Plus ça change...

On Sunday morning, in a small celebration of our first anniversary, I decided to make Ash and I some pain perdu - "lost bread" - for breakfast. This is the New Orleanian version of french toast, and although one might have surmised I would learn from my previous mistakes, one would be wholly incorrect.

Devon response's to the previous culinary disaster was thus:

Tricks with French Toast-- slightly stale bread, don't leave the bread in the egg mixture too long, butter in the pan, Not. Too. Hot.

Here are some pertinent points about Sunday's endeavour:

1. Pain perdu calls for baguettes rather than normal bread, and unfortunately Ash was all out of day-old french bread. In fact she rather inconsiderately had no stale bread whatsoever, only the fresh, soft, tasty kind.
2. Said fresh bread was submerged in the egg mixture for a not inconsiderable length of time while I fiddled interminably with making a pot of coffee.
3. The butter in the pan was perceptibly smoking by the time the coffee was brewing and I finally I slapped in a couple of fast-disintegrating slices.

Now last time, the result of my labours was a rubbery but essentially edible breakfast. This time, not so. Cutting into the fried carapace of one of these unfortunate cakes of doom revealed three distinct strata: first, a crispy shell of burnt butter and carbonised bread; second, a hybrid combination of partially scrambled eggs and bread and lastly, a near-liquid core of utterly uncooked sludge.

A generous application of maple syrup made the outer layer, when carefully separated from the treacherous innards, a crunchy treat. At least it did for one bite, after which my stomach was turned by the sight of the wobbly guts of the thing so that I shovelled it into the bin. I think french toast and I may just go our separate ways after this. It isn't working out. I'm tempted to try beignets next, but it all seems too much like baking, and that's a step I'm not willing to take.

In other news, Mart and I took a trip down memory lane by getting well and truly smashed on Wednesday night. The next day's nauseous bus trip (there was no way in hell I was going to cycle) and beery, aromatic arrival at work harked back to a simpler time when things like sleeping under one's desk and not carrying out a jot of work were accepted - even applauded! - by one's peers. Good (old) times.