Slow-Cooked Blueberry French Toast

Eleven days until the call. I have stopped marking them on my calendar because marking them was making me more nervous. Instead I am marking them in my body — a little tighter, a little lighter, in rotation. I am sleeping fine. James is checking on me gently. Dr. Yoon told me last week that I could call her outside our scheduled session if I needed to; she does not often offer this, and I appreciated it, and I have not needed to call her. That, I am realizing, is the gift of being someone with real support: you know it is there and therefore you often do not need it.

I have been cleaning the kitchen for the call. Not obsessively. Just paying attention. I washed the tile behind the stove on Sunday. I reorganized the banchan shelf in the pantry. I moved the onggi pots to a cleaner spot. I am doing this, I realize, the way Karen used to clean the living room before her in-laws visited. I have become my mother, preparing to welcome my other mother. The symmetry of it makes me laugh. I told James. He laughed too. He said, "Stephanie. You are fine. The kitchen is fine. She is going to look at your face." I said, "I know. I just want the kitchen to be right."

I wrote Jisoo a letter on Friday that I want to capture here. I told her: "I am cleaning my kitchen for you. I know you can only see the piece of it that is on camera. I am still cleaning the whole kitchen. I think you would do the same for me." She wrote back: "Yes. I cleaned my kitchen this morning. We are the same. I think we were always going to be the same. It just took us a while to find it." I am going to print that letter and frame it. Not for the blog. For me. On my desk. "We were always going to be the same."

Work this week was meeting-heavy. The Alexa project is in a planning phase for Q2. I sat through six hours of roadmap review on Wednesday. I ate lunch at my desk and built spreadsheets. I felt like an Amazon Principal Engineer and I did not love the feeling. I noticed this. I did not dramatize it. I just made a note.

Karen had a quiet week. She called on Tuesday to tell me that Rosa had made her posole on Monday (it was the Mexican holiday of something, Rosa had said, though Karen could not remember which) and Karen had eaten two bowls. "It's a good soup," Karen said. "Like menudo but without the tripe." I laughed. Karen's palate is broadening in her old age, which is, I think, a gift of the slow-disease era — she has nothing to do but eat interesting things that other people cook for her. She is discovering food in the way I discovered it at twenty-five. Her world is getting bigger in small ways as her body gets smaller.

The recipe this week is pajeon — green onion pancakes — because pajeon is what I cooked on Sunday afternoon alone in my kitchen while listening to a Korean-language podcast I understand about fifteen percent of. The pajeon went perfectly. I made them crispy around the edges, tender in the middle, the green onions caramelized. I ate two and sent James a photo. He wrote back from his office: "The real pajeon please. Not a photo." I made him a fresh one when he got home. That is the bargain.

Pajeon was what I made for myself on Sunday — those crispy-edged green onion pancakes felt exactly right for a solo afternoon of podcasts and patient waiting. But the recipe I want to leave you with captures something else from that same week: the slow, deliberate care of a kitchen being made ready for someone important. This blueberry French toast is built for mornings when you need the oven — or in this case, the slow cooker — to do the work quietly in the background while you clean the tile behind the stove, reorganize the pantry, and remind yourself that things are going to be fine. You put it together the night before. You wake up and it is already there.

Prep Time: 15 minutes + overnight rest | Cook Time: 3 hours 30 minutes | Total Time: ~4 hours (plus overnight) | Servings: 8

Ingredients

1 loaf brioche or French bread (about 12 oz), cut into 1-inch cubes and left out to dry slightly
6 large eggs
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/3 cup pure maple syrup, plus more for serving
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon fine salt
2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries (divided)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
Powdered sugar, for serving
Whipped cream or Greek yogurt, optional for serving

Instructions

Prepare the slow cooker. Lightly grease the insert of a 6-quart slow cooker with butter or nonstick spray. Place the cubed bread in an even layer inside.
Make the custard. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, heavy cream, maple syrup, vanilla extract, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt until fully combined and smooth.
Assemble. Pour the custard evenly over the bread cubes, pressing the bread gently with a spatula so every piece absorbs the liquid. Scatter 1 1/2 cups of the blueberries over the top. Dot with the small pieces of butter. Cover and refrigerate overnight, or for at least 2 hours.
Cook low and slow. When ready to cook, place the slow cooker insert in the base (do not preheat). Cover and cook on LOW for 3 to 3 1/2 hours, until the custard is set in the center and the edges are just pulling away from the sides. Do not cook on HIGH — the low heat keeps the texture custardy rather than rubbery.
Finish and serve. Turn off the slow cooker and let the French toast rest, uncovered, for 10 minutes. Scatter the remaining 1/2 cup fresh blueberries over the top. Dust generously with powdered sugar and serve directly from the insert, spooning into bowls or onto plates. Drizzle with additional maple syrup and add whipped cream or a spoonful of Greek yogurt if you like.

Nutrition (per serving)

Slow-Cooked Blueberry French Toast — Making the Kitchen Right for Someone You Haven’t Met Yet