Good morning. This is Ed Brown II, recording live.On the watch, the big hand is pointing approximately at the ten, while the little hand is pointing in the direction of five. For those of you who are curious that's 510 GPT (Greenwich Podcast Time).

So, this is the first recorded live episode. Why? I ran out of ideas. This week, I've decided to attempt to "Jump the Shark".

Wasn't "Shark Week" last month? Well, let me check my notes. That's correct. In my defense, I have to say, belatedly, that time-shifting is a bit overrated.

That's the glory of living in an hermetically sealed, a hermetically sealed podcast. This episode's focus is on breakfast, a typical breakfast--the point being, eating breakfast.

A recommendation--to truly experience, I believe, the liveliness of this episode, delay listening to this episode until you wake up in the morning, first thing. That way, you'll be in sync with my "not fully" cognizance, and [the episode] will feel more real to you. Okay. Let's get to eating breakfast.

So, let's first start off with a glass of water. And while sipping the water, you can go ahead.... I gotta, what, some granola with raisins and--with raisins and almonds, and I'll prepare that with some yogurt plain, plain yogurt (zero percent) and a little bit of skim milk. Enjoy.

The size of the bowl I have is regular, regular-sized bowl.

[The sound of opening a box of cereal and pouring the contents into a bowl.]

I fill it about halfway. The thing about breakfast in the morning is you don't think about too much other than getting food in your stomach. You can preplan this type of stuff without much effort.

[The sound of a refrigerator door opening and closing. The sound of yogurt being scooped out of a container.]

In goes yogurt, now for skim milk.

Once again, just a little bit of skim milk--just so you can see it rise above the bottom, rise up from the bottom, so that way when you stir it...it's not. It's wet; the granola is wet, the cereal is wet, and the yogurt sort of like melts. Enjoy.

Now, I don't want to be rude and talk while eating, even though you can't really see what's in my mouth. While I eat the cereal, I begin with the second phase of my breakfast, which is the making of coffee.

What do we have over here? We have some dark French Roast beans. I'm going ahead and grind them up, put them in a stovetop, put them in stovetop coffee-maker--and ah, yeah. So, that way they'll be ready to go after I'm done eating my cereal. Okay, here we go.

So, as you may have figured out this isn't your standard 'sit down and eat breakfast'. This is a get up and go, task-oriented breakfast--and, quite frankly, you've been laying down in bed for about eight hours, hopefully, getting your eight hours worth of sleep. And, if you're an office person such as myself, you're going to be sitting at a desk all day long, so why not in the morning get some blood circulating by standing up and eating your breakfast, preparing it, etc. Why not? I mean usually, I do some exercising before, but since I'm jumping the shark here I figured, why not all out and not do any exercise this morning and do this podcast. As opposed to when I have ideas, I'm usually recording in the evenings after a long day.

Alright.

Oops, excuse me. So, now grind coffee. I may edit this out because I can get a little noisy. Okay?

Coffee, pot.

[The sound of a coffee pot being taken apart.]

For those of you itching for a little regular podcast stuff--'Filtered Water'. Alright!

Now sometimes people say, you know, "I like to have music in the background." You know, what I'm doing. You know, some work at my computer or, you know, even walking down street, now has some background music. Well, here are some typical noises that you don't get in your day to day. So if you want to use this as your background noise to get you going, make you feel like you've eaten breakfast or prepared breakfast, whatever. Go ahead and feel free to use this for your background entertainment, as your background entertainment.

Some people enjoy the sound of the ocean in the background, you know, that type of thing. I know some people who miss the city, they have, you know, construction workers going on the background: jackhammer, cranes, cement mixer. So to each his own, her own.

[The sound of putting ground coffee into the coffee pot.]

Now, some people say you shouldn't tamp your stovetop coffee into the maker there, into the holder, container thingy, but, you know, I like to. But generally, you shouldn't tamp--conventional wisdom says.

[The sound of the coffee pot being placed on the stove.]

Alright. Turn the burner on; let's get some coffee brewing here. Alright. Cereal--before moving on to the next step.

So, I generally have [a] cold/hot breakfast. So, the cold is the cereal, yogurt, skim milk; hot--toast, bacon, egg. Bacon is optional. Sometimes I have sausage, but it's a combination of bread, meat, egg. Sometimes in the morning, I'll have a scrambled egg with some chopped up sausage and some American cheese. Put it in a pan. A piece of wheat toast, butter it. [NOTE: I forgot to mention the cinnamon.] Put the egg/meat mixture, cheese mixture on top of the toast, slice of toast, a little bit of pepper (black pepper) and then put some sugar-free syrup on top. That's delicious, but I'm tired of the meat not for like the past week and a half. So today we're gonna have bacon, and our eggs are going to be sunny-side, and no syrup--just the bacon, toast and butter.

