Over the years of watching Saturday morning Food Network shows (Good Eats is the best), I learned of the custard-variety french toast, the kind usually served at fancy brunch places. The batter is often a base of eggs and cream or milk, plus flavorings. After I successfully made my first crème brûlée from scratch I thought “Hey, I can make a custard-like substance with ease!” and thus my French toast recipe was born. The first time I attempted to make French toast, I was living in my college dorm. I casually combined some ingredients on a weekend morning and voila, I had French toast.

Recipe: French Toast, The Lazy Weekend Way

Typically I make French toast on Saturday or Sunday morning. I am usually very hungry and slightly tired when I am making it, so I don’t really bother with measuring my ingredients carefully. I eyeball everything and determine the custard is ready when it looks good to me. I haven’t had a batch of French toast come out bad, so I must be doing something right. While I do not measure my ingredients carefully (if at all), I do follow a specific ingredient list. The goal is to create a custard-like mixture to dip the bread into, so I follow the basic principles of custard making.

Bonus points if you have a good sourdough bread on hand and you remember to leave a few slices out overnight to dry out — it helps the bread soak up more batter.

Here are my ingredients:

• 2-4 slices of slightly stale or dried out bread (white, french, or sourdough work best). If like me, you don’t always have stale bread, just toast your bread to rob it of some moisture. Fresh, moist bread will yield soggy French toast that is hard to flip in the pan.
• egg yolks (yolks by themselves work better at creating a custard, but you can use the whole egg if you want to)
• milk or half and half
• granulated sugar
• cinnamon
• vanilla extract
• 1-2 tablespoons of butter, for melting in the pan

If I am making french toast for myself and my boyfriend, I use:

4 slices of bread
2-3 egg yolks
about 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup of milk
1/4 cup of sugar
a teaspoon of cinnamon
a teaspoon of vanilla extract

Whisk together your egg yolks, sugar, and cinnamon* until they have lightened in color and combined; about 30 seconds of whisking. If you have ever made a custard, this step will seem familiar. *Adding the cinnamon at this stage helps it integrate better. In the past, I have added the cinnamon when I added the milk, which resulted in cinnamon clumps forming.

When properly combined, the eggs, sugar and cinnamon will look like this:

Whisk in the milk and vanilla extract until combined.

Heat a skillet or fry pan over medium heat and add enough butter to coat the pan. Once the butter is bubbling but not brown, dip your bread, one slice at a time into the custard mixture.

Allow excess egg-custard mixture to drip off the slice of bread and place the slice of bread immediately into the hot, buttery pan.

Fry the slice of bread until the first side is golden brown, about 2-3 minutes, then flip. I typically turn my slices too early so I will flip them back and forth until they are brown on both sides. Be sure to keep your heat on medium; you don’t want to burn your French toast!

Repeat the dipping and frying process until you run out of custard mixture and bread slices, or reach the desired servings of French toast.

I always love to top my French toast slices with something tasty. My favorites are warmed orange marmalade and chocolate hazelnut spread (Nutella), chocolate chips (if I don’t have Nutella), and maple syrup with butter or powdered sugar. Any type of jelly or jam would work too, as would slices of fruit. Get creative!

French toast with maple syrup, my boyfriend’s favorite:

French toast with orange marmalade and chocolate chips, one of my favorites:

Do you love French toast?

Because I have lived in the west side of San Francisco for the nearly four years I’ve been here, I rarely venture to the Mission. Instead of dining at Pizzeria Delfina, spending my Fridays at Mission Bowling Club, or standing in line for fresh-baked morning pastries at Tartine Bakery, I merely read about those experiences on food and local news blogs and imagine what my life would be if I lived in the hipster capital of, uh, Northern California. (I think that’s right, isn’t Portland the hipster capital of the world? I don’t even know)

Hoping to change that, and because I was craving something sweet, I spent my sunny afternoon finding Tartine Bakery, a San Francisco-famous pastry and sandwich shop and cafe at the corner of 18th and Guerrero. The space was small, but the pastry case was big and full of too many tempting treats for me to pick something. Feeling the pressure of a growing line, I went with the first pastry that caught my eye and that remembered was highly recommended on Foursquare, the chocolate eclair.

My Tartine eclair, before I scarfed it down.

After stopping at Bi-Rite Market, another San Francisco institution, for a water bottle, I climbed the hills at Dolores Park to take in a view while taking in the eclair, passing a guy peddling pot cookies. Thanks man, but today this French pastry is all I need. After finding my spot in the grass, I promptly took a huge bite and ended up wearing a blob of vanilla cream filling. I didn’t care because Tartine had lived up to its hype; my eclair was really, really good. It also validated in my mind that these Mission establishments are really as good as everyone says they are.

I already knew that Dolores Park was a nice place to spend a warm afternoon. Now I also know that it’s worth getting out of the Outer Sunset to find some great food in the Mission and in other parts of the city to which I never bother to venture — especially on those rare San Francisco sunny days.

Let’s back up. I was raised as a reformed Jew. I spent my weekends in Hebrew school at our synagogue, learning about the Jewish holidays and customs. In the fourth grade, every Wednesday afternoon I learned Hebrew in preparation for the Bat Mitzvah that I never actually completed (though I did get close). Judaism was a significant part of my upbringing, and every holiday was celebrated in one way or another, either at home or at shul.

