Cool Beans

A friend’s secret recipe for spicy baked beans – too good to be confined to toast – has earned its rightful place on Sam Woulidge’s weekend brunch menu

- By Sam Woulidg

Breakfast has become a battlefield. Motherhood is wonderful. Breakfast is not. I tried my best. I really did. Previous columns are testimony to that. Bottereiers, the way my mom made them. Jacques Erasmus’s oats for a little prince. Puffy cheese toasties. Thai-style crispy eggs. April Bloomfield’s baked eggs with anchovy and rosemary. These are all wonderful ways to start your day. But at 6:30 am during the mad rush not to be the last family at the school gate, I confess to taking the path of least resistance. I just don’t have the strength for a sleepy nine-year-old who does not want to eat a heavy breakfast. So we go the conflict-free breakfast-in-a-box route. ProNutro. Weet-Bix or Seb’s very best puffed rice cereal, and save the inevitable arguments for the berry smoothie that Jacques insists he drinks in the morning.

But come weekend, we are all about The Brunch. Because, secretly, I agree with Seb. No one wants a heavy breakfast at 6:30 am. Much better to dine at 11, that time of the morning when a chilled glass of wooded Chardonnay perfectly complements creamy eggs, or a slightly sweet Cap Classique cuts through the fat of a bacon butty drenched with HP sauce.