“Lost Bread” with Jason

There are certain things that have the power to take you back in time.  No, I’m not talking about a complex invention like a Delorean with a flux capacitor, or a theoretical tunnel through space after crossing the event horizon of a black hole.  Something as common as a scent will do, especially if it is associated with major life moments.  Meals, which we taste by smell before ever taking an actual bite, have that power. For me, that meal is French Toast.

I was eighteen years old, and I had just driven 1,400 long miles from my home in Arkansas to Bullhead City, Arizona. This was well before cell phones and google maps. I was just a kid fresh out of high school and Navy boot camp, traversing across the wide open American West. That’s how I came to find myself sitting alone in a Denny’s Restaurant with an order of their French Toast Slam in front of me, facing the next giant step on the road to my future.  

My grandparents had lived in Bullhead City, so I knew that twenty hour drive from Arkansas well enough. The lonely desert towns and stark yet beautiful landmarks across West Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona were as familiar to me as the school bus ride I took every day as a kid. My own son is that age now, and I can’t imagine him making that drive on his own. It’s a different time. Thirty-two years slipping past has a way of changing things.

I was on my way to my first duty station at NAS North Island in San Diego, and I had planned my overnight stop in Bullhead City before making the last push to the coast. Why? My grandparents were no longer alive. I knew no one in the city.  Looking back, I think it was one final attempt to hold on to a childhood that had already slipped away. Some unknown part of me might have been trying desperately to not face the adulthood responsibilities with the fears and failures that come with it. I already had a wife and a two year old son I had adopted, even though I was still a kid myself. The pressure of that weighed heavily on my young mind.

I had driven past my grandparent’s old home, and childhood memories flooded back as I slowly rolled past. I was struck by how time is such a weird construct. I could see myself as a kid, a ghost playing in their desert landscape yard. I never imagined as a child that all these years would pass in what felt like the blink of an eye, and one day I would be in a car feeling like a stranger, just another random passer-by. I was not prepared for the overwhelming emotion it brought. My grandmother had been that rarest of things in my life, an adult who was nice and one that I could trust. I knew I missed her, but seeing her house now in possession of another family hit me with a finality I didn’t even experience at her funeral.

So I left the faded vision of my childhood self behind in my rear view mirror, and stopped at the local Denny’s where I had shared so many breakfasts with my grandmother. I felt like a character in a film eating alone before having to do some dreaded task. I ordered my childhood favorite breakfast of French Toast, and I heard her laugh with delight in my head as I did. In France, French Toast is called “Pain Perdu” which translates to “Lost Bread.”  Had I known that then, I would have been struck by how appropriate the name is, because if there was ever lost bread, it was me in that moment.

Later, on the three hour drive from Bullhead City south to Yuma, AZ, I might as well have been driving on the surface of Mars. I saw perhaps three other cars in total during the three hour drive, and the two lane highway wound through towering sand dunes that blocked all radio signals, if any had made it out that far. It felt like I was traveling through a wormhole, completely isolated and alone. When I reached Yuma and turned west on Interstate 8 which would take me to San Diego, it felt like all vestiges of that childhood were gone, stripped away and left behind in the desert sands. Lost bread.

French toast is now a bittersweet experience for me. I always think of my grandmother and my rare yet happy visits in the desert with her, and I also think of that lonely, scary trip as a not quite ready to be adult. 

I also love the taste of French Toast, and even on this healthy lifestyle, I’m not giving that up. There are enough calories, fat, and simple carbs in a restaurant French Toast meal that I could have left the car and walked to San Diego, and I’d probably still have had calories to burn.  Of course, I’m going to research and hack the recipe, and make it fit into the healthier lifestyle I have adopted.  If you would like a French Toast breakfast that you can eat in the morning and still function as a human being for the rest of the day, give this a try.  Reliving cherished childhood memories at the same time is completely optional, yet highly recommended.

French Toast (Lost Bread)

Ingredients:

Bread:

4 tbsp grass fed butter

4 pasture raised large chicken eggs room temp

3/4 cup almond flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp sea salt

1/4 cup Stevia in the Raw

1 tsp maple flavoring

Coating:

2 eggs room temp

1/2 cup grass fed heavy cream

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions:

Gently melt the butter in a saucepan and set aside to cool slightly. 

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See the list of all the Shirtless Chef recipes at www.mysaline.com/shirtless.