It is not for the budget alone that I am a thrift store scavenger. Savings are great, but a deeper pleasure lies in treasure hunting for curious baubles and ephemera. I hit gold recently when I stumbled on Plantation Cookery of Old Louisiana from 1938.

It caught my eye immediately because I had fallen in love with New Orleans and the surrounding swamplands in my more libertine days, and I felt a wave of nostalgia for the cuisine, the ghosts and vampires, and the bottomless vats you’re expected to drink in this strange land. But I was jolted out of my reverie by 'Scrambled Brains'.

Maybe, like me, you like your eggs over easy, or maybe you’ve always enjoyed them scrambled up with porcine brains. "It is difficult to select the one deserving the prominence of first place in a series of recipes, but eggs scrambled with calf brain or hog brain, a great favourite, is a fast starter…"

And by starter, Eleanore Ott of Fair Oaks Plantation means starter. Under "Plantation Breakfasts" she follows the scrambler deluxe with cheese toast, accompanied by tripe fried in fritter batter and stewed apples with cream. Then make room for battercakes "drowned in butter and honey," biscuits, rice fried in egg batter, bacon, strawberry preserves, crab apple jelly, molasses, and coffee.

"Now get me right," Eleanore Ott scolds her reader. "This is… one single menu. And of course, that was just an ordinary weekday affair. The plain or garden variety of breakfast."

I read further with delight the author’s charming instructions and lore for pickled pig’s knuckles, squirrel pies, and figs stewed with butter, but there’s no way I’m touching brains with a ten foot pole, even though I know in my heart they are an unparalleled source of nutrients. After all, when we were cave men, we scooped ‘em right out of each other and got smarter and smarter!

My "garden variety" weekday breakfasts are a little bit different than the historic yester yore of Louisiana, breakfasts that I’m pretty sure are gone with the wind. For me, it’s usually two generous cups of coffee accompanied by a vague anxiety reminding me to eat something because fat people really should eat breakfast and usually don’t. You’ll notice that’s the only time girls like us aren’t hungry, and trust me, it’s paradise. But eating the most important meal of the day wards off blood sugar issues, carb binges, and even keeps in check the temptation to over imbibe, a blight to which lushes like me are prone. I keep on hand plain yogurt, berries, and nuts to make the morning meal a simple yet delectable affair. But I confess that I don’t usually crack those ingredients into a bowl until midnight, when I’d rather be scarfing down a second helping of sweet and smoky short ribs or making love to a bag of potato chips - the latter a lover I cannot let into my house, save for my weakest moments.

But then there’s the "not garden variety" breakfast I’ve managed to perfect. This is killer material in my arsenal, for effortless panache. Begin with unique, mismatched saucers- china tea plates with true gold leafing and little yellow flowers, for example, or thick red plates with Moroccan-style patterning. I use plain white half-length olive boats. Slice bananas and strawberries thinly and arrange with "spontaneous artfulness."

Crumple, sparsely please, the finest blue cheese you can afford. If you’re really in a bind, or really broke, you are permitted to use blue cheese salad dressing. It’s not half-bad, but still, that’s just sad. Drizzle concoction with gorgeous, real Canadian maple syrup, which has a secret life beyond pancakes. No, you cannot use the kind that comes in a plastic bottle and has no actual maple syrup in it. You must, in fact, throw that crap out. Save your pennies instead by avoiding boxed and canned food, not by substituting further palate poisoners for the real things in life.

Lastly, toss crushed walnuts on top, and serve up with huge colourful glass tumblers of champagne and cool little mugs of strong coffee. This breakfast is best served in bed, whether or not there’s anybody else in there. It’s easy like Sunday morning.

If you must rise, dress, and brunch with the fierce and the fabulous, always order the Eggs Florentine. Stop fretting about the girth of your thighs and the Hollandaise sauce; instead, toss that English muffin at the chef and rejoice in a rare and important marriage- spinach and eggs. This delish dish helps you see straight- even better for your vision than carrots. Cooked spinach is loaded with lutein, but the eye-friendly vitamin is best absorbed from eggs. Combining the two makes a superpower- and because you need fat to maximize the effects, you don’t have to skimp quite so ascetically on your Hollandaise sauce.

We can’t always have champagne, hominy patties, and Grandmother’s waffles with our scrambled brains. But breakfast somehow always gets the short shrift in home life or in entertaining. Yes, Much Depends on Dinner, but it is breakfast that shouldn’t be skipped. Make eggs centre stage like Grandma did, and end your slavery to toast and sigh, yes, to champagne. Invest in real syrup, full of B vitamins, and in quality coffee. And if, after a late night ball, you find yourself with unexpected belles and pirates on the living room floor, then get cracking.

Author, Artist, Poet Lorette C. Luzajic's website is www.thegirlcanwrite.net. Browse her books at Amazon.ca

The Real Dish...

You may have seen her at the last wine tasting- it was hard to miss her. She was the only one in sneakers and jeans, jeans she was busting out of, bangles jangling as she scarfed back corned beef and pickles, toasting everyone who walked by: "Praise the Lord and pass the Chardonnay!"

Yeah, that was me. I confess I’m a little unrefined. I hardly know my pate or canapés from canopies (but I can spell hors d’oeuvres without looking it up.) I speak locavore, but that’s only because I was born and bred in Niagara, and the celebrated vino runs through my veins. I’m not remotely comfortable in restaurants with truffle glace and white linen napkins and and white jazz. Oh, I don’t mind the odd balsamic reduction, don’t get me wrong- but I’m more likely to order jalapeño mayo and eat the yam frites with my fingers. I can’t dine without spilling Dijon on my knock-off Pucci scarf and knocking over the Perrier. And my editor would be shocked to see that most of the essential utensils are missing from my pauper’s kitchen, where I can barely fit the dish rack.

But I’m passionate about food. Like most of my habits, good and bad, I do it to excess. That’s just the kind of girl I am. Over the top, with zany, unapologetic appetites. I’m voracious to learn about food. I write regularly about eating, and I resurrected my body from lifelong illness by learning all I could about nutrition. I’m an enthusiastic advocate of eat to live, live to eat. And I’m fun!

I’ve got seventy spices in my crammed cupboard and create soul food from all over the world. I make food that nourishes the body and proclaims my love for life. And I’ll bet my sole ladle that I’m not the only foodie or reader who feels most at home in dingy hole in the wall diners. And I’ll bet my prize wooden salad bowl that the rest of you would love to try some of Toronto’s ethnic adventures, but just aren’t sure how to get past the unfamiliar menu or customs, or your fear of grime. So, I’ll take you there.

Once in a while I pull out my French cooking school manual, to pay homage to the gourmet universe. But then I thaw out a rack of chicken thighs- forget the boneless, skinless crock we’ve been force-fed- I cook with skin! And I pour on sweet paprika from Croatia, bought at the Eastern European deli on Pape, with salt and yogurt. And I chop up a few red onions and toss them in red wine and the dried up piece of Genoa salami in the far corner of the fridge.

Oh, yes, I can drop six dollars on one bite of truffle hazelnut crème chocolat - generally, I have to, because I’m celiac and avoid soy like the plague, so most cheap chocolate bars are off limits. But I can stretch that six bucks into a spectacular symphony of flavour for two, or spend ten discovering the joys of Kenyan corn bread or raw meat from Ethiopia. In Toronto, there’s a whole underworld of unsung gourmet, diners with menus in Swahili and faded Formica tableaus that translate into mind-bending flavour. Let me show you the real dish.

Goodbye Billie Jean: The Meaning of Michael Jackson

51 writers curated by Lorette C. Luzajik

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