Breakfast with chickadees

It's time to eat here at Eat Here, where I haven't fed you breakfast in a long while. Like all the cooking I've done lately, it's a balancing act wherein I try not to change the fundamentals of favorite dishes while avoiding my natural inclination to cook for 25. Not that cooking for 25 is a problem, of course, when your house is full of gigantic teenagers who are able to eat with superhuman dedication. But when they go away to pursue their own adventures, efforts must be made to cook for, well, you know, 5 or 6. My dear old person and I are still working this out, and I must admit that recently our dinner plans have been along the lines of, "How do you feel about an egg sandwich?", or "Cheese toast, dear?"

This morning has filled the Spanish moss with golden light and lit the resurrection ferns and the busy birds with bright halos like saints or sacred icons. And so: breakfast. Fresh locally made orange juice, perfectly scrambled eggs, crisp, pointed slices of starfruit and potato pancakes. It's not a breakfast you can get in most restaurants, though of course it's always on the menu at Eat Here. The part you have to make yourself is the potato pancakes.

Start with a cup or so of leftover mashed potatoes. Add one egg, some finely minced onion and, if you like, some equally finely minced garlic. Put in about a quarter cup of flour and whisk the whole thing together with a fork; season with a little salt and bless the whole thing with a few dashes of hot sauce (Texas Pete is the house version). Whisk once more. Using a teaspoon, drop onto your frying surface. For me this is a very well-seasoned cast iron skillet heated to medium high with a bit of olive oil. When the pancaked are nicely browned, turn once and brown the other side. Set on a cake rack, if you have one, while you cook the rest.


Take your plate and that big glass of orange juice out on the back porch, and eat quietly while the chickadees whistle around you and the blue, blue sky peeps out between the waving live oaks, moved by a freshening breeze with the tiniest suggestion of fall. It's always wonderful to have you with us at Eat Here.