Why I write about food…and Baked French Toast

While having dinner out with friends on Friday night, I snapped a photo of a friend’s dinner. The dish was beautifully created, with the perfect drizzle of sauce on a well-selected plate. While I am not this kind of food-obsessed photographer (yet), I do know that this behavior strikes some folks as odd, as it did in this case.

I was asked why I take photos of food. Another friend at the table said, “I guess you don’t follow her blogs or Facebook! You should see the salad she had for lunch yesterday!” Okay, so that was perhaps a little embarrassing and maybe no one really cares what I had for lunch, but I care what you had for lunch. Chances are I read about what you had for lunch if you write about it!

While pondering this conversation (which eventually led to not only photographing food but also writing about food and reading what others write about food), I wished I could come up with a good way to share why I write about food and why I love to read about food. Kate’s in a Pickle beat me to it. Her latest blog post is eloquent and resonates with me.  My favorite line, “We honor each other when we share food that was created in love.”

And on that note, here’s a recipe. It’s not a sweet, but it was so delicious and easy that I wanted to share with you!

Baked French Toast
I started with this recipe.  I changed a few ingredients.  Here’s my variation:

12 slices Udi’s gluten free whole grain bread
6 eggs
2 cups skim milk
1 T. vanilla
1 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. nutmeg
1 cup brown sugar
2 T. maple syrup
1/2 cup melted butter

Butter a 9 x 13 dish.  Stack the bread two slices deep in the pan, covering the entire dish.

Beat together the eggs, milk, vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg.  Pour over the bread, cover and refrigerate overnight.

In the morning, preheat oven to 350.

In a small sauce pan, melt better, brown sugar and syrup until bubbling.  Pour over the top of the bread and bake uncovered for 40 minutes.

You could serve this with syrup, but I found it very sweet without any additional syrup.  It would be great with fresh fruit instead. I did not have enough sandwich bread to fill the baking dish, so I used one Udi’s gluten-free bagel.  You can see it in the photo above. I don’t know if this would work with all bagels, but the Udi’s bagel made terrific French toast.