In which I LOVE THIS WEIRD BREAKFAST.

This meal makes no sense.

I mean, it’s basically bacon and eggs and toast, which is pretty normal, but then there’s tomato, mushrooms, and… beans? And the toast isn’t toasted, it’s fried.

It makes no sense, at least, until you read some very, very old cookbooks and discover “sops,” which are pieces of (one assumes) stale bread, revitalized by frying in fat, and over which is poured broth or stew or whatever. After you learn about that, the British whatever-over-toast thing begins to make more sense. And so somehow the inclusion of beans begins to almost make sense, too.

Except it doesn’t, really, because what the hell do beans have to do with toast? I mean, why on Earth do the English eat beans on toast? But then you eat a Full English breakfast and realize that HOLY SHIT BEANS ARE GREAT WITH EGGS AND BACON AND FRIED BREAD AND A GRILLED TOMATO AND SOME MUSHROOMS and that THESE BRIT NERDS ARE BRILLIANT.

Now, as a vegetarian, there’s no hope in hell of my ever getting a Full English at a restaurant, because even with the general acceptance of vegetarianism there’s never any fake bacon on menus. (Except maybe in some funky little diner in Eugene, OR, but they’d probably be fucking vegan or some shit and butter is essential for basting the eggs.) So I have to make my own.

This morning we slept right through noon and nearly until two o’clock in the afternoon. I got up and started doing dishes and sent my beloved off to the store for eggs. When he got back we had breakfast and it was GLORIOUS!

And then a couple hours later it was dark already. Which is kind of depressing, but the sleep felt great.

I found instructions for making a Full English somewhere on the internet. Basically, you cook the meat first and then remove it to a plate. (Which is what I do for Ader. In my own pan, I use butter and oil to fry my fake meats.) Next you fry the veggies in the fat with liberal applications of salt and pepper. Then you pull them out and fry the eggs “with a knob of butter,” which you spoon over the eggs to set the yolks. After the eggs are on the plate, you fry your bread in the remaining fat, plate it, add a scoop of simmering beans, and serve.

Truly the ugliest, heartiest, greasiest, most delicious breakfast EVER. Of course, the Brits use baked beans, but I just use whatever I have. Because I’m American. And vegetarian. And I use Ezekiel bread instead of white. And I’ve already bastardized the meal so much that the wrong beans hardly matters.

Point is, the eggs are amazing, basted in fat and butter as they are, and the beans are better than potatoes, somehow, and the fried bread is fucking glorious, and the tomato and mushroom is the most amazing accompaniment, what with being all juicy and tasty, and like I told Scott I could probably eat this meal twice a day for a week before getting bored of it.

It’s still pretty awesome with potatoes, but not quite as good. You really want some white or chili beans to make this bitch sing.