breakfast blogger

It’s finally warm enough to sit outside around these parts and I took full advantage of that fact when I found this place on the corner of Osgoode and King Edward.

I grabbed a seat outside and relaxed while watching people walk by. I totally love this time of year! I ordered a breakfast called Mikey’s, which is three of everything… 3 toast, 3 eggs and 3 kinds of meat along with homefries. Yummy:

That set me back around 6 bucks without tip. Here’s a shot of Father and Sons from across the street.. what a gorgeous day!!

Dammit, we’re getting slammed with comment spam.. so I’ve turned on the moderation for now. Bare with me folks..

mmmmmm, looks yummy ;) (click on picture to play video)

Burger King’s enormous omelet sandwich packs in 730 calories and 47 grams of fat. It comes with two eggs, sausage, three strips of bacon, and two slices of melted American cheese on a bun and is meant for those who want a power breakfast. This two-minute video clip sizes it up. “It’s very inexpensive, 2.99, so for a certain segment of the population, it represents getting a lot of energy or calories at a very low price,” says Carla Wolper, a nutritionist at St. Luke’s hospital in New York, in an interview. Burger King defends its decision to have it on the menu by saying that customers have a choice on how fattening they want it to be.

It has been becoming a bit of a habit to go out for a sunday morning breakfast with the hubby and kiddo. The past couple weeks have been pretty uninteresting, just the usual run of the mill, major breakfast places like IHOP (my personal fav) and Denny’s and such. ZZzzzZZzzz

Now there is nothing wrong with these places. They serve a good filling breakfast at a decent price. The real problem lies in the time we usualy get our stuff together and head to these places. There is a HUGE church population that seems to flock to these places after service, so after 10am, you are guaranteed at least a half hour wait for a table and the slowest service imaginable. I dont have the patience for it, specailly with a one year old in tow. So this morning we heading downtown so scope out the little cafes and such on the strip. This morning we found this little gem.

It was one of those places that you have walked by a million times, but never really noticed before. Im glad we did. The place was empty when we first walked in, but people did start trickling in shortly after. We were greeted as soon as we walked in and I couldnt help but feel right at home. It wasnt like the usual plastic, mass produced greeting you get at the large chain places, it was genuine and warm. It had a sweet homey feel to it. Nothing fancy, but charming none the less.

We didnt have to spend too much time looking over the menu, we found what we wanted right away. I usually have a picture in mind of what I want for breakfast anyway.

I ended up getting the Soleil de-lite, which consisted of 2 eggs any style (I had poached) toast, homestyle hashbrows and *drum roll* BAKED BEANS!!! Yes Peabody, I found a place here that serves beans with breakfast. I couldnt wait to blog about it, just for you!

Mark had a ham and cheese omlette with hashbrowns. It looked yummy.

My little Nabob just helped himself to both our meals, stuffing his little face faster than I could keep up with, enjoying the beans best of all.

Overall it was quite a good breakfast for a good price.

Yeah, Im a wuss, I couldnt quite finish it. But it was pretty darn yummy none the less.

*burp*

My ladyfriend and I drove to Toronto last week and to make good time we ate breakfast in the car - both ways.

The 401 is over 400km of flat, straight, boring road.

Montreal - Toronto

We had plans to visit so many friends and family on our short 5-day trip that we left Montreal at 8:00am. We stopped by the St. Viateur Bagel Shop on our way out of Montreal to get 3 dozen bagels for our Torontonian friends and family. The smell of the fresh, warm bagels could not be resisted, so we broke them out!

Then we opened our roasted butternut squash dip . . . to dip the bagels in.

We finished off our meal with chunks of orange and grapefruit that I brought back from Florida the week before.
We arrived in Toronto at 1:30pm and spent a lovely 5 days visiting Sue, Ken, Brindel, Tracey, Chris, Kieran, Joe, Sandy, Velvet, Jonah, Kate, Kevin, Misu, Mazy, Simon, Michelle, Amanda, Nora, the Koffs, Laurie, Ray, Nancy, and many others. . .

5 fun-filled days later, we got back in the car (again at 8am!) and headed back home. . .

Toronto - Montreal

We started out with Sue’s home-made cereal mix. Very healthy and super-tasty!

