Picasso's got it goin' ON!

"Every child is an artist. The problem is to remain an artist when we grow up."- Pablo Picasso 
(and he should know!)

When I spoke at my father's funeral, I focused on what he gave me that mattered most.  Among many qualities that I treasured and admired, my father had, until his dying day, a child's delight in the absurd. He was like a comedy detective. Whatever dank coal mine of life presented itself to him, he'd put on his miner's hat and find what was interesting and funny in it, and if there was a toothless guy named "Clem" who worked there who knew where to find the best road kill soufflé in all of Appalachia. As I always say, "Everything in life is funny, and whatever isn't will makes a good story." Dad would have liked that one. In fact, I probably stole it from him. 
   As a parent, I often try to channel my father. My dad understood Pablo Picasso's challenge, and he met it each day. He was a childlike artist his whole life--not in any medium visible to the naked eye, but in the way he approached life. He was a life artist. If he were around today, you'd  say "He wins at life." His artistry was to invent a new life hack each and every day and share it in an impish way with everyone in his orbit. He could squeeze joy from a stone. That was his art.
   It is in this esteemed tradition, that I began the breakfast art…what we'll call my "petit dejeuner" period when I look back on this. (It's French for breakfast, and since the FRENCH toast is the primary medium, well, you get it.)

 SO….what better homage to my Peter Pan of a father, than to be every bit as impish and immature with my own children, and appeal to their basest humor. OK, so this picture is a bit of a Rorschach test. HINT: If you are a potty-mouthed, bathroom humor kinda person, you will be at a distinct advantage in making the ID on this one. If this were "JEOPARDY", the hint would be: "It is two things that are related." Here's another angle to really make the point of a kind of cause and effect relationship between the two items. 

 It is a tush. (See the two lumpy "cheeks" back to back to make the crack?). And the longish rectangles plopped on top of each other in a kind of circular fashion below, those things that look like kindling logs in a campfire? They are the work product of the above tush.

 I know.  I'm sorry.  I realize that this is the second unappetizing reference I have made in this blog about food. But I think I've gotten it out of my system now, and everything else will be incredibly dainty, refined, and highbrow.
     After a bunch of smiley faces and a heart or two, this was the first piece of the eggy baked ephemera that I documented. In my house, with one person who has Crohn's and another with Ulcerative Colitis, bathroom humor is ever-present and a consistent winner.  I wanted to make a splash and the tush ensemble was a triumphant success. My son gave me a beaming, smiling, head shaking, eyerolling tsk, tsk, tsk JUST like the one I used to give my dad. And then he tore into his breakfast…just to try to gross me out right back. It made my childish artist's heart sing. 

The SON the moon and the stars

THE SON THE MOON AND THE STARS

                                                                   THE BACK STORY

In my last blog, by way of introduction, I shared an overview of my "breakfast art", a project that evolved as a creative response to a sick child. My middle son, my Malcolm in the Middle, in addition to dealing with all the younger brother/older brother slings and arrows of life, was diagnosed with Crohn's disease after months of pain and basically not eating . While we battled the demoralizing hardships of the prednisone he was given to first get this under control, I noticed that French Toast was the one thing he seemed to consistently be able to stomach. Now, my boy has a staggering, often stultifying tolerance for culinary repetition. At his peak of flexibility, he had a "go to" menu repertoire of about four dishes- pasta, pizza, hot dogs and burgers. But when he got sick, even these lost their dazzle. I was SO thrilled to find that he would eat the french toast, that I, even more challenged with cooking than he was with eating, decided to go long on the toast.

Now. I'll go one by one through the boy-friendly breakfast art, starting with today's contribution… and its motivation.

Last night was Methotrexate night…something he dreads each week. He is finally weaned off the Prednisone and this is his main medication to keep his mouth (he has oral Crohn's) and his gut (in addition to the regular kind of Crohn's in the small intestine.) Every Friday, he takes an anti-nausea pill, waits half an hour and then he gives himself a shot that he realllllllly hates. What usually occurs is a lingering nausea/queasiness that stretches over the weekend, along with a headache, but doesn't make him actually throw up. This shot was worse than usual for him for some reason, and he got up 5 minutes later and bye-bye dinner. All of it. Everything he ate the whole day by the looks of it. (I'd like to extend a quick apology to those of you who thought this would just be a yummy food blog..Note to self: try to avoid puking references in food-related blogs.)