So, I'm going to start with the bacon. Now, I don't eat bacon that often. So what I like to do is freeze my bacon. But, I buy at the supermarket, individual slices, as opposed to the packaged. So that way I can put a slice, wax paper it and stack them up (a slice of bacon and wax paper), and then I can just pick one out, and I have to worry about trying to eat the whole package of bacon in a week because it goes bad, or bring up half the bacon and then put the other half in the freezer, and then say, "Oh, I feel like some bacon." And then you take it bacon out, defrost it, and then put the bacon back, and get all the bacteria going. This is a safe way, for me anyway, easy to, of having bacon available when I want to have some--which is now.

So, take it out of the freezer and unwrap it. I got a cast iron skillet here; warm that up. Get your bacon going.

[The sounds of a freezer door opening/closing, the clang of a metal skillet, the ruffle of waxed paper.]

I'm only using a small cast iron skillet, so I sliced my bacon crosswise in there so it fits in the skillet. And also. when it's done it lots of fit on a slice of bread. As you can see, the preheated skillet, the bacon is starting to sizzle there. Have a listen.

[The sound of bacon sizzling in the skillet.].

Nothing like that says, "Good morning. Wake up. Pretty soon, you'll be smelling the coffee."

The best thing about granola, yogurt and milk is that while you doing all this stuff, your cereal doesn't get soggy. You know what I mean? And if it does get soggy, it just means it's easier to chew. And also, for the water, the reason why I have it, is that if the granola gets caked in your mouth, you got a little bit of water to wash it down.

Refreshing.

Alight. Now I'm getting ready to put the toast, slice of bread into the toaster. Have that ready to go, once the bacon is done. Now, the trick here, I guess the most difficult part, one of the trickier parts is after the bacon is cooked. Let me turn to bacon over, pardon me. Once the bacon is cooked and your getting to put your egg on, is to start your toast, and have your toast pop up just before your egg is done so you can butter it and the toast is still warm and doesn't like get all sorta like cold and, I don't know, mushy. So yeah. You're gonna have to work on the timing, if you don't do this on a regular basis is to, you know, know when to put it near you're toast. Chefs do it all the time. You gotta a perfect, the timing perfect for the plate to be finished and then send it out on to the table. You know what that's like when you're food, you have your food is cold. So, you're gonna have to work on that timing on your own, but you're standing. You get your circulation there going. You're starting to wake up. And you're starting to get your sense of time.

Alright.

Ah! It's almost time to smell the coffee. Have a listen.

[The faint sound of coffee percolating.]

If you can't hear that, what's happening is the coffee is starting to come up the little funnel there, the pressure or whatever, from the coffee maker is just streaming up, and like a bubbling or gurgling fountain there that isn't quite functioning properly, you know. Time to call the maintenance person. And there it goes. Ah, hear it.

[The sound of coffee percolating.]

Now I gotta pause because the bacon is about to overcook there. I like my bacon crispy, but not burnt.

I'm gonna let the skillet cool down a little bit and then I'm going to scrape the grease out of the pain or pour the grease out of the paint into a little tin can I have in there to preserve the bacon grease. Not so much using in the future, but so not to--to easily dispose of it. That's all.

Alright now, once again we will return to the fun part of toasting and making the sunny side egg. In the spirit of a regular podcast, 'Jumbo Egg'. I know it sounds a little off because this is my morning voice--as opposed to my evening voice.

Important. Once your coffee is brewed, you want to put port in your mug because your mug will keep it warmer than the pot.

[The sound of getting a coffee mug out of a cabinet.]

If you say, "well why don't I just keep the burner on a little bit?" Well the burner will evaporate the coffee or burn off the coffee, and coffee will taste like burnt, not burnt like meat, but burnt like a drink--'thicky' dense.

And the best thing about morning breakfast, preparing it any way--so generally, you don't think, you just do, and you don't converse that much. It's me time. You get to live in the moment.

Alright. So I'm gonna put the, pour this grease in this can here, um, so that way I can use the same skillet. Use a towel or a, a, what do you call that a, potholder and, um, so we don't burn our hand.

And that's the thing in the morning, you know, you have to be careful because sometimes you may not be fully awake and grab the pain without thinking because you're not paying attention. So, you know if you're prepared enough to make breakfast in the morning, that you're awake enough and alert enough to do what you need to do properly.

And I like to use a cast-iron pan in the morning because I can now scrape the bacon grease out, I can quickly dash this underwater to get the grit off the skillet and wipe it off with the paper towel and not have the pan warp because of the change of temperature: hot to cold.

[The sounds of running water from a spigot and a pan being placed on the stove.]

Just about finishing up the cereal before making the second half of the...breakfast.

[The sound of a refrigerator door opening/closing.]

We have a little guest this morning for our breakfast. We're gonna add a grape or two. I got some red grapes, and pop one in your mouth, liven up this granola. One, two, three. Delicious!

We're gonna reheat, preheat the skillet, cast-iron skillet, with some 'Olive Oil'.

[The sound of a spoon scraping the inside of a bowl.]

There's one thing worse than not eating breakfast in the morning--and that is not eating ALL of your breakfast in the morning: fuel for the day, or for at least the commute.

Okay. Preheating. I'm going to push around the olive oil in the pan.

