PREP FOR BREAKFAST
This is the most important area and I cannot stress this enough! You will often think to yourself that there will be plenty of time in the morning but there never is! There will be the early risers, the various problems that need dealing with and the fact that you are half asleep and keep bumping into your partner in the rush for the shower. So tasks to do the night before are:-

1. Set up your tea and coffee trays if you are serving guests individually fit as many as you can comfortably get on your work surface. If you can find them the small round trays are the most useful as you can get more on. Then set up at least 2 of each (coffee and tea) with a piece of kitchen roll, tea pot or coffee pot and empty milk jug. Then fill up your kettles to the max I cannot recommend strongly enough having at least two.

2. Then chop up a good amount of mushrooms I myself prefer fresh but it is worth having a couple of cans of the tinned in your cupboard for emergencies. Also check your stock the night before there is still time to dash to the emergency shop as during service you will have no such luck. I find about a large handful per person is about right as they seem to reduce in the pan by a startling amount.

3. As for tomatoes you will find if you try to cut them up the night before they will go all sloppy so I would recommend waiting till the morning but have your chopping board and knife set out as it is remarkable how these things disappear when you need them most. We fry our tomatoes but they can also be grilled. A top tip is however to have several small pans about the size to take 4 slices of tomato on your shelf as the oil gets dirty for tomatoes very quickly and in the heat of service it is quicker to put the dirty pan in the sink and whip out a clean one.

4. As regards eggs I try and have in at least twice as many eggs as people as you can guarantee that if you were a bit short and decided to risk it then everyone will not only want eggs then they will want scrambled eggs which takes two.

5. Also as a side note if you offer poached eggs you can do them with an egg poacher on the hob but we have found that the easiest way is to do them in the microwave. It is 20 seconds to start and then rest for 5 seconds then 10 seconds and then 5 seconds rest and then repeat this until cooked. This was discovered after many scalding incidents with the conventional kind of cooker.

6. I tend to cook sausages through the night before and then reheat or fry them in the morning otherwise they take much longer than the other components of the breakfast. Another alternative is to serve 2 small sausages and to fry them the choice is yours.

7. Bacon we do in the Microwave for one very simple reason you don’t have to watch it you simply set it off and then carry on with your other cooking it is approximately two and a half minutes but check your instructions.

8. Beans we found the easiest way is to buy small pots in fact we use open topped milk jugs and put on one portion of beans and microwave approximately 1 Min. This leads to les wastage as you only cook what you need and it is very quick.