Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite Toast ($3 or less, fifteen minutes)

This is not a picture of food. It is, instead, a painting by Delacroix, called "Liberty Leading the People," or more correctly (sans accents) "La Liberte guidant le peuple."

See, what's really funny in a not-pleasant way about all the franco-hysteria of 2003 and/or -- oh, now -- in which legions of people were introduced to sliced, deep-fried potatoes as "freedom fries" and battered, pan-fried bread as "freedom toast" is that freedom is what the French were all about. Might even be currently all about. The Statue of Liberty? Made in France. Our freedom as a country from the British Empire? Assisted by France (via Lafayette [he looks like he likes a stinky cheese, don't he?], among others). Freedom from undergarments like corsets and to show one's breasts, as in the painting above, while killing aristos? You know it: FRANCE.

Thus this is VERY FRENCH TOAST.

Which itself is an irony, since no decent French person would touch the stuff, I'm sure. It's pure American.

Ironies upon ironies abound.

This is why Tea-baggers are idiots (does this sign even make sense?), largely -- okay, one of the reasons. Zero ability to sense irony.

For le pain faux-francais, what you need is some stale bread (not moldy! just stale!). Also milk, a couple of eggs, a little sugar, a little cinnamon, and a hot, greased pan.

In a bowl -- here I feature the beautiful gift bowl I got last week from the Brickman-Curzons -- beat a couple of eggs with about a 1/3 c milk for every pound of bread. You might need more or less, but that's the beauty [use your mute button freely at this link] of this recipe. The freedom of it, you might say.

Sprinkle on about 1/2 tsp sugar and a 1/4 tsp cinnamon. Mix this all up well. You can see I waited to beat my eggs until I'd added the other stuff. That's okay too.

Heat the pan with a little oil, until when you shake a wet hand over it, the water pops or dances immediately.

Take a slice of bread and briefly dip it, both sides, in the bowl of eggy-cinnamon-milky-sugar stuff. DO NOT SOAK the bread. You want just to coat it.

Drop it in the pan. If the pan's big enough, do several.

Here I've used my own bread (a recipe I'll post later) -- it's a very dense whole wheat which is good to keep the batter on the outside. White bread will absorb more, more quickly, so keep in mind that you want to be quick in the batter with Wonderbread sorts of breads.

You'll be able to smell this as it cooks and see the edges browning. Lift up each slice to check underneath to see if it's the right color -- brown colored. Like French toast colored. When it's that color, flip and cook the other side.

Set the oven on warm and set an oven-safe plate inside. Put each slice on the plate as it's done, to keep it warm.

Meanwhile, heat a little REAL maple syrup (the other stuff is gaggy and people tend to use too much of it trying to get it to taste like something. So dish out for the real, and use only a little.). I just put the glass bottle next to the pan, not touching, and it's warm enough by the time I'm done.

When it's all cooked, take the slices you want out of the oven and butter and drizzle with maple syrup. Then chow. Or, powder with confectioner's sugar if you need to -- though since this has some cinnamon and sugar in the batter, you might find that's overkill. Fry a runny egg and put it on top, if you don't value plaque-free arteries. Use it as sandwich bread for a thick bacon or slab-o-ham sandwich. Have at it. Do whatever. You have that freedom.

There you go.

Note: Here is a picture of what Chuck made of the batter leftovers. He says to say, however terrible it looks, it was mighty tasty. He simply turned the batter into the hot pan, shoved it around until it cooked, sprinkled it with grated cheddar and jalapeno paste (cinnamon and jalapeno??) and ate it.

In no other country would this be legal. I swear.

Burritos for Breakfast (maybe $5; about 15 minutes)

I preface this whole entry with the caveat: we are not Southwesterners. These are as inauthentic as any other ethnic recipe here.

As I say this, I wonder: what is authentic Southwestern? A hybrid of Mexican and American food? What is authentic Mexican? A hybrid of Spanish and indigenous food? And which indigenous food? And which Spanish cuisine? And how long does a cuisine have to be itself before it's really a cuisine and not some hybrid? And while we're at it, what's Spanish cuisine, but a mash up of regional food ways overlaid with preferences from hundreds of invasions from elsewhere?

I'm looking for the Ur cuisine. That might be authentic.

And don't get me started on "American" food. Now there's a mare's nest if I ever saw one.

Okay, caveats and phlights of philosophy aside, here's what we do when we want quick finger food for brekkie.

You need:

** tortillas (these are El Banderito, but any will work.)

** 2 med potatoes, washed, unpeeled, and chopped into about 1 inch pieces

** 2 eggs

** jalapeno cheese slices (You too can torture your children! Use pain and bribery!)

** a little margarine or butter

** salt and pepper

You can add diced onion and salsa if you want. We generally don't.

In a microwave-safe dish, cover and cook the potatoes on high about 5 minutes. They should be completely cooked.

In a separate bowl, beat the two eggs together.

Meanwhile, heat two skillets. Lightly grease one (I use spray grease). You'll use this to heat the tortillas.

In the second skillet, melt a little butter. Use med to med-high heat.

When the potatoes are done, dump them into the buttery skillet and brown the potatoes. If you want diced onions, this is the stage to add them.

As the potatoes brown, set a tortilla in the other skillet and put a piece of sliced cheese on it. Heat for about a minute (until the edge of the cheese starts to soften). Remove to a plate.

In the potato skillet, pour eggs over potatoes and scramble with potatoes until almost dry. Turn off heat, add salt and pepper, mix.

