French Toast Casserole -- The Birthday Morning I Decided Fried Potatoes Could Wait

I turned forty-eight last Wednesday and I will tell you the same thing I told Travis when he showed up with a six-pack: I don’t see what the fuss is about. It’s a number. The number goes up every year whether you do anything worth doing or not. I’ve never understood why people make ceremonies out of aging, which is the one thing in life that requires absolutely no effort on your part.

That said, Connie made a cake. Box mix, chocolate, the kind with the little foil packet of frosting that you squeeze out like caulk. It was good. It is always good. I don’t need a bakery cake with flowers piped on it. I need a cake that tastes like cake, and Connie’s box mix does that just fine. Clay ate roughly half of it before I got home from work, which I discovered when I went to cut myself a piece and found a cake that looked like something had taken a run at it from one side. I asked him about it. He said he didn’t know anything about it. He had frosting on his shirt. I did not press the matter.

Travis came by Wednesday evening after Clay had gone to whatever fifteen-year-olds go to, and we sat on the back porch with his six-pack and watched the yard get dark. We didn’t talk about much. Travis is thirty-three years old and still not great with words, which is either my fault or just the Hensley way, and I’ve stopped trying to figure out which. We talked about the Wildcats. We talked about whether the redbuds along the fence line were going to bloom before Easter. We talked about the way the evenings are starting to stretch out again, that extra light at the end of the day that feels like getting something back that winter took from you. That was the whole conversation. It was a good birthday.

Amber called from UK, sang happy birthday in a key that I’m not sure exists on any piano, and told me I was getting old. I told her she was the worst singer in the entire Hensley family, which is a meaningful statement because not a single one of us can carry a tune. She laughed and said she was working a double shift and had to go, and I told her that was fine, and we both meant everything we didn’t say, which is how this family operates.

I called Betty, same as I do every birthday. She answered on the second ring because Betty has always answered on the second ring and I don’t expect that to change. She told me she remembered the day I was born — March 30, 1968, Harlan ARH hospital, seven pounds fourteen ounces — and that Daddy had come straight from the mine and still had coal dust on his face when he held me. She says this every year. I don’t think she knows she repeats it, or maybe she does and she’s decided it’s worth repeating. Either way, I never stop her. Some stories need to be told out loud on a regular schedule or they start to fade around the edges. The coal dust on Daddy’s face is something I can’t afford to let fade.

She said the daffodils are up in her yard. She planted those thirty-some years ago and they come back every spring without being asked, which is more than you can say for most things in Evarts.

Now. I want to tell you about Saturday morning, because Saturday morning is where this week’s recipe actually lives.

Most Saturdays I make fried potatoes. This is not a preference so much as a habit so deep it’s become reflex. You peel the russets, slice them thin, heat lard in the cast iron until it shimmers, lay them in a single layer, and then — and this is the important part Betty drilled into me when I was small enough to watch from the floor — you leave them alone. You do not stir. You do not fiddle. You do not check. You let the bottom build its crust, and then you flip once, and you salt, and that’s breakfast. I made them last Saturday and I made them the Saturday before that and I will make them next Saturday. They are the most honest food I know.

But this Saturday was my birthday weekend, and Connie had been on one of her health things all week, eating yogurt for lunch and looking at my lard can the way a preacher looks at a slot machine. I figured if I was going to cook something that wasn’t going to get me a lecture about saturated fat, I’d better find a recipe that at least looked like it was trying to be reasonable. And I had a loaf of bread that was one day from being useless, and a carton of eggs, and it was a birthday weekend, which means you’re allowed to do something different.

I made a French toast casserole. I’m not going to pretend this is Appalachian food, because it’s not. Betty never made French toast casserole. Betty made biscuits and she made cornbread and she made fried bread on the rare occasion she had leftover dough. She did not make anything with “casserole” in the name that wasn’t the Christmas morning egg casserole, and that is its own story for another time. This recipe came from a card somebody left at a church fellowship we went to last fall, and I held onto it because it called for things I already had and it looked like something Connie might eat.

Connie ate two pieces. She set her crossword puzzle facedown on the table, which is the highest compliment she gives anything short of her saying “that’ll do,” and she ate two pieces and had half a cup of coffee and didn’t say a word about lard.

