My Point...And I Do Have One

to know about me.” And one of the things you seem to want to know most about me is my recipe for French toast.
    It is one of my favorite recipes, and I bet dollars to donuts that after you try it out, it will be one of your favorites, too. Come to think of it, I’m not exactly sure I know what the saying “betting dollars to donuts” means. Maybe it used to be “betting donuts to donuts,” but then … no, that still doesn’t make sense. I don’t even know when people started betting donuts. I do know that if you’re in Las Vegas, you can’t just go up to the roulette table, put a jelly donut on number 17, and shout out, “C’mon. Mama needs a big mess o’ crullers!!” Believe me, I’ve tried. Oddly enough, you can put a chip down on any number. But it’s a plastic chip and not the kind that you eat. So maybe it isn’t all that odd after all.
    But I digress.
    Anyway, this is something that I cook up whenever people drop by, whether it’s invited guests (Gus, my mailman), or tour buses filled with screaming fans (who tell me that I serve better food than Kevin Costner or Madonna).
    Believe it or not, Ellen’s Real Frenchy French Toast is also a great alternative to candy for trick or treaters on Halloween. Ah, the look on the little children’s faces when I drop the still-steaming hot bread into their bags followed by a generous dollop of butter and a splash of maple syrup. You can see their faces because in Hollywood children don’t wear masks on Halloween. They usually dress up as agents, valet parkers, or second-unit directors instead.
    Now, on with the recipe.
    Ingredients
    BREAD
“What kind of bread should I use?!” you might say, panicking a wee bit early. Well, there are many types of bread: wheat, rye, white, Italian, Swiss, Dopey, Doc, pumpernickel … Do you know if you took every type of bread there is and laid them end to end—and I’m not counting crackers—well … Sorry, I’m not exactly sure of the point I’m trying to make. Maybe, just that it would go really really really far.
    In the 1960s, bread was slang for money, as in “Hey, man, gimme some bread so I can buy a psychedelic headband.” I don’t know why that was. Maybe it’s because in the 1940s, dough was slang for money, as in “Excuse me, Mister, can I borrow some dough so that I may purchase a spiffy fedora.” One theory is that dough rose and eventually became bread. My point being that you shouldn’t put money into this recipe.
    EGGS
How did people ever figure out that eggs were edible? Did they see something come out of a chicken and think, “Boy, I bet that would be tasty?” There had to be a first person who ever ate an egg. I’m sure it wasn’t pleasant. In fact, there are pictures in a cave in the south of Franceshowing a Neanderthal crunching into an egg and getting a big mouthful of egg shells; to the side there are other Neanderthals pointing at him and laughing. But who got the last laugh? I don’t really know, I wasn’t there. Also, this might not be true. It’s possible it’s just a dream I had one night after eating a bad clam.
    People probably started eating some foods because they saw other animals eating them first. For instance, somebody saw a pig digging up truffles and eating them and said, “Say, that pig must know what he’s doing. Otherwise he wouldn’t be a pig. Hey, I can talk. Listen, everybody, I’ve invented language.”
    There had to be a first person who ate beets. Why why why didn’t that person tell everybody that it wasn’t worth the bother? To this day, people are still eating huge forkfuls of beets and asking God in Heaven how anybody decided that this could be food. Or, maybe that’s just me.
    SQUID
    Actually there is no squid in this recipe. I was just thinking about them. I wonder what happened during their evolution to allow them to shoot out ink behind them. Some people think they developed this talent to avoid predators. But maybe it’s just a neat magic trick: the squid squirting out the ink and when the ink disperses, the squid is gone. He’s like the David Copperfield of the ocean. I’m not saying that a squid is married to a supermodel like Claudia Schiffer, but I’m not saying that he isn’t, either.
    BUTTER
    If you have a moral or health reason for not using butter, then you can substitute some other lubricant, such as margarine, oil, or Vaseline. In a pinch you can rub a peanut really hard and fast over your pan. I’ve never