Banana Fruit Toast

Source: http://www.mrbreakfast.com/superdisplay.asp?recipeid=243

This morning Stella and I made breakfast for my family.

Result: Five Stars from the panda and me. The family hated it--one bite and the rest was rejected.

The quantities given below are for one serving:

Ingredients:

• 2 slices of bread
• 1 large banana
• 10 almonds - chopped
• cinnamon 

Directions:

Toast bread to a light golden brown. Peel the banana, mash it and then spread on toast as if it were butter. Sprinkle chopped almonds on that and then dust with cinnamon. Put the toasts in the toaster oven for 2-3 minutes to bring the flavors together. Serve warm.

Please excuse the quality of the phone-pictures. Personally, I loved the toast. My family i.e. my parents probably didn't like it because their tastes are more 'Indian' than the panda's and my own (or far less not-Indian?). My mother, in particular, tends to dislike things without the usual masalas and can't do breakfast without parantha and hari chutney.

Also, I learnt yesterday that cinnamon is dalchini in Hindi. DALCHINI!!!! All the amazing recipes I ignored because I thought cinnamon was some expensive, exotic thing!  

Ok, so tips to make 'Banana Fruit Toast' better:

1. Add a healthy sprinkling of cinnamon. Its all banana without it.
2. I found the bread was crispier and warmer after being microwaved for 1-2 minutes. However, it is possible that the problem for this lies with my oven.
3. Fruit juice or a cold glass of milk tastes nice with the banana toast.
4. Don't bother with it if you like chili and dislike bland or banana.

I recommend both this recipe and mrbreakfast.com for a day when you wake up early in the morning, have time on your hands and like to experiment with your food.

Finally, a comment on the name of the recipe. In Calcutta, one often sees roadside stalls with 'Bread Tost' on the menu. 'Tost' can also be found at MJ da's canteen, provider of humongously unhealthy food at a certain prestigious university of law (Caveat Emptor!). Perhaps I should rename this post, 'Banana Fruit Tost' because after all, I do live in Calcutta and once you get used to this city, you will find that its charm lies in things like having tost on the pavements.  

This is becoming a habit...

... Six am in the morning, and I'm still opening this blog.

Wonder what people normally do in these situations. How does one stop a habit before it starts? I suppose one would proceed as follows:

1. Identify the almost-habit. 
2. Accept that it actually is becoming a habit. Denial will get you nowhere.
3. Take measures to lower the incidents of said almost-habit.
4. Fight temptation.
5. If you fail at step 4, repeat steps 2-4 immediately.
6. Try and try until you succeed i.e. stop the almost-habit completely.

(On second thought, I suppose this is how a determined person, with an unbeatable and enviable amount of will-power would proceed) 

Unfortunately, these steps do not work for me: I would like to reduce the time I spend on this page, but not stop altogether. On modifying the steps above, I must also calculate the amount of time I'd like to reduce to and work toward it (i.e. to somewhere in the middle of step 6). 

However, for a precise and accurate determination of the quantity of time I must cut from the time spent on this page, I have to first precisely and accurately determine how much time I do spend on this page. Alas! One day is not enough time to reach the required determination. Statistics tells us that, in order to draw a line on a graph (you know, the X-Y axis thing), we must have at least three points on it. Similarly, I postulate that I would need at least three days for my calculations. The more time I take to calculate, the more precise and accurate it will be. Three weeks, I think, will give me the most precise and accurate answer I can imagine--any longer and my patience and mental ability for calculations won't be able to take it.

So there it is. My self-help guide on countering an almost-habit. I only hope that Robin Sharma's (The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari) 21-day rule--It only takes 21 days to make a habit-- isn't true or else, instead of an almost-habit, I'll be stuck with a whole-habit by the time I finish step 3. 

On the other hand, it could be that I've mistakenly identified a beginner's enthusiasm for a new hobby as an almost-habit. In this case, only time will tell. Relying on this option, however, seems a little risky to me: What if time takes 3 weeks to tell that my identification above has indeed been mistaken? The end-result is a whole-habit, yet again.

And everybody knows a whole-habit is much harder to break.