Especially on cold winter mornings, when we like to sleep late and then start the day with a hot and hearty breakfast.
A few new cookbooks offer some intriguing approaches to these morning meals, especially Morning Food: Breakfasts, Brunches and More for Savoring the Best Part of the Day, by Margaret S. Fox and John B. Bear (Ten Speed Press, $19.95).
The book is an updated edition of a 1990 cookbook that grew out of the menu at Cafe Beaujolais, a beloved before-noon dining spot in Mendocino, Calif.
When asked what made her restaurant's breakfasts special, Fox, the former owner, replied: "We didn't serve breakfast; we served morning food."
Patrons loved the place because of its expansive approach to "morning food," which went beyond the typical omelets and pancakes.
"We took ingredients that most of us associate with the comfort and conventions of breakfast and shaped them into dozens of wonderful specialties whose only common denominator was that they were utterly delicious - and they were served in the morning," Fox writes in the introduction.
In that vein, her book also branches into the terrain of creamy polenta, Waldorf salad, cookies and cakes.
With homey graphics and photographs and authors named Fox and Bear, the book has a cozy feeling that matches its subject.
The tang of goat cheese and the aroma of roasted garlic made the colorful Mendocino Frittata a winner. It was mildly irritating, though, not to be told just how much oil and garlic it would take to get a quarter-cup of roasted garlic (about 3 tablespoons oil and 11 cloves of garlic, for the record).
Seduced by Bacon: Recipes and Lore About America's Favorite Indulgence by Joanna Pruess with Bob Lape (The Lyons Press, $24.95) offers recipes for those occasions as well as other meals while capturing one of the big food trends of last year: using bacon to flavor everything from pasta dishes to sweets.
Though the book states that 71 percent of bacon still is consumed at breakfast or brunch, the breakfast section offers just 10 recipes. But they're tantalizing enough to make you want to move on to the appetizers, sandwiches, entrees and even a few desserts that use bacon the rest of the day.
A savory bread pudding marries Canadian bacon with multigrain bread, feta cheese, tarragon and wild mushrooms for a sophisticated combination that would be welcome at any meal.
Along with the recipes, there's also a handy section on how to cook bacon. Author Joanna Pruess prefers to oven-fry large batches in jellyroll pans, in a 400-degree oven for 11 to 16 minutes.
Coffee Cakes: Simple, Sweet and Savory by Lou Seibert Pappas (Chronicle Books, $18.95) is a pretty little book dedicated mostly to sweet morning morsels - though there is a chapter of interesting savory breads. Veteran cookbook author Lou Seibert Pappas separates the "everyday" coffee cakes from the more decadent specialty cakes, a few of which are really desserts.
The pecan-streusel coffee cake we tried was both easy and guest-worthy, with a moist body and enough sweet, nutty topping to make everybody happy.
Savory Bread Pudding With Canadian Bacon, Wild Mushrooms and Feta
Makes 4 to 6 servings.
1/2 cup half-and-half
1/2 cup milk
3 eggs
1 teaspoon salt or to taste
1/2 teaspoon white pepper or
to taste
