Confessions Of A Breadboard Addict | Page 5 Of 7 | The Breadboard
Breadboard Bacon – Acceptably Addictive
I was enjoying my Lemon Poppyseed pancakes at the Breadboard the other day – so yummy – and I overheard one of the strangest conversations I had ever heard. You see, the Breadboard has this amazing, thick-cut bacon. It’s not just bacon – it is something special and really quite addictive. For sure, I am not the only one who thinks so. So, I’m sitting there and these two guys are eating eggs and homefries and side after side of bacon and then this one guy says he just got back from China and on the Yangtze River near Lijiang there lives this Chinese minority people called the Moso and they are known for their “Boneless Pig”. They slaughter a big pig, debone it and salt it. Then they use the pig as a “mattress” for up to a dozen years – really – and then they eat it. This is really true. The Breadboard has free wi-fi and I googled it and everyone at our table was kind of horrified. But both guys were SO enthusiastic about this… To them, it was like a dream come true, a fantasy. One of the guys was saying he wanted to move to a little hill town near Lijiang and sleep on a boneless pig, and he keeps munching bite after bite of bacon… I’m not sure what was weirder to me, the Moso custom or their reaction. I mean, bacon is good – the “gateway meat” and all that – and the Breadboard bacon is almost mystical in its power of goodness but things were just too strange and for the first time, I opted for a fresh fruit cup instead of a side of bacon. I’m not saying I’m not still addicted to Breadboard bacon. But just on that day, at this particular time, I thought someone needed to show just a little restraint. Well, I did get a side of sausage patties, but they are peppery and delicious and one can only show so much restraint…
Awesome Food and Blazing Fast Service…but be sure to bring a spoonerism!
I was enjoying a delicious Pecan Waffle at the Breadboard the other day and it was cold and rainy outside and I told the server that it was so nice and cozy in the little nook where I was sitting and he said who’s a nosey little cook? And I said – “cozy little nook” and a lady named Ashley said “Nice tip of the slung!” And she was laughing but I didn’t get it and the waiter said – “Oh, I get it – ‘slip of the tongue’!” And then the hostess wanted to change the radio station and asked, “Does anyone mind if I ‘chip the flannel’? And another customer named Jim was laughing and said, “I get it – yes – you can ‘flip the channel’!” And then another customer said they went to the Varsity Theater last week and said that the ‘cop porn’ was awesome and someone else said – “Oh, I get it – the ‘popcorn’!” And I was starting to get irritated and I was done with my breakfast and I asked for the check and the waiter handed it to me and said, “Just so you know, we don’t accept ‘mad bunny’!” And then I started to get it and as I left I yelled, “Eye ball!” And as I walked out the door a guy walked in wearing hospital scrubs and I overheard the hostess say, “Hi doc, been ‘sealing the hick’?” He’ll catch on, and even if he doesn’t, the service is fazing blast and the wood is fewsome.
A New Year… Time for adventure and yummy Breadboard food!
I was in the Breadboard the other day enjoying a huge Marionberry muffin when the guy at the table next to me was talking about his recent trip to Colombia and how he just loved the lengua and I asked if their lengua was different than the Spanish that they speak in other Latin American countries and he was confused but then he said – “Lengua, you know, cow’s tongue?” And I said, “The cows have their own language in Colombia?” And he looked a little confused and he said, “No, the cows don’t talk – we eat their tongue.” And I said, “Well, of course they would have to develop their own lengua if someone ate their tongues but I still don’t believe cows down there could talk with or without their tongues. I just don’t buy it.” Then he suggested that I have some more coffee. So I did and then I ordered the Breadboard’s steak and eggs and I wondered what other crazy things the Colombians told this poor guy and I picked up his check for him and he said thank you and that his breakfast burrito was “muy rico” and I said “No, actually, it was a BURRITO.” Poor guy – must be dangerous for him to travel abroad…
Yummy Food and Great Service! Every Day, Every Meal!
There was never a good time to approach anyone about my feelings. I would often start the conversation but then I’d get psyched out and change course. A lot of times I felt like I was the only one who felt this way. Then, it just got too hard to repress and I felt like I just wasn’t living – I wasn’t being ME. Finally, last Wednesday, I got to the point where the pain of deprivation outweighed the fear of embarrassment and I headed into the Breadboard right as the door opened at 7 am and in a kind of belligerent rage I announced that today – “Guess what? I’m not ordering anything SPECIAL! ” Everyone was stunned – well – the server and another customer – it was only 7 am – but they were STUNNED. Everyday, the Breadboard has these amazing and creative specials like frittatas and stuffed French toast and crepes and yadda yadda yadda but see – TODAY – I wasn’t going that way. I was gonna get 2 eggs over easy with homefries, wheat toast and a side of bacon – and “YES that would be all, thank you!” … “Oh, and a cup of that delicious better not bitter Goodbean coffee… But that’s it and I don’t even want to hear about the “specials” because straight up breakfast food right off the menu is “special” and just fine with me!” You see, they do traditional good ole’ breakfast right at the Breadboard and yeah the specials are always good but I’m a simple eater and proud of it and not afraid to be ME. “Oh, and I might even make a dump run after breakfast and maybe even change my own oil… What do you think of that?” Well, I’ll tell you – there was a hush. Everyone – both of them – were speechless. Well, the customer was reading the paper and the server was putting in the order – but I felt good – true – genuine… just like the food at the Breadboard.