We poured the cereal straight into a container of Liberty Mediterranean plum&walnut yogurt.

Here is a shot of me getting spoon-fed as I drive along the boring 401.

There are a few more breakfast entries to come from this little trip, including a gefilte-fish tutorial, so stay tuned!

Here’s a cozy breakfast spot close to where I live. Over on Rue Montcalm here in Hull, it offers a good variety of breakfast yummies.

I had the Pacha, two eggs with smoked meat. The toast comes with a homemade jam that is a little sweet for my taste, but it’s a nice touch. I ordered some beans (fèves au lard) to go along with my breakfast yummies as well:

$7.45 plus the beans.

***UPDATE December 19, 2006*** Café Diana is gone!! But just up the street, we have Le Twist which just started serving breakfast on weekends. Check it out here..

Oh, here’s an odd thing I found on BoingBoing: Fan fiction devoted to the McGriddle and other McDonald’s breakfast items.

I dunno ’bout you, but the words “All Day Breakfast” get me excited:

I was out on a Breakfast Blogger scouting mission when I found this spot on Bank Street near Gladstone. I happened to learn a valuable BB lesson on this trip: bring extra batteries. It seems that the rechargable batteries for my camera lose thier charge faster over time as you use them.

I sat in the back next to big box picture of Frosted Flakes..

I had the Bram Slam: 2 eggs, 1 pancake, 1 french toast, 2 bacon, 2 sauasge, toast, homefries and a large juice. WOO! Good thing I was hungry.

But here’s the sad part.. after my super friendly server put the plate in front of me, I turned my camera back on to take a shot, but it was dead. No life. I tried some of my tricks, but nothing worked. I could have waited 10 minutes to catch a lucky shot but my breakfast would have been cold. You’ll have to use your imagaination on this one! I can tell you at least that it was super yummy..

***UPDATE Feb 2007: see this link.***

A good friend of mine at work gave my a few of those tiny boxes of cereal that you can still find at the grocery store. I don’t remember ever having tried them before, so I had myself a good photo-op for BB ;)

Isn’t it cute?

I don’t know if there is a trick to getting these suckers open, but the perforations on the package are useless. I had to use a sharp knife to get this thing opened up.

Just add milk, and yer good to go!

And the moneyshot.. they’rrrrrrrrr great!

This morning was nice and sunny but damn.. it was chilly. Once again I had no idea where I’d end up and just jumped into the car and headed out. I went solo over the river and turned west. It was getting late (12:45) so finding a place still serving breakfast was starting to look bleak. I was about to give up and head home when I saw a sign that said “ALL DAY B FAST.” WOO! Kettleman’s Bagel Co. at 2177 Carling claims to have Montreal style bagels and I can tell ya after having them with a breakfast over at Dunn’s on Elgin that they’re damn good bagels.

I had the Breakfast Bagel:

It was really tasty.

I was a little thrown off by the “ALL DAY B FAST” claim though. Maybe I didn’t look carefully enough but the only breakfast item that I saw there was the Breakfast Bagel. It was yummy, even if it is the only thing they have available for your breakfast pleasure. It came with coffee for under 5 bucks.

It was sunny out this morning and I stayed in bed quite late.. only to find out it was even later than I thought with the time change. It was like a cruel April Fool’s joke. I called my awesome friend Allison, the singer from the first band I was in (The Alfalpha Wigs) and told her I was headed her way for some breakfast yummies. I got dressed, jumped in the car and headed over the river.

After picking her up we had no clear idea of where exactly we were going to eat. I’ve hit alot of places on Elgin but haven’t gotten to them all so I suggested we just park in the area and find a new one. After mulling over a couple of spots we decided Maxwell’s Bistro was going to be BB’d.

I had the Eggs Benedict:

Allison had the Frittata Espagnol, an open faced omelette with mixed olives, tomatoes, onion, mushrooms and mozzarella cheese. Yummy:

My yummy Benedict was 9.29 and Allison’s Frittata was 9.49.

And now a request to anyone from the Ottawa area who might be reading this: I want to hear about breakfast places you think I would like to check out. Heh, it would be nice someday to claim that I’ve had breakfast everywhere around here ;) and I’m sure everyone in the Alfalpha Wigs would agree..