Monday, June 25, 2007
Ponder Post 4
Many people have remarked that this blog's interest in breakfast is crucial to its enduring popularity. We do seem to keep returning to the subject, most controversially with my shattering post on steel-cut oats. And today, I notice, my most popular post is XXX Shreddies XXX from April 27th, a thoughtful assessment of the idea of the adult cereal. So today the ponder is: what is it about breakfast?
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
The idea of Manx kippers and kidneys. Yum yum. Never bother with breakfast myself.
ReplyDeleteIn the olden days Catholics had to fast for ages before receiving Holy Communion. Now it's an hour. Presumably, any meal after a fast is breakfast.
ReplyDeleteBy the way captainb, try www.manxkippers.com
sleep and work, obviously. next!
ReplyDeleteBreakfast is a perfunctory meal. As such, its preparation should require very little cognitive function (a pulse should do) and minimal tableware. As for taste, well, that's optional. My own favourite is one or two Marlborough Lights (alfresco), washed down with a quadruple espresso.
ReplyDeleteBreakfast - it's something everyone can have an opinion on. So we do. Duck eggs and black pudding does it for me.
ReplyDeleteI'm tempted to try the fairly well-grilled PM on Newsnight, please. But make sure it doesn't boil over.
ReplyDelete(surely some mistake in the cooking instructions)
Waking up is quite enough trauma, without having to eat a meal. Some of us take a couple of hours to come to terms with having been wrenched out of our timeless world.
ReplyDeleteBreakfast is high point of my day, beyond which things usually start to go awry.
ReplyDeleteAlpen does it for me, though I pick out the sultanas.
Breakfast is the only meal at which it's all right to be perfectly selfish and exactly who you are. You may eat what you like - no one is expected to tolerate an unwelcome dish forced upon them at breakfast. You do not have to engage in tiresome conversation, unless you want to and the other party is willing. You may in fact be quite distracted for the whole meal, and no one should mind. For these reasons there's something awful and depressing about the notion of a "business breakfast" or a "working breakfast" that wouldn't apply to lunch or dinner (excluding a pleasant domestic supper, natch). Perhaps the essential falsity of a "working breakfast" is what makes it so appealing to politicians. Just my 2 cents.
ReplyDeleteI can only eat breakfast when away from home, whether just overnight or on holiday.. The hotel breakfast can be utterly delicious, a chance to indulge in a little bit of everything on offer and set yourself up for a day of sightseeing. Soft -boiled eggs should only ever be eaten with family, and certainly never alone.
ReplyDeleteOddly, cereal is often best at night, while the internal organs of anything that was once alive are surely verboten at any time of day. For people such as myself (and Nige, I'll warrant), fruit juice and coffee is more than enough to get us through those first couple of hours of wakefulness. Just don't expect me to speak to you.
J Cheever Loophole
Isn't the secret to the joy of breakfast that you can believe without alcohol that this day will be more enjoyable and profitable than all the others? By lunch, reality has set in and you need help to keep that fantasy going.
ReplyDeletefor a while i had Jameson's for breakfast. It would send me hurtling out the front door at 0710 to get my bus then my train to a £5/hour job without too much agony. Strangely, it would sometimes take hold at weird times of the day like just before lunch, and i'd start giggling drunkedly while hiding behind my VDU. Those were the days.
ReplyDeleteMark, you paint the horror of horrors but there is one exception I know of that can't be resisted; the smell of early morning bacon rolls arriving on a construction site.
ReplyDeletebut I expect you speak of croissants and coffee meetings. yeugh!
At one with you there, Cheever (as on so much else) - No food, no conversation, nothing but the background babble of the Today programme, and the long job of coming to terms with being awake and ambulant again...
ReplyDeleteHey - let's do breakfast!
Ah, grand idea Nige me ol' mucker. Can't imagine anything more companionable. Make mine a Copella!
ReplyDeleteJCL
Mark, I'm with you. And Nige, too, I suspect. My day begins with coffee, toast, a newspaper, and my dog. The dog is there as long as the toast is (awake; she's still there after, too, but snoring). I don't want to talk, I want to read. I don't want to eat pancakes and eggs; I want to drink coffee.
ReplyDeleteI think Bryan, however, begins with a bowl of cereal and his blog. This is why he has so many posts about brekkie.
There's only one thing to say about breakfast.
ReplyDeleteWeetabix.
I believe this exchange between Mark and Jeremy in Peep Show contains a couple of salient breakfast truths:
ReplyDeleteJez: "Crunchy Nut Cornflakes are just Frosties for wankers."
Mark: "Frosties are just Cornflakes for people who can't face reality."