Weekend Breakfast: Avocado Egg Toast

So this is my version of a power breakfast: hearty seven grain bread, hallowed out in the middle, an egg cooked inside, and then topped with avocado salad. I saw something similar on another food site and it reminded me of the first avocado breakfast toast concoction I’d ever had. It was during a trip to the magical double-island nation of New Zealand. I was visiting this bohemian family who had become very successful turning a native tropical fruit into wine. The father was an American hippie transplant and he still lived with all his strapping sons (single ladies: if you are looking for strapping and outdoorsy men, go immediately to New Zealand) and daughters and their kids in homemade houses that dotted their tropical paradise, called Lothlorien Orchards. I visited during breakfast time and when I was brought into the kitchen I was told they made basically everything themselves: the bread, the flour for the bread, the butter, everything they ate they made. The lady of the house, Jo Bradshaw, made me a breakfast of fresh baked bread cut into thick slices, slathered with fresh churned butter (that was sitting uncovered on the counter at room temperature for who knows how long; still delicious ), half a ripe avocado smashed on top of that (from their own tree, of course), and then topped with a sweet and spicy corn relish scooped from a Ball jar.