My personal preference here is to, I always try to, soon as I use a [chef's] knife, clean it, put it back in the rack there so it's ready to go. And you don't have to worry about it falling on the floor stabbing you in the foot, or needing it at a crucial time and it's sitting there with a whole bunch of mucky-muck on it. You know I mean? And then your trying to clean it and get this cut, whatever, blah. Clean it! Rack it! Now!

If you're a foodie or you like to cook, there's always the whole thing. Do you break the egg on a hard edge or you use a flat surface like a counter top? Now, I used to use the edge of the skillet, whatever, and you get a little bit of the egg inside a skillet. Blah blah blah blah blah. And there's not much you can do about it because if the skillet is hot, then the egg cooks on the side of the pain, and it's not usable. If you use the edge of a bowl then sometimes it drips down the side of the bowl, and not make it, and then get shells.

Alright, I mean you may have heard this argument before. So, I moved to the technique of smashing it. Well trying not to smash it, but crack the egg on a counter top. If in the morning, you know, you're a little heavy-handed, whatever, if you happen to smash the entire uncooked egg onto the counter, at least you have the opportunity to scoop the, or wipe the counter with your hand or spatula or whatever and get the egg into the pan and fish out all of the shells later.

But that won't happen. Practice makes perfext, perfect. Practice makes perfect. Even when you say it three times fast: practice makes perfext; practice makes perfect; practice makes perfect. Eventually you'll get there.

Alright, I'm going to start the toast. Uhp. Plug in the toaster.

[The sound of objects being pushed aside to plug in the toaster.]

[The sound of an egg being cracked and poured into a hot skillet.]

Now this is the thing of knowing your skillet, knowing the flame beneath, and so that way you're yolk doesn't cook faster, or the egg white doesn't cook faster than the yolk. So, you gotta play this whole, sort of like a, game of using a lid to heat the yolk, but not overheat the yolk, depending on how you like, prefer the yolk. So concentrate with me here.

[The sound of a metal lid covering the skillet.].

[I'm] getting the plate for the toast.

[The sounds of a cabinet door opening, the cluttering of plates, the cabinet door closing.]

Lower the flame!

[The sound of the lid lifting, then covering the skillet again.

[The sound of drinking water from a glass.]

[The sound of water flowing from a spigot.]

Wash the hands!

[The sound of the lid being removed from the pan and placed to the side.]

So, now we're just waiting for the toast. That's the egg. Hear the egg gurgle.

[The sound of the egg in the open skillet crackling.]

You want to be ready. The toast has popped. You want to get your butter right away so the butter melts on the toast, because the toast is still hot.

[The sounds of the refrigerator door opening, a compartment door flipping up/down, the refrigerator door closing, a knife being retrieved from a drawer.]

This is probably, probably the most intense portion of the meal, preparing the meal is getting the egg, butter, toast: melt butter, spread.

[The sound of returning the butter into the refrigerator.]

I prefer unsalted butter.

'Butter Tabs'. There you go.

[The sound of a knife spreading butter on a piece of toast.]

I have the habit of after spreading the toast with the knife, the butter, putting the knife in the sink, and then when I eat, [I] have to go get another clean knife out of the drawer. This time I did not forget; I SAVED THE KNIFE for breakfast.

[The sound of a drawer opening and closing abruptly to retrieve a metal spatula.]

Quick! The egg is over-cooking. Hurry up!

[The sounds of the skillet clattering on top of the stove, the spatula gliding on the skillet surface.]

The trick is making sure that the bottom of the egg is cooked hard enough so that way the yolk doesn't come seeping out the bottom. This time I think I got it right.

So it's uh--toast, butter, bacon, egg.

[The sound of the sunny-side egg being lifted from the skillet onto a plate.]

Wallah! Toast, butter, bacon, egg! Toast, butter, bacon, egg! And if you like, some pepper. I don't use salt.

And now, since we've been standing here cooking breakfast, waking up--now that we have our toast, butter, bacon, egg, pepper--sit down and have a moment to reflect while you eat.

Aah. Pause for a moment to eat. Enjoy!

So, it's been about an hour since I woke up this morning. And as you can tell, it's been about an hour since I woke up, yeah, and as you can tell I'm making, I'm forming better sentences than when I did when I woke up this morning. Even though I had a bit of a script in front of me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel much better now. I've almost finished my coffee. I'm getting ready to shower and get ready for the rest of the day.

But, you know, hey, when you run out of ideas, get a good night's rest, wake up, mumble to yourself a little bit, get downstairs, make yourself a decent breakfast--and maybe for the rest of the day, the ideas will flow. Yeah!

So, this is Ed "Jumping the Shark". And, let's see here, um.

[The sound of paper shuffling.].

Yeah, I hope you enjoyed your breakfast.

Now if I failed, which is important, because I do fail--more often than I'd like to say, but if I failed to “jump the shark”, then think positively and consider this a win-win. Not only did I have a satisfactory breakfast, but so did the tooth-thumb, the toothsome thrasher; so did the tooth...the toothsome toothsum, the toothsum threshah, THRESHAHHHRRR!

There you go!

So go out there. If that's what you have to do for the day.