Page 31 - Family History

Family Stories

Cream Toast & Lum Soo

Cream toast is a traditional Poulsen family breakfast. It is basically a
sweetened white sauce that is spooned over toast with a sprinkle of cinnamon on

top (the recipe follows). Add link sausages and coffee and that is what we
always had and still have for breakfast on Christmas morning. It was and is
as much a part of Christmas as the presents and everything else.

I always believed that the recipe originated with my grandmother Athelene
Poulsen however I later found out that she probably got it from a Chinese man

that lived in Port Angeles named Lum Soo. Apparently Lum Soo sometimes
cooked for her and the recipe came from him.

Having believed that this was a Grandma Poulsen thing all my life – one day I
happened to be talking to my mother and the subject of cream toast came up. It

was then (after nearly 50 years) that she told me about the source of the recipe.
She also told me all about Lum Soo. She had quite a few memories of him and
his family. More on Lum Soo to follow but…

Here are a few interesting cream toast side stories:

• When I was a freshman in college I was the breakfast cook for my dorm. I
would get up at 4:30am and walk over to the cafeteria to start the coffee, get
the griddle warmed up and think up something to cook. Even though there

were 100 students in my dorm, thankfully only about 30 ever seemed to
make it to breakfast on any given day. One morning I found some link
sausages in the freezer so I decided to make cream toast to go with them.
Unfortunately it didn’t go over very well. I had a very hard time convincing
most of the students to even try it. Apparently some had it in their head that
it was akin to the Army dish “cream-chipped-beef on toast” – also known as

“SOS” (S*#% On a Shingle). No – it’s really nothing like that I would tell
them. The few that I was able to convince to try it loved it but for those that
wouldn’t try it – well I ended up making scrambled eggs for them. It was so
much extra work that I only ever made it that one day.

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