Once I had outgrown my synagogue’s own education program, I was sent to the new and modern Jewish community center to take classes for confirmation. My religious peers cared more about chasing boys and screwing around in the back of class than learn about the history of our people. I got fed up and dropped out of my Jewish education.

By the time I made it into high school, it was rare to find me at synagogue other than for the high holy days. By my junior year, I had stopped going to those services too. I was struggling with forming some sort of relationship with God and feeling deeply tormented by my past let-downs with a higher power. I felt that Judaism didn’t offer any guidance.

A few years later and looking for a sense of community when I got to university, I joined my campus’ Hillel. I met a few friends, learned a bit more about my religion, and had a lot of fun. On the other hand, I encountered a lot of cliques that made it hard to feel included. As meetings and events became more about people’s drama with one another and less about actually connecting to our faith, I stopped going altogether.

Give or take a few years, that leads me here. I’ve done my best to keep up my Jewish traditions, which at this point just means lighting the Hanukkah candles, making latkes, and maybe eating some matzo at Passover.

Aching for a way to really understand the significance of everything that Jews do, I signed up for Birthright this year. It’s a 10 day trip to Israel to see the holy sites, explore the country, and, most importantly, learn about the history and significance of our people. To me, it’s a way to pick up where I left off in my religious education in a setting that’s far more meaningful than sitting in a fancy community center with a bunch of ambivalent teenagers.

I’ve been told by everyone who has gone on the trip before me (my cousins, most of my friends, several colleagues) that it is life-changing. I really hope that’s not an oversell. I don’t think it is. I couldn’t be more excited. I leave in May, and I really hope I come back with more than just a few souvenirs.

All I want to say is that it sucks that I’ve now spent about 2/3 of my life without you. You were here for the first eight, but not the last sixteen. Every day I replay a memory from those years, making sure as little slips away as possible. Every day I miss you. But every day I’m thankful for what you taught me. Every day I’m proud of the person you were. And every day I remind myself that you’re proud of me too.

From Wired: “This mosaic of 53 images shows the different composition of rocks on the moon’s surface. Blue and orange colors represent lava flows, bright pink areas are highlands, and light blue colors indicate recent impact material with the youngest craters showing blue rays extending away from them.”

Image: NASA/JPL/Wired

• Sit in the Arcade and Bleachers at Giants games. I’ve watched the Giants play at AT&T Park in every level, from Lower Box to View Reserve, including the private boxes. But I haven’t sat in the bleachers with the crazy fans, or sat in the arcade where I can turn over the Ks. I want to do both this year.
• Run another 5K and/or run my first mudder race.
• Think Less, Trust More. This is my 2013 motto. Trust my judgement more, make more snap decisions, and think less about 2 hours, 3 days, or 5 weeks in the future.
  
• Save for a new computer. Yes, it will be an Apple laptop. No, I’m not exactly thrilled about that.
• Start an IRA.
• Get addicted to caffeine. Ha ha. But seriously, I need more energy.
• Alternatively, fix my sleep patterns.
• Use my Fitbit more/track my health metrics.
• Learn more Spanish. Hey, I’m already halfway there!

It’s an ambitious list, but I’m hoping I can tackle it. Now I just have to wait for the New Year’s resolutioners to get sick of going to the gym so I can get my spot on the treadmill back. Ciao!

While I love it because it combines baseball and motivation, it also got me thinking. What if you’ve gotten over your fear of striking out, play the game, and strike out anyway?

In that case, a few more metaphors are equally helpful. In life, (or work or school) you’ll get up to bat many times. You might have confidence that you’ll hit the ball, but you strike out. That might day might seem like a total disaster, but there’s a game tomorrow kid. And you’ll get your butt back to that plate again.

Some days, you’ll hit a single and just get through the day. Hopefully most days you’ll get a double, meaning you do good work, make good decisions, and have a good day. Sometimes you’ll get a triple and feel awesome because you did something great. And finally, on those few occasions you’ll hit that ball out of the damn park (into McCovey Cove) and do something epic — anything from nailing a huge project at work, graduating from school, or accomplishing any great goal you’ve set for yourself. (Yes, there’s the grand slam too, but I’m not sure where that fits. Maybe that’s reserved for child birth because that’s crazy hard to do.)

What’s the moral of my ramblings? It might be hard as hell to get up to the plate everyday, but you have to give it everything you can. On the days when you strike out hard, treat yourself to something up lifting. On the days you get a hit, pat yourself on the back and cheer yourself on if there’s not a crowd to do it for you.

Side note – To those crazy people who fired guns, flipped over cars, set things on fire in the streets, and bashed in the windows of my office building: You are not true fans. You make Giants fans look like lunatics. I heard most of you don’t even live in San Francisco, nor have been fans of the Giants for longer than four years. Please go away from San Francisco and do not return the next time we win. Thank You.

Watching on Monday when the Giants shut out the Cardinals in Game 7 of the NLCS was awesome. Especially since I was at home curled up under a Giants blanket, while it poured outside apartment and at the stadium during the 9th inning. But that didn’t seem to matter to Sergio Romo, would looks very happy:

Photo: San Francisco Giants

Oh Buster, you’re so cute and one of the best hitters we’ve had in a while. MVPosey!

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