recipe - it's the same thing you all would do for French Toast. Batter is a couple of large eggs, milk (I didn't measure), and a touch of heavy cream in this case. I put in about 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract (the real stuff). Beat it up, slice up the brioche in to appropriate sizes (I only used 3 for the 2 of us, I can't eat more than 1 piece myself of this heavy stuff). Used about 1-1/2 pints of the berries (rinsed) smushed up (yes, smushed is a technical cooking term) with a tablespoon of confectioner's sugar. Pan fried it in some vegetable oil and butter until nicely browned. Plated it, spooned the strawberry sauce equally over, cut up some extra berries and scattered over. Powdered sugar over the top. Yum.

Anyway, we did nothing yesterday. Today, so far, lazy again. I guess there are a few things we need to do but I have no inclination. I should get over to the house and have a look at things but lazing around sounds so much better. And it feels good. Besides, it is a holiday weekend. Right? I think?