A New Calendar, a Familiar Table

The New Year doesn’t always ask for reinvention.
Sometimes it asks for return.

This year, it asked me for breakfast.

Not the rushed kind. Not the symbolic kind.
The real kind — generous, considered, and made because it feels good to make it.

The Breakfast I Miss Making

I’ve always loved an English-style breakfast.
The full, unapologetic version.

It was my Boxing Day ritual for years — long before motherhood rearranged time, and long before life took its inevitable turns. I never worried too much about not hosting the big Christmas dinner. I preferred the Christmas Eve smorgasbord or the Boxing Day big breakfast. They felt more relaxed. More generous. Less ceremonial and more lived-in.

My love of that kind of breakfast was sharpened during my silver service days at the Fairmont Resort in Leura, before I married and had a family. I can still picture it: enormous trays edged in polished copper, gleaming under soft light, holding copious breakfast offerings in equally shiny stainless steel bain-maries.

Delicately scrambled eggs made with full cream, whipped just enough to be soft and luscious. Crispy, salty bacon. Proper pork sausages. Pancakes waiting patiently on warm plates. It was decadent, yes — but also beautifully done.

That’s where my Boxing Day breakfast menu was born.

Food, Heritage, and a Long Memory

With two grandfathers who were chefs, I was never going to escape food.
Not cooking it. Not eating it. Not loving both equally.

Even when my marriage ended and the family table changed shape, that urge to create a generous breakfast didn’t disappear. I scratched that itch the only way I knew how — by taking on a pub bistro and offering it there instead. Feeding people has always been one of my languages.

And a big breakfast, to my mind, is never complete without marmalade.

Marmalade, Toast, and Memory

I make my marmalade the old way — with raw sugar, so it carries that faint caramel note on the palate. Mmm - Hot toast, salted butter melting into the crumb, generous lashings of marmalade catching the light.

It’s comfort, yes.
But it’s also brightness.

It reminds me, every time, of how much I love Cointreau — that clean orange note with just enough warmth underneath. Which, naturally, leads me to cocktails.

A Smaller Table, Still Well Set

This year, it’s just me. And it's not Boxing Day - it's New Years Day.

No need for enormous trays. No need for feeding a room. Just a toned-down version of my Boxing Day brunch, made with the same care, even if the table is smaller and it's a week late.

And for that moment — toast still warm, marmalade still glossy — there’s really only one drink that belongs beside it - since it's after 10am and I refrained from any mixers last night: the Breakfast Martini.

You’ll find it on page 106 of The Cocktail Diaries. Bright, citrus-forward, and unapologetically morning-appropriate, it feels like a bridge between hospitality, ritual, and quiet celebration.

Not a party drink.
A punctuation mark.

A Gentle Way In

Welcoming a new calendar year doesn’t have to be loud.
It can be deliberate. Familiar. Made with care.

Sometimes the most grounding thing you can do is set a good table — even if you’re the only one sitting at it.

Especially then.