What You Can Have....And What You Can't

The hunger kinda hit me this morning while I was standing barefoot in the cold on my good neighbor's porch:  I wanted a hot breakfast.  More particularly, I wanted crispy bacon and eggs with toast fried in bacon dripping for breakfast.  If I wouldn't have that, I wanted the stellar mushroom, onion, and cheddar egg soufflé that my mother always made in our huge old iron skillet on Sunday mornings.  Sounds so good, doesn't it?

It's a Sunday morning and I'd like to have a Sunday breakfast, please.....well, I can't.  No arguments.  I can't have bacon and eggs no matter which day of the week it might be.  Kinda makes me want to cuss.  But since it's Sunday, there's even less excuse for swearing than on any other day.

We just can't always have what we want.  End of story.
.....or is it?  Maybe it's just the beginning of a different one.

As I've mentioned before, my vegetarianism isn't for style.  It's the life-and-death variety.  (If you really want to know more, you can read this.)  I don't get a day off.  I can have eggs when they are used as leavening in baked goods but it's risky just to have an egg as an egg, if you see what I mean.  (When I took a notion to make Anglesey Eggs last year, I was actually honestly scared because I knew what the consequences could mean.)  Eggs I have to be careful with.  But meat is off the menu, forever and ever amen.

Not having what you wish for is hard.  That's the truth.  But that doesn't mean you can't have something else that is tasty and just right for a chilly Sunday morning.  Certainly I wanted something, just about anything, after trudging half-asleep across a field, over a fence, through a wood, past the azaleas, and up onto the porch (where I remove my shoes to avoid tracking mud) to go feed my good neighbor's cat Smokey.....and the same but in reverse all the way back home again.  

On my walk, I remembered the coffee beans that I keep in the freezer.  They were a gift from one of my eBay buyers.  He was so proud that he had roasted them himself but he sent far too much for one person to consume.  A year on, even though I've shared the beans liberally with others, I'm still enjoying the bounty.    And I remembered that the freezer also contained some beautiful Barm Brack that I made last week with craisins and orange peel.

Good stuff.   Life is full of good stuff.  But if we spend all of our energy on mourning what we can't have, we neglect the feast that waits before us.  When I got home, I pulled my mother's lovely old egg-yolk yellow French coffee pot out of the cabinet and I opened the freezer with gratitude.

Life is good.  Truly.
I didn't need bacon and eggs after all.