Letter From the Editor

By Marcy Nathan, Creative Director

This might come as a surprise to you, but breakfast doesn’t have to be breakfast food. My father, for example, has a special passion for corn, in part because we grew acres of it on our farm in Cotton Plant, Arkansas (population 649). Dad is perfectly happy to eat corn on the cob for breakfast, straight out of the fridge.

Last year, when a pizza-ordering platform polled their users, more than half said they would rather have a cold slice of pizza for breakfast than the usual bacon and eggs. I did a less formal poll on Facebook recently and got so hungry while I was reading the comments, I had to cook one of our wood-fired pizzas for dinner just so I could have a slice for breakfast.

If you’ve ever stood on the parade route early on Mardi Gras morning, I know you’ve eaten fried chicken for breakfast. To be fair, Rouses crispy fried chicken is just as good cold as it is hot, so it’s perfect for an alfresco Fat Tuesday breakfast.

We have a store director in New Orleans, Stanley Duplessis, who absolutely loves to go out to eat; we have that trait in common. But I’ve been known to wake and steak after dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steak House, and Stanley cringes if you mention leftovers. Sadly, he will never know the joy of having last night’s dinner for breakfast.

Everyone but Stanley can agree that a hot roast beef poboy is still great cold and a day old. One of my favorite leftovers for breakfast is cold spaghetti — any pasta with red sauce tastes great cold. I will eat takeout Chinese, cold, out of the carton, by the forkful, when I wake up. I appreciate a good egg roll, hot or cold.

Moo Shu Pork only gets better overnight, and you can’t really expect me to wait until lunchtime to eat it, can you? I draw the line at cold rice, though. I have an ex-boyfriend who is an amazing cook. He’s the one who taught me about breakfast rice, which is actually eaten all over the world. Breakfast rice is a great reuse for leftover fried rice. Start with a bit of oil in a nonstick skillet. Add the cold fried rice. Form a well in the rice and crack an egg directly into it. Cook until the egg is just set, then mix it all up and eat it. I’ve found this technique works just as well with plain, cold cooked rice and breakfast ingredients like eggs, bacon and sausage — just make sure the meat is fully cooked. I’ve also eaten it Hawaiian-style with bits of fresh pineapple and ham.

Before the pandemic I ate most of my meals out, or I got takeout. I’m still trying to do that a few times a week — our local restaurants need our support now more than ever; they are the backbone of our hospitality industry. But with less leftover steak and spaghetti in the fridge these days, breakfast is too often just eggs.

If you find yourself eating the same thing for breakfast every single day, I invite you to try cold spaghetti, or the recipes on the following pages. When we cooked the pancakes you see on the cover in our Test Kitchen in Thibodaux, everyone went wild.

And if you’re Stanley, I invite you to ask for a doggy bag the next time you eat out — c’mon, live a little, Stanley. We all just want to know, can you take it with you?