Friday, October 07, 2011

More applish things for breakfast, and stranger fruit.


Oh, I am so healthy.  I don't really live on toast and marmalade and wine and garlic butter and potato gnocchi and boiled sweets (soft centred ones), I sometimes eat this puffed spelt muesli from the Abbaye La Joie Notre Dame

(I may post more on the role in my life of religious communities as retail experience at another time, except by doing so I would quite possibly lose the respect of both people of established faith and convinced atheists - excuse me is there a difference? Except I often find the former more gentle and tolerant than the latter, only of course I live in Europe... enough, parenthetically, enough.)*

With this rare-varietal, cereal-based food, which also contains coconut and is reassuringly un-crunchy, I mix diverse things, such as chopped prunes, Medjoul dates, apricots or bananas, I'm nothing if not fusion - or perhaps that should be ecumenical - in my tastes.  On this occasion I added more gift apples, this time sweet eaters from B the German Doctor (espoused to the Quiet American), with a little light muscavodo, some soya cream and, a last minute notion, a pinch of cinnamon. And very good it was too, in the blue green hand-thrown bowl which is one of my favourites.

With, of course milky coffee (Fair Trade Guatemalan at the moment, or is it Haitian?), and supplements: lots of B complex, probably so much that most of it passes through me without touching the sides, zinc, and most important of all, magnesium, which I swear by. and which also is to be found in spelt.

TMI, no doubt.  So what did you have for breakfast?  (Thereby confirming this blog's place in the division one banality stakes.)
~


These physalis fruit, I feel, deserve to be portrayed because they are things of quite spiritual beauty too.  Discovered and purchased on a trip to Lamballe market, along with a bunch of earthy but not woody radishes, some gorgeously corrugated big tomatoes, a small aubergine with a long stem still attached, some dried butter beans which here rejoice in the name haricots de Soissons ( though that was the council that condemned poor Peter Abelard and his book, I still think it sounds better than butter beans...) and are quite hard to find, and a net of pink Roscoff onions.  The physalis were grown by a lady selling organic stuff and she grew them herself in a polytunnel, which she said was the only way to ensure a long enough growing season.  Tom was quite surprised one could eat them at all, as he assumed I had bought them purely for their beauty, which I might have done, if they didn't taste so very good too, and if the act of unwrapping them from their papery raiments and popping them in one's mouth wasn't so exquisite.

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Well, that's a pot boiler of a post for the weekend, since though I have sorted through, shrunk and exported (oh hear me, you Trojans, your Blogger allowance will burn up before your eyes if you do not heed my words and shrink and export your photos... I have seen it!) the pictures I have just downloaded from the astonishing Indian summer we have just experienced, I ran out of steam and time to do any more with them just yet, so this will have to do for the moment.  

And so to bed.  Have a good weekend.

~  

* In fact the abbey is a beautiful, graceful and warm place, which I'd recommend anyone to look in on, except very convinced atheists, I suppose.

17 comments:

the polish chick said...

oh dear, an avowed atheist here, dropping in to tell you that my only breakfast has been butt ends of mini baguettes that are being used for crostini for tonight's dinner party. normally i'm a hearty breakfast eater but something snapped today and i've been snacking only, although i'd best eat something before i pass out into the risotto.

i do love cape gooseberries (or ground cherries) but i never knew they were called physalis which sounds ever more elegant.

off i go into the kitchen again!

christopher said...

My dad was an irritated and discussion avoidant atheist until he got the bone cancer that ended his life in a haze of pain and dope. Then he converted which permitted his wife to become overt in her faith too. When I was in high school my mom put her foot down and demanded that he leave us be to go to church so that I and my sister could have some basis for choosing what to do. He did that. I never went back to Christian church after that time, though I have a devotion now. My sister followed my mother into Unity. I tried Unitarian for 10 years but found it wanting. Neither Christian nor Unitarian but still spiritual...

As for your breakfast discussion, I loved it.

The Crow said...

I had a bowlful of whole grain oatmeal dusted with roasted Saigon cinnamon (heavenly!), with a slice of toasted Portugese bread and a mug of steaming hot masala chai. Started my chilly morning off on the right foot and kept me warm for most of the morning.

Loving these photos, Lucy; especially the ground cherries, which I didn't know could be eaten fresh. I'm not certain, but I think these are also called Chinese lanterns...I'll have to check on that.

HLiza said...

I take that kind of breakfast at least once a week..just to convince myself that I'm healthy..hehehe..to us cereal and English breakfast is so boring bland..our traditional breakfast include oily and spicy stuffs like rice cooked in coconut milk served with hot and spicy red chilli-prawn gravy, in some parts the rice is coloured blue, red and pink! My mom frown upon the idea of fruits very early in the morning (but not chilli!).

Zhoen said...

