What better way to start off the 4th of July then with Cinnamon Vanilla French Toast topped with patriotically colored fruit?

This batter is a variation on my father’s famous recipe. After decades of pleading and negotiating, he recently revealed it to me and I am so pleased to share it with you.

Combine 2 whole eggs with 3/4 cups of heavy cream.
Stir in 1/8 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon of good vanilla extract. Add a pinch of salt and whisk until eggs and cream are incorporated. For a delicious variation skip the cinnamon and vanilla and add a teaspoon of Grand Marnier and orange zest. This batter will coat approximately 5 slices of bread.

Speaking of bread, I like something on the sweet side and our local Von’s supermarket sells a brand in the bakery section called, Mom’s White Bread, Thick Sliced. It’s fantastic for this recipe. It has the texture and taste of a Parker House roll but in loaf form.

So, celebrate independence from your diet and enjoy!

Dust off your bicycle and ride like when you were a child, not for exercise but for the sheer joy of it.

I bought these inkbottles in Albi, France after visiting the Toulouse-Lautrec museum. I was of course familiar with his lithographs of Parisian nightlife but his pen and ink studies were a revelation! He drew a lot of them on what appeared to be brown paper bags. I figured, I’ve got lots of paper bags at home, now all I need is some cool French ink and I’ll be on my way to creating masterpieces too. For some reason when I’m traveling I manage to delude myself with all kinds of crazy thoughts. To think that for even a second I expected to come close to Toulouse’s mastery is laughable. What’s even more laughable (and embarrassing to admit) is that this was no passing thought. It took me a couple of days to find this ink. Needless to say once I got home and unpacked my little bottles, they looked so pretty sitting there under their caps of molten wax, I didn’t have the heart to break the seal. Today they rest in the back of the infamous art closet. Even though I have never used this ink, that trip did inspire me to start painting and while I have yet to create any masterpieces, I have spent many blissful hours on my patio listening to music and unleashing my inner Lautrec.