Anyway,  he was drained. SO…this morning, I knew this would be a good day to get back to some good old carbohydrate love. 

Since I have had lots of people ask how I make these confections, I will include a step by step "how-to".

THE EXECUTION

1) Make a pile of Challah French Toast at once…a whole challah's worth at once. This is the constraint. It is the amount he will plow through in several days of French toast and it makes an interesting creative challenge. Like twitter's 144 characters…(is that the number?), I limit myself to whatever can be made with the toast this yields, like a little egg bread haiku. Now the non-lazy among you can feel free to make it as you go, but I don't do that…too little time in the mornings, too many pots and pans to clean.)

Here is this morning's yield. 

A few weeks ago, I offered up this baby (below), and told him it was a downpayment on my promise to give him the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars. (For those of you who thought this was some sort of freaky spider, it is THE SUN)

This one was done "freestyle". I took the biggest piece of challah from the center of the loaf and cut out what was the closest approximation to a circle that I could manage. Fearing the mistaken identity with members of the insect or crab family, I tried to cut out the "rays" like individual lightening bolts. When possible, I cut these out of the scraps from the central orb of my sun. Then came two more concentric circles, stacked on top of each other, to try to create the 3D illusion of roundness. Then, more lightening bolts cut out from what remained of those smaller slices. Obviously, timeliness was of primary concern, so the total creation time was about 10 minutes.

So this morning, I decided it would be a good day to go for the second part of that promise. I'd make the moon and the stars. This was much easier, because it mostly allowed me to cheat and use stars from my abundant cookie cutter collection, and I didn't really have to do anything freehand. Only the smiling moon and one profoundly unimpressive star were done without a mold. See if you can guess which one. It looks a little like the talk bubbles from cartoons where words like ZAP and POW are written.

I tried to block out the stars with the most efficient use of the french toast real estate. (See below)

And once, I stuck one star inside another to create a cut out effect.

The moon was my best effort at cutting out a crescent from the largest piece of the toast, and then making a smile, eyebrows, and eyes from the scraps that remained.

Here's the freestyle "star"- POW! 

The tools of the trade and…VOILA!

       *********************************************************

An Introduction

HELLO GENTLE READER,
Welcome to my blog! I am a reporter/writer on an indefinite parenting sabbatical, and this is my current creative outlet -- a page from the maternal arts (culinary division) for the kitchen-challenged: breakfast art.
  My wry, sweet, funny middle son was recently diagnosed with Crohn's disease, and in the months leading up to the diagnosis this fall, he lost a lot of weight he did not have to lose. It hurt too much for him to eat. It hurt me too much to watch him not eat. SO…as they say, necessity is the mother of invention, and I decided that I needed to create some added enhancements to get that boy to the table. I needed to make him laugh. Since french toast was just about the only thing he could reliably choke down with any consistency, I decided that this divine delectation from my own childhood would become my path to the laughs…and to a kind of white trash version of nutrition for my son (bread, butter, egg, milk, cinnamon-- practically health food :)).
Challah bread, the wonderful, squishy, eggy sacred bread of the Sabbath would be my artistic medium, my comic vehicle.
  The first few toasts went undocumented: a smiley face here, a kind of neanderthal man there. And then I decided to start taking pictures. I went lowbrow, appealing to the baser humor of a 13-year-old: I fashioned a tush out of the back to back "mirror" images of two lumpy pieces of challah. And below it, sliced and placed cris-crossed like logs in a fire, the work product of said tush. My son was mortified and delighted. He ate his breakfast just to "gross me out". I was thrilled.

The next day, I did this one, and called it "A Sunset in One Color". He bought it….or at least he ate it with a smile.

