rum-soaked french toast w/ pecan butter

Did everyone survive the holiday madness? Any diasters? Everything settle out or down ok? New Year's is right around the corner. I love Christmas, but in all honesty I love New Year's more. I love the celebration of a brand spanking new year. It's like someone came into your home, cleaned everything spotless, organized everything to a perfect ideal system just for you and gave you fresh clean sheets on your brand new bed. I love that! The perfect motivation to start something anew. This new year I am moving into my own home. Finally my own home with my own kitchen. No more greasy, messy rentals with broken appliances that never get fixed, no more wasting, burning rather, your hard earned money on a rental. My current rental I've dubbed as 'the money pit'. Seriously, I've even named my home network/internet connection 'the money pit'. This is the place as many of you remember where the landlord took her time fixing the fridge, then finally realizing (after 2 months) that she should buy a new one. But she didn't take the old one out (it's a wall unit) so the new fridge was put in the living room. Nice! And on top of that the new fridge that she bought was actually a 2-year old floor model that was used on the showroom floor for potential customers to open and close repeatedly, kids to open and slam repeatedly, and who knows what else abuse. She wanted the floor model because....yes, it was cheap. And cheap it was. You should hear the noises that thing makes, it reminds me of the movie Alien. No lie. I have to keep it turned up to the highest setting just to keep it at a nice toasty 35 degrees. Yes, this was the same landlord that didn't want to get the brand new washer & dryer properly fixed. I could go on and on, but in a month I move. But the icing on the cake was the fact that last week the 37-year old oven died. Just two days before Christmas my oven dies. I knew this was coming, but was hoping it would happen the day I moved. None such luck! And get this, the landlord is still undecided on whether or not to put in an oven! Good luck getting it rented with a brand new washer & dryer that doesn't work, a barely working fridge sitting in the living room and now no oven. Crazy right?
I have one more month left in the money pit and with no oven I have to resort my baking & creating to the gas stove. Thank goodness that still works (I should knock on wood at this point right?). This can give me a good excuse to do more with my wok and to flambe more, no? I have to admit I did try a batch of cookies in my ez-bake err toaster oven--it wasn't that bad!

rum-soaked french toast w/ pecan butter

1 large loaf of day old, crusty bread, sliced thick
3 eggs
1/2 cup - 3/4 cup of half & half
1/4 cup dark rum
pinch of salt
couple pinches of cinnnnnaminnnaamon

pecan butter

1 stick of room temp butter
1/2 cup or less of toasted, chopped pecans
pinch of salt
couple dashes of vanilla sugar (if you have it)

Make the pecan butter first by combining all the ingredients in a bowl and mixing well. Put into a small dish, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to use. You want the flavors to have an hour or so to meld together.

To make the french toast combine all the liquid ingredients, plus the cinnamon and salt in a shallow dish. Whisk this egg batter very well. Slice the crusty bread into desired thickness and let a few slices soak in the rum batter until ready to use. I soaked mine about 5 minutes. Add a few pats of butter to a hot skillet and cook up the french toast. Easy peasy. Make sure to serve with the pecan butter.