I’ve been craving french toast for a long time. I wanted to purchase some from the diner next door but was turned off by the $17.50 price tag. A part of me told myself that I should buy it one day for breakfast and that regardless of the higher price tag, I deserve it. Another part of me knew that french toast was simply some bread, eggs, milk, and syrup and that the ingredients would certainly cost me less than $17.50. This was the part that was holding me back from eating some french toast. Or at least that’s what I initially thought.
I bought a loaf of bread to make grilled cheese sandwiches and thought that one day I could just make some french toast if I wanted to. However, despite having the bread, eggs, and milk, I still felt something holding me back from making french toast. I thought to myself that I’m probably just lazy, not in the mood to cook two pieces of toast, or not that into french toast to want to make some myself.
After weeks of craving french toast, I finally decided to place an order. But after seeing the $30 total with all of the delivery and service fees, I told myself I should just get out of bed and make those two slices of toast.
I first removed an egg from the carton, cracked it, and beat it with a fork. I then added some soy milk and whisked the two together. I then dipped each slice of bread into the mixture, making them nice and wet. Heating up the pan with some oil, I then placed the slices of wet toast onto the pan. As I did not have syrup at the moment, I sprinkled the toast with some sugar and voila! My french toast was complete.
When I took the first bite of my toast, tears welled up in my eyes as I came to the realization of why I had such an aversion to creating my own french toast: Gathering random ingredients from the apartment to make an improvised french toast may seem like something that I would have learned during my days in college dorms, but it was actually something I used to do with my grandpa.
Growing up, I recall being amazed at the things my grandpa could make with the random leftover ingredients he’d find in the house. He would take stale bread and make it into a delicious and hearty fried bread. Milk that was close to the expiration date would help create a lovely steamed egg dish. No food would ever go to waste as my grandpa would somehow think of a use for it. He shared how he learned to make some of these American-inspired dishes during the Vietnam War, when he worked as a cook for American soldiers. These dishes were not only representative of my grandpa’s frugality and waste-free mindset, they were also representative of our family’s history and resilience.
But after my grandpa passed away, things like the steamed egg, fried bread, and french toast disappeared from my life.
I do recall making some of those dishes with my parents, but I also remember them not being the same as the way my grandpa made them. Comments would be made about how maybe grandpa used a lot of MSG or maybe grandpa added something else that we forgot about, but maybe they just don’t taste the same because we don’t have grandpa with us.
Unconsciously, I may have been avoiding creating any of these dishes myself despite their simple ingredient list. I would instead eat french toast at restaurants and cafes under the guise of it tasting better or it being a hassle to make my own. But in actuality, my avoidance was perhaps a way of avoiding reminders of my grief and the loss of my grandpa.
Sitting here with my makeshift french toast with sugar on top, I eat this meal in honor of my grandpa, the legacy he left, and the intergenerational strengths he has passed onto me. French toast may be a simple meal for others, but for me it is a meal full of memories of my grandpa.
