Valentine Breakfast

I'm not a huge fan of breakfast, not even breakfast in bed. I like breakfast foods all right, I just can't face them at breakfast time. I usually get hungry around 10 or 11am - that's when my appetite gets ready for something more substantial than coffee with cream. I'm also kind of fussy about how my breakfast is cooked, so I usually do it myself.

On my birthday, however, I consent to being cooked for. My Beloved had purchased some peppered bacon from the canny butcher who had fried up a few rashers and offered bite-size pieces in little cups atop the meat case - a sample was all MB needed to clinch the sale. He loves pepper anyway - I was a little surprised he resisted at all.

Anyway, he cooked the bacon on Valentine's Day morning just the way I like it, nice and crisp. I toasted an English muffin and spread it with the beautiful, rose-colored Dapple Dandy pluot jam that I made in June Taylor's class and popped it onto the sentimental plate MB gave me last Valentine's Day, next to one of the delights of the winter season, a plump and heavy, smooth and shiny California Cutie clementine.

I figured out a few years ago how to choose citrus and I am now rarely disappointed in the flavors. Citrus should be heavy for its size with a very smooth, shiny skin, as if all the dimples had been puffed out from within. If a clementine, orange, grapefruit, lemon or lime passes all these tests, it will be delicious, full of juice and full of flavor. This clementine was no exception.

This is nearly my idea of the perfect breakfast; a nice cup of coffee laced with half-and-half would have made it perfect but neither of us felt energetic enough to haul out the coffee maker. That's okay - this breakfast fueled a trip up Nichol Knob with Cora to watch the fog come and go across the water of the bay.

One minute, Angel Island was anchored to the water level and the next minute it was floating on a roll of cottony fog. The oil pier came and went through the mist, starkly industrial one minute and hazy and indistinct the next. I sat down on a thoughtfully provided bench and admired the view while Cora sniffed and snooped her way around me, keeping me in sight while exploring a world of scent that only she could experience. We ambled back down the hill about half an hour later, still full of breakfast and visions of the fog.