Cream of wheat with wheatgerm, raw almonds, chocolate chips on top. Every working morning. And strong tea.

Roderick Robinson said...

Even when I ignore the main thrust of your post completely (and let's face it, it wouldn't be manly to devote that much ingenuity to breakfast) there are always these little pickings - techniques, you might say - which I can carry off and plagiarise at a later date. In this case it's the throwaway adjective that seems unimportant, but hints at a greater majesty of mind. Not just dates but Medjoul dates. Probably no great thing from a gustatory viewpoint but evidence of your knowing that dates are categorised. Whereas I, not liking dates (convinced that they're fabricated from well-boiled toenail clippings), am always sidetracked, drawn to pictures of badly drawn camels that decorate the boxes.

Atheists get a couple of mentions, coming off worst when tested for gentleness and tolerance. Only someone totally paranoid would conclude that this might be the result of your recently bumping into one (two, in fact). But I have no complaints. I would swap these two qualities for a hand-embroidered banner proclaiming "Inveigler" and that has in fact happened.

Ah, I notice the bowl is hand-thrown. I like the ambiguity.

earlybird said...

Lucky you finding physalis ripe enough to eat. The only ones I've found here on the markets have been sour. I love their beauty.

I think breakfast is possibly the best meal of the day. I can eat pretty much anything for breakfast... although I had some difficulty in India with cold fried fish and very spicy chickpeas... not my breakfast of choice.

tristan said...

oi ! ex-parenthesis ! have you tried the new triple chocolate mars bars yet ?

Unknown said...

Physalis is a much nicer word than cape gooseberries, and how beautiful they are indeed in the light of your photograph. Ground cherries is a new word for me, I'm grateful.

Crafty Green Poet said...

physalis are so beautiful and taste so good too.

I had croissants for breakfast, the type with marzipan and almonds, a regular weekend treat

marja-leena said...

Lovely post and images, Lucy, as always. I too did not know those golden little fruits that adorned some restaurant desserts were from physalis! Spelt muesli sounds healthy and something I could have as I try avoid regular wheat. I use spelt in my baking. I wonder if I can find it that muesli here but probably not as lovingly prepared as from your abbey - doesn't love make the food healthier?

You do live in a most lovely part of the world, with so many interesting sights to see nearby without having to travel long distances with its accompanying stress, expense and pollution. We are trying to do more of the same around our area as well.

julia said...

I do not eat breakfast
except when The Rags are here and we have brunch on Sunday
or when in France when I eat croissants, of course

Thumbs up to your buying habits (pun intended)

Lucy said...

Ah, God and breakfast: everyone has different ideas and some just do without.

'What did you have fore breakfast?' is generally considered the epitome of a boring and trivial question. However I find it rather interesting; although people tend to have much the same thing for breakfast every day, and most find something reassuring in this, the range of different foods and tastes is enormous and eften surprising.

I think the prize must go to Hliza's Malaysian multi-coloured rice, chilli and prawns, along with the, to me, amusingly upside-down fact of fruit being frowned on but chilli approved. Though I like the idea that bright colours seem to be globally considered desirable to wake us up in the morning, whether it's the cereal boxes or the food itself that is coloured.

Actually, in the days of Indian takeaways, I used to find leftover curry, cold or reheated, the most delicious breakfast of all, especially if there was a bit of naan bread left to put in the toaster.

Though CGP's almond croissants are pretty classy too, I gather there are some fine pastry shops in Edinburgh.

Tristan - I hope you don't have the triple choc Mars Bars for breakfast!

ML - I don't think these nuns actually make the muesli, but we bought it in their shop. Monastic retailing really is quite savvy these days, there is a nicely designes Europe-wide 'Monastic' label for the products of religious communities, really, and the products are uniformly very good. This abbey makes excellent chocolate.

Mouse - thanks for the thumbs-up; I seem to remember seeing a photo that looked like Timadeuc on your blog once. Their shop is gorgeous and their cheese and fruit jellies delicious.

Physalis, well yes, it is a nice word except I can't help worrying about the risk of transposing the first two consonants and it coming out as a sexually transmitted disease. But perhaps I'm warped. cape gooseberries is indeed a wholly inappropriate name for them. some of these are a bit tart, but they are very good. The friend who was with me when we bought them grew up in southern Africa and is always pleased to find them, she grew some good ones one year but mostly the climate is inadequate to ripen them. The Chinese Lanterns one often sees are a different variety, I think, and not edible.

Pam said...

I had a piece of wholemeal toast and honey. And weak tea with milk. Yours sounds better!

Fire Bird said...

porridge, banana, honey, tinned peaches, rooibosch tea... if I'm not too late to mention

Fire Bird said...

oh, and no god, just that strange uncanny

Fire Bird said...

oops - feeling that something's missing