Dec. 21: Toast and farm tractors

 Today, the shortest day of the year, the Rotating Pineapple breaks new ground. For the first time ever, the note-a-day will include a recipe. I channel my late grandfather, Edward Morris, who ate this for breakfast many a morning before trudging outside to his giant green John Deere tractor (I hope) and then tilling the wheat fields of his Saskatchewan farmland.

You need the following:

- bread

- butter

- tomato juice.

1. Toast the bread.

2. Butter the bread.

3. Cut the bread into strips.

4. Pour tomato juice into a glass.

5. Dip the bread/toast strips into the tomato juice and eat it.

-

I am not a farmer but this is one my go-to breakfasts. I substitute the tomato juice with V8 and usually add a pinch of Mrs. Dash, but the recipe remains pretty much the same. It gives you the energy you need in the morning.

-

There is not much else I can say about this except that I can picture my granddad doing this. He gets up while the household is still sleeping, while my mom and her sisters are not even thinking about the schoolday, while grandma is still snoring.

Grandad alone in the kitchen. Sun just starting to poke its head over the horizon. The coffee is on. The toaster is down, the elements inside all red, humming ever so softly. Butter tray on the table, half used, bread crumbs strewn throughout. Radio on, quiet enough so no one hears. Grandad listening to the farm report, seed prices, maybe even the scores from last night's baseball games.

Pop goes the toaster. And grandad gets out the bread and butters in and cuts it and dips it and eats it and then he's out the door, a thermos of coffee in one hand, whistling or humming as gets ready to climb into the tractor. Engine starts, filling the early Saskatchewan morning with that throaty purple rumble. And then he's off. Plowing the fields, earning a living for his family, eventually paying for three girls to go to school.

His mind is on the task. He has no time to think about what a fine man he is.