Evolution of a Breakfast, or Tales of the Breakfast Wars

[gnomi]

So I'm eating breakfast and thinking about breakfast.

When I was in high school (after beckyfeld had graduated, so the morning commute was just Abba and me), I had a set routine: Get up at 5:30 AM, get dressed, do whatever last-minute homework stuff I'd left undone, and then get out to head to the T by 6:45. At some point, lcmlc noticed a missing component -- no breakfast. And she was not particularly pleased by this. However, I cannot eat real food for at least half an hour after I've woken up. So, after much back-and-forth, we hit on a solution: corn on the cob. She got frozen corn on the cob, I would microwave it and eat it before leaving for school, and then I'd have cereal and milk (sold by the Student Council starting in, I believe, my 10th grade year) during the breakfast period at school (between the end of Shacharit and first period).

This continued until I went to Israel. While I was in Jerusalem, I ate breakfast between my first and second classes (because, well, the dorm building had classrooms on the first floor, so it was not uncommon for my classmates and me to stumble out of bed, get tea or coffee, go to class in our pajamas, robes, and slippers (first class was always Hebrew language), then go back upstairs, shower and dress, go back downstairs for breakfast, and then go to our second class). On moshav and kibbutz, we ate with everyone else (on moshav with our host families and on kibbutz with our work group, whatever it was that day).

I went back to not eating breakfast when I got back to the States and started college. Breakfast, such that it was, was more often than not a 20-oz Mountain Dew and a pastry (yeah, I know. I was in college; that is my only excuse). After graduation, I lived with the parents for a year, so I went back to random-vegetable-for-breakfast before going to the bus to get to work.

When mabfan and I got married, I was working down the block from the main block of kosher stores in Brookline, so my usual pattern was to pick up a bagel on my way to work, and that would be breakfast. But then I started working in Cambridge, and while I tried to keep the bagel-for-breakfast pattern up, I kept missing my bus because it would pass the bakery while I was waiting for the cashier to finish ringing me up. I had to come up with a plan.

I started by bringing breakfast cereal to work, and I'd have a bowl of cereal (and a cup of coffee) every morning. Then, one Pesach that had a number of Chol HaMoed days that I was in the office (and, thus, had to figure out breakfast (kosher-for-Pesach cereal is not my idea of food)), I started having yogurt for breakfast. Once Pesach was over, I saw no reason to stop with the yogurt, so I was having cereal and yogurt. Then I added in a bottle of water to go with the coffee, and then just a couple of months ago, I added a banana to the cereal. So, yeah. I end up having approximately the same breakfast every work day, but, y'know? I'm not starving by lunch time, so I figure I'm doing something right.

Comments

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Is this in honor of Pi Day? Pie for breakfast!

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

It was, actually, just random.

But you remind me that I wanted to do a brief Pi Day post...

[madknits.livejournal.com]

When I was in high school, my father was quite ill, and my mother spent much of her time tending to his needs. So she was usually asleep when we would get up for breakfast. Since there was usually chocolate cake in the house, breakfast would consist of a slab of cake and a glass of milk.

Yes, I was one of those kids who really did eat cake for breakfast.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

There's nothing wrong, in my book, with cake for breakfast.

Bill Cosby agrees (http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=14462).

[dianora2.livejournal.com]

I have the same breakfast every weekday morning, a toasted whole wheat bagel with butter and a small coffee. Breakfast of champions. But I'm like you, I don't like to eat as soon as I get up, blech.

And once in a while I'm bad and have a donut or two instead. *g*

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

I know some people who wake up hungry and can eat right after getting out of bed.

Those people confuse me.

[tygerseye.livejournal.com]

I am this person. I wake up starving.

[tygerseye.livejournal.com]

Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day, and therefore often my largest. It's not uncommon for me to have a yogurt with grape nuts and some kind of fruit in it like a banana or berries, and some toast or a bagel, plus water and coffee and orange or grapefruit juice.

I'd much rather eat breakfast than dinner. So much so, that I often end up having breakfast food for dinner. ;-)

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Your breakfast and mine aren't that divergent. Mine has evolved over time, but I think that my current combo is the perfect one for my current situation (what with it having to be preparable and edible in my cube).

And there's nothing wrong with breakfast at dinner time. One of our local kosher restaurants (Rubins) has a breakfast menu that you can order from at any time, and folks do so.

[tygerseye.livejournal.com]

If I lived near you, that would be my favorite restaurant.

And yes, my breakfast has also evolved from the "at my desk" mentality. :D

[autotruezone.livejournal.com]

"I went to a restaurant that serves 'breakfast at any time.' So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance."

