Breakfast in the Farmhouse

I pride myself on getting meals from stove to table piping hot. It isn't that easy in a strange kitchen and this farmhouse kitchen is definitely strange.

This morning Gary demanded a big breakfast. We had half a pound of bacon and half a dozen eggs to use up. There was a potato, too, and Gary dearly loves fried potatoes.

Warning: this is not a heart healthy menu, but we only eat a breakfast like this about four times a year.

The first problem was the bacon. I laid out the pieces in the big frying pan which I put on the big burner on the electric stove. I peeled and sliced the big russet potato and looked for some cooking oil to put in the smaller frying pan. There wasn't any oil. I wound up using butter. As it melted, I noticed the bacon was still raw on the big burner. The burner didn't work. This required moving a coffee maker from a burner on the right side of the stove. That one heated up right away but only when set on high.

Now the butter was melted in the other pan. I threw in the sliced potatoes but set the burner low because the potatoes couldn't be done before the bacon.

The next step was to chop onions to fry with the potatoes. That was when I found out there weren't any onions nor were there any dried onions in the spice cabinet. Gary said he had thrown out all the spices in a fit of clearing. Clearing, after all, is why we are here in Illinois in the first place.

So I progressed to the eggs which cracked nicely and went into a bowl. With only the two pans already on the stove, I figured scrambled was the way the eggs could be fried. I whipped them up with salt and pepper. Usually I would add some mustard, onions and green pepper for a little added zing. We didn't have any of those.

Meanwhile, I kept adjusting the burners under the potatoes and bacon. It was quite some balancing act getting everything cooked properly in the right time span. The bacon was done first but that worked out because I whisked the bacon out of the pan and threw the scrambled eggs into the remaining grease. (Remember, no cooking oil.)

In the end, I managed to get breakfast on the table piping hot and delicious. Now I understand that stove, though I suspect the next big breakfast will be at a campground where I will be cooking over a camp stove. That, at least, I am used to.