Just as when I read The Omnivore’s Dilemma for the first time, reading In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto has once again piqued my interest in French food. Michael Pollan can do that to you. In response I have started eating French rolls stuffed with soft cheese, and apple, and a cup of coffee with cream for breakfast each morning this week. It has been a delicious experience.

My routine is this, I wake up at 7:00, hop out of bed and preheat the oven to 350. Then I take a quick shower, get dressed, pull some French rolls out of the freezer and pop them into the preheated oven. I start the coffee and by the time I have a freshly brewed cup in front of me my rolls are perfectly golden brown and ready to come out of the oven. I smear them with cheese (Port Salut this week) and eat them while re-reading In Defense of Food or emails from my blog readers.

This is a great routine, or at least it was until disaster struck. Remember my post on Vegetable Cheddar Pot Pie? Remember how I mentioned that if you aren’t very careful about sealing the top and bottom crusts that filling will bubble out of your pie which is why you should be careful to place a pizza pan or cookie sheet under the pie plate? I told you this because my pie did in fact spit filling all over the bottom of my oven, a fact that I considered a minor cleaning inconvenience until this morning when I realized while still in the shower I could smell smoke.

You already know what happened, but I’ll tell you anyway. When I set the oven to preheat the goo on the bottom of the oven began to burn. Not only did this make the house smell terrible, but it also meant that our smoke detector started going off at 7:10am, an hour that most of my roommates blissfully sleep through on any given day. Not today, oh no. Because I was in the shower I couldn’t hear the smoke detector (I guess being in a place with running water is a good thing if the house starts burning down, but this realization still makes me nervous) which meant that everyone else was woken up by the racket and had to leap from their beds to bash the smoke detector with the mop that we keep ever ready for just such an occasion, turn on fans, and open the kitchen door.

Boy do I know how to get a day started.

Anyhow, if you don’t have goo all over the bottom of your oven you should really try this French rolls with cheese thing for breakfast. I’m in love with it.