On Sunday morning, in a small celebration of our first anniversary, I decided to make Ash and I some pain perdu – “lost bread” – for breakfast. This is the New Orleanian version of french toast, and although one might have surmised I would learn from my previous mistakes, one would be wholly incorrect.

Devon response’s to the previous culinary disaster was thus:

Tricks with French Toast– slightly stale bread, don’t leave the bread in the egg mixture too long, butter in the pan, Not. Too. Hot.

Here are some pertinent points about Sunday’s endeavour:

  1. Pain perdu calls for baguettes rather than normal bread, and unfortunately Ash was all out of day-old french bread. In fact she rather inconsiderately had no stale bread whatsoever, only the fresh, soft, tasty kind.
  2. Said fresh bread was submerged in the egg mixture for a not inconsiderable length of time while I fiddled interminably with making a pot of coffee.
  3. The butter in the pan was perceptibly smoking by the time the coffee was brewing and I finally I slapped in a couple of fast-disintegrating slices.

Now last time, the result of my labours was a rubbery but essentially edible breakfast. This time, not so. Cutting into the fried carapace of one of these unfortunate cakes of doom revealed three distinct strata: first, a crispy shell of burnt butter and carbonised bread; second, a hybrid combination of partially scrambled eggs and bread and lastly, a near-liquid core of utterly uncooked sludge.

A generous application of maple syrup made the outer layer, when carefully separated from the treacherous innards, a crunchy treat. At least it did for one bite, after which my stomach was turned by the sight of the wobbly guts of the thing so that I shovelled it into the bin. I think french toast and I may just go our separate ways after this. It isn’t working out. I’m tempted to try beignets next, but it all seems too much like baking, and that’s a step I’m not willing to take.

In other news, Mart and I took a trip down memory lane by getting well and truly smashed on Wednesday night. The next day’s nauseous bus trip (there was no way in hell I was going to cycle) and beery, aromatic arrival at work harked back to a simpler time when things like sleeping under one’s desk and not carrying out a jot of work were accepted – even applauded! – by one’s peers. Good (old) times.