A Breakfast Tradition of Challah French Toast

I cooked challah French toast Saturday morning during a quick weekend trip with Gilda to see Dan, Allison and the grandchildren. The paterfamilias cooking weekend breakfast is a Forseter tradition dating back at least 60 years. I don’t know if my grandfather back in Ottynia, Poland (now part of Ukraine), delighted his five children with French toast but my father treated his three young offspring to a delectable breakfast on many a weekend morning.

Dad rarely ventured into the kitchen of our Brooklyn row house. At least not to cook. To be truthful, my mom didn’t cook too often when we were young, either, as she worked in the office of my father’s lingerie factory. They came home too late for her to start making meals, so our dinners Monday through Friday were prepared by a succession of housekeepers, the most memorable and long-lasting being Bertha, then Virginia. They were good cooks. Bertha was an especially proficient baker. Her pound cake was to die for. I’ve never tasted its equal.

Lest you get the wrong impression, my mother was a good, very good, cook, though she tended to overcook vegetables. She produced extraordinary multi-course holiday fare, all the more remarkable because of the small kitchen and limited appliances she had at her command. Among her specialties, and my favorites, were sautéed sweetbreads, sweet and sour lambs’ tongues, crown roasts, breaded veal cutlets, matzo ball soup, gefilte fish, and kreplach. It’s making me too hungry to expand the list further. But to get back to the matzo ball soup, that became one of Dan’s favorites, as well. He still enjoys it, thanks to Gilda’s culinary talents. Sadly, Finley and Dagny have yet to cultivate a taste for soup.

Dan and Ellie also knew intuitively when my parents would be coming for a visit. Miraculously, it seemed, cake would grace our kitchen table. They quickly realized cake was a signal grandparents were soon to be guests requiring sweets with their coffee. My telltale signs of pending grandparent arrival are Fuji apples, Diet Coke and a can of whipped cream.

Anyway, to return to my father, his cooking usually was accompanied by loud commentary as he coaxed my brother, sister and me to set the table, get out the Log Cabin syrup and prepare ourselves for breakfast. 

Breakfast wasn’t always French toast. Sometimes he would cook what he called “army eggs,” fried eggs surrounding thin circles of fried salami. He did serve about a year in the stateside army during World War II, but I have no way of knowing if army eggs were standard fare in the military back then.

It is not unusual to remember a mother through the meals she prepared. I do, but I also recall my father and his food habits. He required every dinner to begin either with a half grapefruit or a slice of melon (if the melon tasted “like a potato” he would complain that our fruit and vegetable man was stealing our money). He drank one beer with dinner, usually a Schlitz. He’d leave the dregs at the bottom of the bottle for us kids to swig. Dessert would be some canned Del Monte fruit cocktail or Bartlett pears. About an hour later, after a nap, he’d have coffee and cake, or chocolate pudding topped with whipped cream. Or a scoop of ice cream. When we’d go to the delicatessen he’d more often than not order “specials” and beans. Specials were wide frankfurters, usually boiled. In restaurants, especially at Seniors on Nostrand Avenue near Avenue Y, he’d eat broiled fish. With me, he never ate in an Italian restaurant, and didn’t eat Chinese unless it was in a kosher eatery. Why he insisted on it being kosher I can’t tell you, as he didn’t require it for any other meal outside his home. 

I ate thousands of meals with my father, but the ones that resonated the most with me were our weekend breakfasts of challah French toast or army eggs. I guess that’s why I eagerly and happily continue the tradition.

French Toast from Generation to Generation

Of all the comfort foods in the world, French toast has to rank among the best. Not so much for its taste, though I do like it, but because it's a food often made on weekends by dads and granddads.

A last minute visit by Dan, Allison, Finley and Dagny gave me the opportunity to exhibit the culinary skill passed down by my father. He rarely made an appearance in my mother’s kitchen in Brooklyn. He never cleaned the dishes or the pots and pans, though he did don jeans instead of his usual dress pants to lie on the floor to fix the dishwasher when it went on the fritz.

Other than French toast, his cooking—better to call it, food preparation—was confined to peeling an apple or slicing a pear for his three children. But he did make good French toast. Challah French toast, made from leftover Friday night sectional challah.

Cooking French toast has made its way down to another generation. Dan cooks it for his family, and after seeing his dad and grandpa do it I hope we are planting the seed of continuity inside Finley.

Finley already has experience with generational continuity. Gilda and I saved many of our children's toys including lots of Legos and construction trucks, one of which is a giant crane. For more than a year we made it a point to show Finley a picture hanging on our family room wall, a picture of young Dan playing with the crane just as Finley now does. Soon, Gilda will hang next to it a picture of Finley playing with the crane.

The Legos, of course, are as much fun for Dan to play with again as they are for Finley to explore. But it's the books we kept that really choke Gilda and me up. Seeing and hearing Dan read to Finley books he loved, like “There's No Such Thing as a Dragon” or “Sylvester and the Magic Pebble,” is beyond priceless.

To assure there will be enough bread for French toast on Saturday or Sunday morning I always buy two challahs when I know the kids are staying the weekend. I can't say I include any secret ingredient in the batter. Just eggs, milk and vanilla extract. My dad didn't include vanilla extract and neither did I until Ellie made it that way during a recent family get-together at Dan’s house.

Finley and Dagny like to dip their French toast pieces into maple syrup sitting in a monkey dish. I drip sugar-free syrup onto my slices. Dan only uses real maple syrup.