Breakfast

Whenever the morning is cool in the summer, I get a craving for this breakfast. Peanut butter toast and a cup of hot chocolate or chai. I know exactly where and when this whole craving was instilled in me: 26 years ago in Portland, Maine.

I was there with my Aunt Connie and my cousin Michael, visiting my cousin's relatives there (who I refer to as aunt and uncle, even though they're of no relation to me). We flew into Portland and stayed for a few days at my aunt's relatives' beach house, or as they call them in Maine, their "camp". It was a big, beautiful Victorian house, complete with a wrap-around porch, a turret, and Adirondack chairs on the expansive lawn in front of the house. A small climb down the hill landed you on the beach, where my cousin and I spent most of our time.

The weather for the most part was beautiful while we were there. Except one day when a storm came through. The house took on a whole new look and feel. In the morning, we were all confined to the spaces in this house, and huddled in the small kitchen while we ate breakfast. My aunt requested some bagels from Chicago, since at that time bagels were hard to come by in remote places (I don't think Lender's were around). We gladly brought a couple dozen from our favorite bagel bakery.

While the rain poured down and the air stayed cool, my aunt made hot chocolate for my cousin and me, and coffee for the adults. Then she grabbed a freshly toasted bagel and smeared it with peanut butter. This was a foreign concept to me. I was a strictly butter-on-my-bagel girl (cream cheese didn't even appeal to me then), and peanut butter only belonged with grape jelly on sandwich bread. But when I tasted the peanut butter on the bagel, I was hooked. And then the combination of the hot chocolate and the peanut butter bagel was wonderful.

It always amazes me how our senses and memories are so intertwined. Something as simple as a cool summer morning brings me back 25 years ago to a beach in Portland, Maine. And this same memory triggers a craving in me, prompting me to get out the toaster, peanut butter, and hot chocolate and make the same breakfast. Yum.