Breakfast: The Other “B” in B & B

On this rare and unusually snowy morning on Cape Cod, my husband and I had breakfast together. What’s so extraordinary about that, you might ask? Well, we own a bed and breakfast inn on Cape Cod, and most Sunday mornings we prepare breakfast for our guests. This Sunday before Christmas, however, we are experiencing a classic Nor’easter. The wind is howling, the snow is drifting, and we cannot see out the windows because they are covered in snow. The weather forecasters prepared us well for this event, giving us 2-3 days warning of what was to come. Anyone contemplating a trip to Cape Cod this weekend probably deferred that trip for another day, opting to stay home where hopefully they are safe and warm. So we find ourselves sans guests for the first Sunday morning in many, many months. Hence, it gave us an opportunity to prepare breakfast for each other and to sit down and enjoy it together in front of the fireplace. It was like being a guest in our own home, only better.

We serve a full menu of breakfast items for our guests to choose from each morning, which is a bit out of the ordinary for most inns. Most inn guests will be served a plated breakfast of the innkeeper’s choosing. We believe that breakfast, being the most important meal of the day and one that is often a rare occurrence in this hectic world, should be special for all of our guests, and since everyone has different likes and dislikes, we offer a choice of at least six entrées every morning, plus a chef’s special.

So this morning we chose ebelskiver. A holiday treat in their native Denmark, ebelskiver are light, puffy pancakes that can be filled with fruit, jam, cheese, chocolate or pastry cream. You need a special ebelskiver pan to cook them in, but they are a delight whether served for breakfast, as an hors d’oeuvre, light supper or dessert. My husband served them with warm, maple-glazed sausages and real Grade A, dark amber, maple syrup. Yum!

It was a wonderful way to start the day, and a pleasant reminder of how important the other “B” in B & B is.