--Steven Wright

[dianora2.livejournal.com]

I'd much rather eat breakfast than dinner. So much so, that I often end up having breakfast food for dinner. ;-)

Me too! I have cereal for dinner quite often, and only partly because I don't like to cook. ;)

[half-double.livejournal.com]

I'm one of those people who wake up hungry. I don't think I could eat right after getting out of bed, but if I haven't eaten within an hour of waking up, there is Big Trouble in Little Eli. Leora eats breakfast at 8:30 on weekdays (2 hours after getting up) and gets discombobulated by weekends, when she has to eat about the same time I do, 1/2 an hour after getting up. She says it feels wrong.

I have the same breakfast every weekday: cold cereal with soy milk and a metric ass tonne of water. Sometimes there will be a piece of 12-grain toast, if I'm feeling extra peckish. As if that weren't enough, I eat oatmeal for breakfast every Saturday. At that hour of the morning, my brain is foggy and groggy and needs routine. It can't handle digressions into unknown foodstuffs.

I am digging the "random-vegetable-for-breakfast" routine. We'll have a CSA share this summer; this seems like a great way to work our way through what promises to be an inordinate amount of produce.

Also, I am seething with envy over your getting to go to class in pajamas and slippers.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Going to class in PJs was one of the excellent perks of Riklis (the dorm/classroom building I lived in). I can't even remember which one of my cohorts started it (though, even all these years later, I have an idea of who it may have been). And Miki (our Hebrew teacher) didn't mind. There were only seven of us in that class, so Miki was very flexible with us. PJs and tea in class, watching movies instead of her lecturing, it was all good.

(It was ulpan for those of us who came to the country already fluent. So it was 4 yeshiva graduates and 3 US-born-kids-of-Israelis or something like that.)

[betra.livejournal.com]

Gah! I can't eat right out of bed, it makes me feel sick all day. And I can't eat too early in the day either for the same reason. I would love to be able to have bagels every morning, that would be awesome...with a schmear right about 8:30 or 9.

[ephemera.livejournal.com]

my commute into work and my late-running-day means that I can do that - toasted bagel and cream cheese on the way into work about 9 ... I do realise I'm lucky! I can't stomach the thought of food first thing either.

[betra.livejournal.com]

Yea it really makes my stomach clench. Even if I wake up hungry I can't just go eat, unless I am so hungry that I actually feel sick from that.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Some mornings, when I hadn't had a creative thought about lunch and didn't want to spend money on going out for lunch, I'd get two bagels, one with cream cheese and one with cream cheese and lox. One would be breakfast and one would be lunch.

[betra.livejournal.com]

*flop* *twitch* Bready goodness...bagely....

[eireangus.livejournal.com]

That was a great post! I usually have a cereal bar and/or oatmeal and a banana for breakfast. During Pesach I am totally into fruit and chocolate macaroons for breakfast.

I adore cake for breakfast. Today I am having a yogurt bar and cinnamon challah - AMAZING! :)

Speaking of which, I need to buy FOUR loaves of Challah on the way home. My pre-Shabbat check-list is out of control because I am having three houseguests.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

SHABBAT SHALOM :)

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you enjoyed the post. I was just contemplating my breakfast closer than I usually do. :-)

Good luck with the houseguests!

Shabbat shalom umvorach!

[tsuki-no-bara.livejournal.com]

i'm hungry for breakfast food now, damn you. or a piece of cake. :p on weekdays i have pita bread with cheese on top, toasted in the toaster oven on the lowest pop-up setting, because it toasts while i'm getting dressed and i can eat it in the car, because i'd rather sleep an extra half hour than eat breakfast at home. (on days when a. i don't have time, or b. i don't have pita bread, i get a bagel after i get to work. there's a bruegger's across the street from the office.) within, like, fifteen minutes of getting out of bed, i want fooood. people who can't eat until they've been awake an hour just confuse me. don't you get hungry?

on weekends i eat whatever's around and easiest, for i am a lazy-ass. and now i really want a piece of chocolate cake, ideally my mom's chocolate passover cake, with a glass of milk. oh baby. or pie, pie works too.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

people who can't eat until they've been awake an hour just confuse me. don't you get hungry?

Not really. I don't really get hungry until I'm ready to eat, around 8:30 or so. And these days I'm on a medication that has to be taken on an empty stomach (and an hour before I'm going to eat), so I take that first thing, go to work, and then by the time I'm ready to eat, I can eat.

[eal.livejournal.com]

And you know how I am. Someone has to remind me to eat breakfast in the first place :).

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

I seem to recall you were contemplating breakfast yesterday as I began to contemplate a late-ish lunch.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with you about not being able to eat right after waking up. Ooog. And I'm often still doing my traditional Cocoa Puffs... :-)