Strawberries are ripe now—those exquisite locally grown berries with the delicate skin. I picked up a flat at the Vienna, VA farmers market, which gave us enough to eat, and plenty for jam. The greatest thing about this, the first of the season’s jam, was that Max asked me if he could help. We think that he is prematurely homesick. And being the good scientist, always looking for a better way, he suggested using a pastry cutter to chop the berries.
Number 2 pencil, nerdy t-shirt and a plate of French Toast—Max is ready for his test.
I haven’t made this recipe in years, and then two things happened that brought it to mind.
1. Molly came home from her math tutor’s house with three large loaves of day-old bread. There was no explaination as to why she was given the bread, nor where it came from. We hypothesize that the tutor thinks we are a pauper family with 8 kids—a least that was Molly’s first thought and she right away informed the tutor that there are only three kids in the family. 2. Tomorrow is the beginning of AP test week—no wait it’s only the first of two AP test weeks—at our over-achieving, why bother with college when you can take 2 dozen AP classes in high school high school. (I know that my editor friends will be all over that sentence, but that’s what you get from a designer.) Anyway, nothing like a good breakfast before an AP Computer Science test, right? A great use for old bread, and what a wonderful treat for a weekday breafast.
Overnight French Toast
The night before: Mix the following together in a 9″ x 13″ baking dish:
Arrange the bread slices in the pan, on top of the egg/milk mixture. Wait a minute and then turn them over. Cover and place in refrigerator over night.
In the morning: Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place bread onto a greased cookie sheet. Bake 10 minutes on a side.
Here is the bread, ready to be tucked in for the night:
The Plate is My Canvas 