Breakfast Hack
This weekend, Kim’s nephew Josh, his wife Haj and their kids JJ and Leila are staying with us in order to launch a day at Legoland. Josh’s older brother Will is also staying even though he is more a local than not since he lives in Ocean Beach. The good news is that Kim and I get a pass on the whole Legoland deal and are only hosting breakfast and dinner with the clan. I’m actually surprised that Kim is opting out of Legoland since she is much more of a joiner in things kid-oriented than I am. But to show you how seriously Kim takes these family visits, she arose at 4am to prepare for whatever the kids wanted for breakfast. The kids were up early, so they went on the morning Betty walk with Kim, which made Kim very happy. Then it was time for breakfast decision-making. Would it be pancakes, waffles, eggs or something else?
By the time I got up in the morning and wandered past Will on the blow-up bed in the living room, snoring up a storm, I got to the kitchen where Kim, JJ and Leila were very busy at some sort of food preparation. When I asked, I was told that they were making a breakfast hack. Not being familiar with that term, I asked the composition of a breakfast hack. It seemed that Kim and JJ had come to the conclusion that cinnamon rolls were the order of the morning, so they Googled them and found a recipe online that they “hacked” and decided they had the needed ingredients to make. After waiting for the buns to come out of the oven, Kim covered them in white frosting and dished them out for everyone. In a word, the experience of the breakfast hack cinnamon buns was…sweet. Sweet to the point of making your teeth ache. Sweet to the point of feeling a diabetic shock come on. Sweet to the point of thinking that I might finally swear off of sugar once and for all in my life.
Breakfast is an interesting meal. They say its the most important meal of the day. When I was growing up, my mother was quite insistent that we have breakfast to start our day. The haranguing bordered on putting the notion into the same category as waiting an hour before going in before a swim. It took on an old wive’s tale tone. The funny thing is that I can go either way on breakfast. There are days I can just blow past the kitchen and skip it altogether, figuring that lunch is not so very far away. Lunch has never been a debatable meal for me. I might go so far as to say lunch is my favorite meal of the day. But back to breakfast. On other mornings, I can get a real hankering for a big breakfast. When we travel, the breakfast buffet combined with an omelette (assuming it is on offer) is a favorite. A nice cheese omelette with a side of sausage (preferably patty more than link) with some hash browns or home fries and a side of rye or sourdough toast is the perfect way to break the morning fast.
When we’re not traveling, we only get that sort of perfect breakfast once in a while and rarely, if ever, at home. There’s an old joke which I think I can get away with here with a little bit of finesse. Think about whatever sexual favor you care to prefer, now ask what the similarity is between that favor and Eggs Benedict. The answer is, neither is available at home. Batta boom. But the good news about the perfect breakfast is that it is always as close as the nearest diner. Near us is The Golden Egg Omelet House, which does a very nice perfect breakfast of your choosing.
But on a normal morning on the hilltop, while Kim is making Betty her concoction of foods for breakfast, I usually toast an English muffin and put a piece of cheese or peanut butter on top. The alternative, usually prompted by someone like Gary having it for breakfast, might be a bowl of cereal, a favorite from youth. In fact, this morning I decided to have a bowl of cheerios only to find that Josh decided to make eggs and sausage for him and Will. Will, who had come in from his living room boudoir had what we affectionately call bed head. He really has perfected the “I just woke up so don’t roust me” look about him. He claims its the hair, but I think there’s more to it than that. My son Thomas is prone to bed head, but he never quite looks as disoriented as Will does in the morning. It was nice of Josh’s to offer eggs and sausage scramble, but that had come only after I was full of cheerios, so I would have to make do with cheerios and one very sweet hacked cinnamon bun that is still reverberating in my back teeth.
Breakfast is such a controversial meal that it is even sometimes served for dinner, especially on a Sunday night for some reason. I think that qualifies breakfast as comfort food. In fact, whenever you watch a movie or a TV show where a father comes home after a long absence, he is always offering to make pancakes or some such comfortable breakfast for the children he has ignored for so long. It is a gesture of love and remembrance of better family-oriented days. I remember watching the animated movie Shrek where Eddie Murphy’s voice is used for Shrek’s donkey friend. At one point of denouement in the show, the donkey talks about going home to bed and waking up to make waffles in the morning. He says it with the same gusto that a father offers pancakes to his estranged children.
And then there is the concept of breakfast in bed. I’ve never been a fan of having a bed tray laid on my lap while I struggle to sit up in bed before getting the chance to relieve myself or brush my teeth. It is thought of as the ultimate indulgence, but unless you are a person who can literally not function until you have your morning coffee, I’m not sure I see the value in making your bed your dining table.
Culinary life always comes down to sweet or salty/savory and breakfast is no different. I am generally a savory guy who only defaults to sweet once in a while. Compare that to Kim who will opt for sweet any day and any time. The sweeter the better, hence the cinnamon buns. While I like a nicely buttered toast and a salt and peppered egg dish, I am not inclined to spice up breakfast the way many people do. Out here in Northern Mexico (a.k.a. Southern California) throwing salsa on your eggs is de rigueur. That takes me to the other end of the spectrum from the cinnamon buns and is not to my liking. I’m also not a fan of the hungry man’s breakfast of things like steak and eggs or Huevos Rancheros. That’s too much of a meal for me at breakfast. Similarly, the whole midwestern/southern biscuits and gravy (usually with sausage in it) is simply too rich to digest at 8am.
I think I have beat the breakfast topic with a stick at this point and I have nothing left to say except that all of this tells me that rather than the cinnamon roll recipe, perhaps it is I who am the breakfast hack.