Set another tortilla in tortilla skillet, add cheese. While that's warming, take a spoonful of the potato mixture and wrap it inside the warm tortilla. You can do a simple taco-like fold-over; we tend to want less messy envelopes, so we fold and roll like a burrito.

Repeat fill-and-fold with the now-warm second tortilla; repeat whole process with the rest of the tortillas until you run out of filling. This should make 5-7 small burritos; maybe 1-2 large ones.

If you want salsa, I'd recommend adding it before you fold, or using it to dip.

There you go.

Cornbread (about $2; 40 minutes)

I was reading something the other day -- don't ask me what -- and someone was complaining that she couldn't make cornbread because there wasn't any buttermilk. That got me to wondering what the heck she was talking about. I guess you could use buttermilk. I'd never used it. But I guess you could.

And anyway, the chemistry of using buttermilk in baking is easy enough that you can substitute spoiled milk (or sweet milk curded with a little vinegar) for buttermilk, in a pinch.

People get their panties in a wad for the weirdest of reasons.

Witness: the sugar issue (this person's actually pretty mild in her disapprobation; she only kicks you off the website). Apparently -- I'm really outside this debate (here's another random sampling), too, so can't be trusted to represent it at all well -- if you add sugar to your cornbread you are [insert nasty regional epithet here]. "True" cornbread, the food of [benevolent regional description]ers, is sugar-free.

I don't know. You could take out the sugar I guess, just add a little less milk, and see how it does. All depends on whether or not you want to be a [nasty region]ist, or if (heresy, I suppose) the matter of sugar really does mark you as a [nasty region]ist.

Alright: here's the recipe. I make this in a cast iron skillet, and make 1 and a half of this recipe to fill it. As written below, this will fill a loaf pan.

You'll need:

1 c self-rising cornmeal (buy local!)

1/2 c white flour

1/4 c white sugar

1 egg (what I want for my birthday)

milk

corn or a very small can of creamed corn (6 oz?)

Oven at 350.

Grease the skillet or loaf pan generously.

In a bowl, mix meals and sugar. If you're using corn niblets, add them to the meal/flour mixture. I put about a handful in mine -- so maybe 1/4 c?

In a large measuring cup, beat the egg with creamed corn if you're not using niblets. Don't do both or you won't have bread so much as corn pudding. Which is delicious, but won't really sop much.

Add enough milk to the measuring cup to make about a cup and a half of liquid. Keep the milk out since you may need a little more wet.

Mix the wet materials into the dry materials all at once. Add enough milk that the consistency of the batter is like very loose pancake batter. You should be able to pour it. Mix just until everything's incorporated, then immediately pour into your greased pan.

Bake about 30 minutes. Eat hot with lots of butter. Sop up soup if you want.

NOTE: I use this for stuffing at the holidays, only I make it hot and spiced. I double the recipe, add garlic, red pepper flakes, oregano, sage, basil and thyme. Cook in a large skillet. Leave out overnight, then crumble with regular bread for your stuffing. It's my secret. Shhhhh.

There you go.

Salad. Of. Potatoes!

My brother Karl hates mayo (though it's pretty cool how it works). He calls it pus. I'm not a big fan, either, so I make potato salad with whatever else I have. Today I had some mayo and not much of anything else. So I had to use the pus. Sorry, Karl.

Purists will note: this is not German potato salad, or hot wild vinegar potato salad, or weird-ass fancy potato salad. It's potatoes dressed in white stuff with a few other things, such as salt. Very basic.

You'll need:

Boiling potatoes

Eggs

Pickles

Yogurt, sour cream, mustard, mayo if you have to

Spices (I use jalapeno paste here, but have been known to use rosemary, thyme, and/or tarragon)

salt and pepper

The first thing you want to do is take about a half-dozen medium-sized red-skinned (boiling) potatoes (about two pounds I'd guess). DON'T peel them. Cut them into chunks roughly the same size. Boil them until they're just done, drain, and refrigerate.

In another pot, boil 2-3 eggs until hard. Best way I've found to boil eggs: put eggs in cold water that covers them. Heat on medium-high. When they start boiling hard, let them boil just five minutes, then turn off the heat and let them cool to room temperature. Douse them in VERY cold water and peel immediately. Generally speaking you only lose a couple of eggs in a dozen to shell-stick this way.

When you're ready to make the salad, put the potatoes in a large bowl. Chop up a handful of small gherkins and add them to the potatoes. You could use half a large dill if that's all you have. You just want some of that pickle-y taste and the crunch, too.

In a separate small bowl, put about 1 1/4- 1 1/2 cups of white stuff. I like to mix mustard and yogurt (Stonyfield is the best), but sour cream is nice too; I've used yogurt cheese, softened cream cheese mixed with milk -- just about anything will do.

Since today I just had a little yogurt and no mustard, but did by some freak of nature have mayo, this is yogurt and a couple of spoons of mayo, with a heaping tsp of jalapeno paste. Add a scant tablespoon of salt (salt has its own newsletter!) and mix together.

Pour over the potatoes and pickles. Mix GENTLY. You want chunks of potato, not mashed potato. If you need more dressing, mix some up in the separate bowl and pour and mix again.

Chop egg coarsely and add to salad. Sprinkle black pepper over everything. Mix GENTLY.

Check that your salad has enough dressing. Some people like it drier than others (we like it pretty dry). Taste and adjust seasoning. You want it to taste like something. At this point, it'll taste mostly like egg, potato, and pickle. If it just tastes starchy, add some salt. It's what usually needs adjusting, so try a little of that first, then adjust the rest. Let sit in the fridge for at least an hour to combine flavors.

There you go.