Yummy Pumpkin pancakes and pumpkin spiced lattes until 2016 … Wow!
I’ve been enjoying Pumpkin Pancakes and Pumpkin Spice lattes at the Breadboard for two months now. I’ve heard a rumor that they will continue serving them until the end of the year so I figure that I’m pretty well set for 2015. Then I read that the date 2015 was the “future” date in the original movie “Back to the Future” and I wondered if Michael J. Fox had ever been to the Breadboard and I remembered that Anne Curry, Frances McDormand, Michelle Pfeifer and Reese Witherspoon had been there but I don’t know if they ever tried the Pumpkin Pancakes but then I started thinking about the movie “The Martian” and that takes place in the “future” year of 2035 and that’s 20 years from now and the “Back to the Future” movie opened in 1985 and that’s 30 years ago but the Breadboard has been around since 1983 and if you were to sit down with Michael J. Fox and Matt Damon and the four afore mentioned female movie stars and do the math (assuming that the Breadboard served Pumpkin Pancakes every fall since 1983 – which is possible) then they might get all fired up and decide to make a sci-fi movie geared to numerologist-type people who are Breadboard fanatics and you could like hide a pumpkin in every scene and you would most certainly want to include a popular conspiracy theory aspect and it would probably develop a cult following and probably be a big hit and I was sitting alone in the corner at table 11 and the server mentioned I’d been mumbling a lot and the tables next to me were concerned and I realized I might be getting kind of unbalanced in my thinking but, you know, when something just tastes so good you can get kind of euphoric and you know that’s when things can get really cool – well, maybe a little weird…but, I’m just saying…the pancakes are REALLY good.
Super Yummy Caramelized Apples topping a Belgian Waffle!
They are serving something new at the Breadboard this month… crazy delicious – Caramelized Apples and whipped cream on a waffle served with eggs, bacon and sausage. I was eating it the other morning and there was a table of teenagers next to me that were all chowing down full stacks of Pumpkin Pancakes and everyone was in a euphoric mood and they were discussing politics and some of them were democrats and some were republicans and then one of them starting talking about how amazing the Donald was and I was afraid it was going to get ugly but everyone was so respectful and friendly. Little did I know that the real conflict was about to begin…Turns out they had all been to ComicCon in Portland and they started arguing about which universe of superheros was more powerful – the DC Comics Universe or the Marvel Universe and they were really arguing over who would win between Superman and the Thing or Spider-Man or Iron Man and why etc…then they started to list every hero in each universe and one kid had even made a database of each universe and ranked powers and created an overall universal power index or “OUPI” And it started to get really heated and at first it seemed pretty ridiculous to me but as I listened I remembered my first comic books and I started to wonder what kind of superpower I would want if I could have one and next thing I knew I was full but I still wanted a Marionberry muffin and I wanted an Eggs Benedict and I was thinking how cool would it be if I had a super fast metabolism? Now there’s a superpower!
Now Serving Pumpkin Pancakes!!!
“If you can’t handle a random bloated corpse you shouldn’t be watching TV…” As I was sitting at the Breadboard the other morning polishing off an enormous freshly baked Marionberry muffin there was a family at the table next to me trying to decide between the Pumpkin Pancakes and the Eggs Benedict or the monster cinnamon roll or the California Omlette and they were kind of arguing because the teenage daughter thought the firefighters should have been working harder this summer but the Mom was trying to explain that forest fires were different than house fires and it wasn’t about “just working harder” it had a lot to do with topography and weather and then the Dad said the daughter didn’t understand because she just watched too much TV which he thought was too violent and then she made the “bloated corpse” comment and the Dad said so then she sort of agreed with him and anyway with all his problems he thought TV wasn’t worth his time. Then the Mom sort of snapped, “What problems do you have?” And he said he was struggling with baldness, obesity and sleep deprivation. The girl said he was so dramatic and that he was going through a midlife crisis and that his spare tire and expanding forehead was kind of cute and why didn’t he sleep well? He said that was a middle-aged guy thing and he didn’t want to get into it but he really wanted Pumpkin Pancakes and an Omlette and he said starting tomorrow he was going to go on a 14 day juice cleanse followed by an Atkin’s diet for the next 6 months and the mom just laughed and the girl ordered a Mountain Man – which I thought was kind of cool. And I thought about those hardworking firefighters and I was filled with gratitude for their hard work and sacrifice…
Kristal’s Killer Chicken Sandwich … Full- on Yummyness!