What follows, in the order they somewhat randomly uploaded, are the breakfast treats presented to my son over the next several weeks during the Polar Vortex era this winter. I am profoundly tech-challenged…so these are not in the order I made them. Above-- the efforts of a non-time-challenged snow day breakfast: the 7th wonder of the world-- the Taj Mahal. I printed out a picture of the gorgeous temple in Agra, India and tried to replicate the foreshortened angle, the cedars lining the road leading up to it, and the columns/turrets on both sides.

Other days were much lazier. Inspired by the "wonders of the world" theme on a day where I was scrambling to get the kids off to school, I went for the pyramids in Egypt.

Another day, supreme laziness and a fondness for landmarks combined with  deepest reverence yielded The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center…with the northern tower number one, the radio tower on the left.

I have always liked art and architecture with text- phrases like those by artist Jenny Holtzer or the names of "the greats" in various fields, like Plato, Euripedes, etc. atop a library.

Here, in a cross between "waste not want not" and homage to the arts, is my rather impressionist Guggenheim museum, made from the edges of the bread from another design.

This one is a nod to my son's favorite sport- America's pastime: Baseball. 

Eventually, I began to feel a little guilt about all those carbs, and his tummy became a bit better able to tolerate a slight variety of foods…so I expanded the medium beyond bread.

But not for long: As we labored under the deep freeze of the Polar Vortex, and farrrrrr too many school-free snow days.  Igloo 2.0 came soon thereafter.

Here, with the clip art sketch that was its inspiration.

Couldn't decide if it should have a chimney.

Tried to create a deeper doorway to the igloo with multiple layers of toast on the arched entrance. And then…for one of my own personal natural wonders, a downpayment on a promise to give him the Sun the Moon, and the Stars: the sun for my son. 

I started posting these French toast treats on my Facebook page, and got great reactions from my friends…some of them quite funny. Sarah R. said this looked a bit like a spidery sea creature…but when I explained my limited talent and lame-ish efforts to compensate for this with "lightening bolt-y rays", and concentric circles of French toast to create the orb effect, she bought the whole "Sun" thing, alien arachnid factor notwithstanding.

I began taking requests and suggestions. My friend Julie was really into the "Wonders of the World/landmarks" thing, and she threw down the gauntlet: "Do Stonehenge". I demurred…"I am not ready for a 3D tableau". 

    Back to fruit…"The Wink"

 In honor of the Olympics, and the mini-reenactment of the Russia vs. US miracle on unfriendly (Sochi) ice, "Hockey player with chipped tooth"

 And then "Hockey player with a black eye and a chipped tooth"

 And finally, when we packed up the kids and went to visit Julie and her family in Florida, I was ready to take on Stonehenge as my first collaborative effort. We clicked on a great image of Stonehenge, and then did a mockup on the counter pre-cooking, just to lay it all out and make sure we had all the bits and pieces just where we needed them. On this day, we traded in challah for ciabatta because the latter's flat shape and firm crust lent itself much better to recreating the shapes of the vertical, rectangular stones.

 To avoid the soggy factor, we decided to forego the French toast squish for the cinnamon toast crunch. Julie supplied the viking in a  total plunge into historical and scale inaccuracy. We really did try to put all the stones in the right places.

 The parthenon…an early effort.

 A witch, as interpreted by my son.

 And finally, the French Eiffel tower in French toast.

A bunch of friends have, generously, suggested that I get a gallery to do an exhibition of this edible art, or that I do a book out of it. Architect and college friend Shari M. has critiqued the structural soundness of the architectural monuments. Others, like high school friends Patti H. and Sean M., have peer pressured/encouraged/brow beaten me into starting this
blog, with Sean even kind enough to offer up a tutorial for the tech-challenged on how to do this. He had some great ideas for names for the blog, but in the end, it was former TV colleague Paul M. who came up with the title. (thanks guys!)
The title is TOAST OF THE TOWN, but that URL was not available, so…please look for this in the PLURAL as http://toastsofthetown.blogspot.com/2014/02/an-introduction.html  THAT's MANY TOASTS, not just one…toastSofthetown.blogspot.com.

My son's weight and appetite are back and so is his regular laughter, so I may just back off on the carbs for a while. But I'm sure I'll still have a thing or two to share…on a wide range of topics. Come back and check it out!
Sharon D.