Clay ate approximately a third of the pan. He is fifteen years old and I genuinely don’t know where he puts it.

I ate mine at the counter because my back was bad enough that sitting in a kitchen chair was more trouble than it was worth. I’m not going to get into the back. I will say that framing houses at forty-eight is a different proposition than framing them at thirty-eight, and the numbers are not trending in my favor, and Connie has told me to see a doctor approximately nine times in the last two weeks, and I have said I’m fine approximately nine times, and neither of us is surprised by any of this. I stood at the counter and ate my French toast casserole and looked out the window at the redbuds coming in along the fence, and I thought: forty-eight is fine. Forty-eight is just fine.

The recipe is simple enough that I almost didn’t write it down, but that’s what I said about fried potatoes before I started this whole thing, and fried potatoes are worth writing down, so here we are. The base is cubed bread soaked overnight in an egg custard — eggs, milk, a little vanilla, cinnamon, brown sugar. You pour it all into a baking dish before you go to bed, wrap it, put it in the icebox, and in the morning you pull it out and bake it while the coffee’s brewing. The top gets this slight crust from the brown sugar and the butter you dot across it before it goes in the oven, and the inside stays custardy and soft. It tastes like French toast the way a pie tastes better than a slice of bread — same ingredients, more concentrated, more of a thing.

If you’ve got stale bread sitting on the counter, you’ve already got most of what you need. Don’t throw that bread away. Stale bread is just bread that knows where it’s going.

Betty always said the same thing about leftovers: “Waste is a sin and a choice.” I’ve been hearing her voice more this week than usual. I think that happens around birthdays. She’s still in that house in Evarts, still going to church, still planting daffodils she’ll never dig up. I’m fixing to drive down in a few weeks to mow the lawn and eat her soup beans and sit on the porch and watch the fog come up the hollow.

Forty-eight years old. Earl was forty-eight once. I wonder if he noticed.

Forty-eight hit me quieter than I expected, and I didn’t want fried potatoes and eggs—I wanted something that felt like it came from somewhere, like Betty’s kitchen or a Sunday morning I can’t quite place. A casserole you put together the night before and just slide into the oven felt right for a birthday when you don’t want to stand over a stove thinking too hard. Here’s what I made.

French Toast Casserole — The Birthday Morning I Decided Fried Potatoes Could Wait

Ingredients

• 1 loaf French bread or thick white sandwich bread (about 12 oz), cut into 1-inch cubes — day-old or slightly stale is better
• 8 large eggs
• 2 cups whole milk
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• Powdered sugar for serving, if you want it
• Maple syrup or warm honey on the side

Instructions

1. Cube and arrange the bread. Grease a 9x13 baking dish. Spread the bread cubes in an even layer in the dish. They can be a little mounded — they’ll settle when the custard soaks in.
2. Make the custard. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, heavy cream, granulated sugar, brown sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt until the sugars are dissolved and everything is well combined. This takes about a minute of real whisking. Don’t rush it.
3. Pour and press. Pour the custard evenly over the bread cubes. Press down gently with a spatula or the back of a spoon so every piece of bread starts to absorb the liquid. Dot the top with the small pieces of butter.
4. Cover and refrigerate overnight. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator. Let it sit at least 8 hours, and up to 12. The bread needs time to absorb the custard fully. Don’t skip this step. This is the patience part.
5. Take it out before you need it. The next morning, pull the casserole from the refrigerator and let it sit on the counter for 20 to 30 minutes while the oven preheats to 350 degrees. A cold dish going into a hot oven cooks unevenly. Let it come toward room temperature.
6. Make the topping. Mix the brown sugar, cinnamon, and melted butter together in a small bowl until it looks like wet sand. Sprinkle it evenly over the top of the casserole.
7. Bake uncovered. Bake at 350 degrees for 40 to 45 minutes, until the top is deep golden brown and the center is set but still has a slight give when you press it. A knife inserted in the center should come out mostly clean. If the top is browning too fast before the center is done, lay a piece of foil loosely over it for the last ten minutes.
8. Rest and serve. Let it sit for five minutes before cutting. Dust with powdered sugar if you want it. Serve with maple syrup or warm honey on the side. Eat it at the table or standing at the counter. It’s good either way.

Nutrition (per serving)