I think our breakfast plates actually are looking a little more minimal lately.  While this may be a desirable trend, the downside is that I might begin to lose interest in cooking eggs for breakfast if I leave little room for my imagination.

The picture below probably includes everything seen on the plate in the first one, except for the bacon, eggs and toast themselves. I snapped it for my own use, to record what was included, and so be able to write this post more easily; only much later did I decide to include it in this post.

• the ingredients included 6 fresh eggs from pastured chickens and 4 slices of bacon from pastured pigs, all from Pennsylvania’s Millport Dairy Farm in the Union Square Greenmarket, the eggs, while they were being fried, seasoned with a newly-introduced local Long Island sea salt (P.E. & D.D. Seafood/Phil Karlin’s own), freshly ground black pepper, and a dry seasoning called L’ekama from Ron & Leetal Arazi’s New York Shuk, sprinkled with dill from Stokes Farm; 8 very ripe tomatoes, ‘The Best Cherry Tomatoes’ from Stokes Farm, heated gently in a small enamel-lined cast iron porringer then rolled in a French sea salt, pepper, and thin slices of scapes from Cherry Lane Farms, sprinkled with some cut spruce tips from Violet Hill Farm; a garnish of micro purple radish from Windfall Farms; and toasts of ‘Whole wheat Redeemer Bread’ (simply ‘Redeemer wheat’, water, salt) from Lost Bread Co.
• the music was assembled after my own heart, to use an expression common while I was growing up but which I didn’t quite understand until after it had virtually disappeared, the album, ‘Venecie mundi splendor: Marvels of Medieval Venice’ (“Newly recorded in the bright acoustic of the Cenacolo of San Giorgio Maggiore Monastery in Venice, La Reverdie brings together, for the first time, musical compositions written c. 1330-1430 in honor of the Venetian Doges, or Venice itself.” – excerpted notes from the album)