I was at the Breadboard the other day, sitting on the deck, enjoying this yummy “Kristal’s Killer Chicken Sandwich” that had avocado and chicken and bacon and pepper jack cheese and jalapeños and lettuce and tomato on a French Roll and it was so messy and big and just so good and I was trying to have a conversation with my friend and she kept getting texts and I kept losing my train of thought because I was trying to tell her how when I was walking to my car at Shop – n – Kart I overheard this guy sitting in a $60,000 Volvo with California plates comment on how he loved the Kombucha at Shop-n-Kart and he thought the store was like a post-apocalyptic Trader Joes and I wanted to tell my friend this but I couldn’t get her attention and then I realized I locked my keys in the car. Well, I was starting to stress out so I figured I would just text her but I wasn’t really paying attention closely enough and apparently when I touched “send” the predictive text changed my message from “I locked my keys in the car” to “I locked my jews in the bar” – and she was kind of offended but at least I had her attention and the lunch was awesome. Eventually, we got into my car – but that’s a whole other big story – anyway, we got a growler of Kombucha and I love that stuff, but she said she doesn’t like “liquid fungus”. But, you know, it was a really good day.
Gelato? …after hours, in the back….but don’t tell anyone
I was sitting on the deck at the Breadboard the other day. It was a nice sunny day, which has actually been kind of rare lately because surprisingly we have finally been getting quite a bit of rain which is a good thing and the view was stunning and I was hungry after a nice morning bike ride through the vineyards which used to be orchards and I was sipping a latte and trying to decide between the Creme Brûlée French Toast special or the Huevos Rancheros and I was feeling very mysterious and foreign. And just then I overheard that there was a rumor that the Porto Gelato guy was going to set up his 98% organic gelato cart in the backyard behind the Breadboard – well, the gelato is 98% organic, not the cart – it’s an Italian antique bicycle gelato freezer cart and the gelato is unusually creamy and really really good – awesome actually – and he is always experimenting with new flavors and he’ll been selling this stuff in the afternoons after the Breadboard is closed and you can sit in the yard in back in the shade on a hot summer day and feel blissful. And thinking about it made me want the Breadboard’s Italiano omelette with mild Italian sausage, basil, thyme, green onions, garlic and jack cheese because I thought I’d have gelato later in the day and I wanted to get in the mood and then I heard that in Italy they were filming a remake of Ben Hur which was originally shot in Italy in 1959 but this time because of today’s advanced computer graphics the chariot race scene needed only hundreds of extras rather than thousands and I started thinking about the dangers of chariot racing and how nice it is that Ashland is such a bike friendly town and then I ordered a cappuccino and despite the amount of caffeine shooting through my system, I felt wonderfully lazy and satisfied – just another typical morning at the Breadboard…
Urban Deer are here to stay… And the Breadboard serves yummy yummy breakfast and lunch. – some things never change…
According to the latest information from the City of Ashland, there is a new kind of deer – “Urban Deer”. I was reading the new brochure the other day while sipping my latte at the Breadboard. Apparently, some of the Urban Deer reside in the fire station because there was a picture of them hanging out in the garage next to vehicle 8863. I was trying to decide whether to have something sweet and cakey and yummy like a stuffed peaches and cream french toast or to go more full on protein and get a California Omlette with avocado and bacon with a side of sausage patties and an extra side of bacon, you know – on the side, and I was even wondering if they would ever have a venison special and then I realized they probably wouldn’t because the brochure from the city mentioned that we shouldn’t feed the deer. When I started to think about that I realized that if a whole section of the brochure was devoted to explaining why we shouldn’t feed the deer then apparently there are people in Ashland who see “Urban Deer” as something different than “wild” deer and view them as pets or guests or something. So, the Breadboard would probably think it might be politically incorrect to feature venison because some people might think that if a regular visitor to their garden was missing then maybe someone at the Breadboard was involved in a sinister way and all kinds of bad feelings could come up. Yeah. And apparently the deer do not always use the crosswalk so you should hit them with your car if they surprise you at night – or something like that. Anyway, I decided to go with a very yummy Huevos Rancheros, and I then I read that there was a $500 fine for feeding the deer and I realized that I probably should start shopping for a lawyer because the plants in my yard are a virtual deer grocery outlet and I think the deer in our neighborhood are very well fed due to my my efforts at landscaping.