About Breakfast

Here we go, another Presidential election year and you may be around the kitchen table at night discussing what needs fixing. How about we start with breakfast?

My wife and I are just off the road from a drive to Louisville to visit our son who works there in the hotel business. We set off the day after Christmas in a car loaded with valuables for his apartment and one-year-old puppy, Huckleberry.

A road trip with Huckleberry is a column by itself. The headline might be “Pup Cup,” the name Starbucks gives to the small container of whipped cream it hands out at the drive-through that dispatches in every direction once it reaches the dog’s nose. You have to be into that much dog excitement to agree a storm of whipped cream is worth it. An example would be the young man who gleefully handed us the pup cup before sunrise one morning as we struggled to keep Huck from leaping out the driver’s window. “This is the reason I work here!” he said, Huckleberry howling in the background.

I wish I was as moved by our own breakfast experiences. What happened to that important part of the day? It is a rhetorical question. The demise of breakfast happened a long time ago. I do not want to spin this sociologically—two working parents, early morning bus stops, everybody on the go—or nutritionally: I am not interested in how many essential vitamins and minerals you can squeeze from a pouch into your mouth. Unless you are orbiting in space without access to a stove.

This is a quality issue. And mostly, it regards how to cook an egg.

I stopped ordering scrambled eggs at restaurants, including good ones, long ago. Invariably— as in, every case, every occasion—scrambled eggs come out overcooked and rubbery, sometimes flecked with specs of brown. I understand some people like eggs this way, the way Mom made. Or Grandma. Some people like steak well done. My dear, late father-in-law was one, a true Yankee. As a youth, he hunted squirrel and possum, cooked, and ate them in order to not go hungry. He insisted I cook his steak until I could scrape the grill clean with it. I understand. To each their own. Except these days, there is no available option for a gently scrambled egg, rich and velvety with butter. It has gone off the market. It is no longer for sale.

A poached egg should feature a firm white wrapped around a creamy yolk (hint: to achieve consistent results, you must use a pot with gently boiling water deep enough for the yolk to drop through the white), and if it arrives in a small dish, it should not be sitting in a puddle of water. This is the breakfast thought of the day: a poached egg should not be served in a bath of tepid, gray water. The universal breakfast equation will be brought closer to balance if we simply eliminate water from a dish of poached eggs. Use a slotted spoon. Reach for a sheet of paper towel.

I will say that I enjoy a three-egg omelet, cooked on a griddle, folded into thirds, with veg, ham, and cheese. This is my go-to if I am traveling and stop at a diner. The requirement is American cheese, which is applied in thin squares, will melt uniformly, and offset the inevitable dry eggs. Other cheeses, pre-shredded from a bag, tend to be unevenly distributed by busy cooks, and congeal in clumps. Besides, bagged cheeses have no flavor, cheddar or otherwise. Go for texture. 

At each hotel, the breakfast buffet was dominated by the make-your-own-waffle iron. It is a triumph of fun over (real) food. Yes, the kids luv ‘em, slathered in butter and “golden” corn syrup. But submerge one of those waffles in water and you will understand why everyone is hungry again in an hour. 

This is more-or-less a friendly column that steers clear of sharp criticism, which I am not qualified to offer in most regards. Breakfast is an exception. I do not wish to throw any hotel brands under the bus—my son’s included (who was brought up a breakfast snob and is tormented by their offering)—but it does not matter, pick any of them. The pretense of a decent breakfast is gone. Vanished. Today, you are invited to nuke your plastic-wrapped breakfast sandwich, carry it to your table with coffee, or tea, crunchy green and orange melon squares, maybe yogurt, plastic fork, spoon, knife, and listen to Good Morning America.

What a way to start the day. 

The drive to and from Louisville is two days for us. We left New Year’s Eve, got home late afternoon New Year’s Day. As previous owners of retail businesses, we are in the habit of thanking people for working weekends and holidays, in markets, at restaurants, wherever. “Hey, thanks for working Sunday,” we’ll say. We made a couple of incidental stops New Year’s Day. One was a pet store. We needed something else for Huckleberry to chew on after he ate the arm rest in the back of the Subaru. 

“Thanks for working New Year’s,” I said to the woman at the counter, who scowled and answered that she only got two days off a year. Ouch.

We stopped later at a fun-looking store that advertised lunch. There was a large bell at the front, the sort you ring for service. But a big one, a caricature of the device. My wife chirped, “What a fun bell!”

“I hate that bell,” the guy at the counter said. Ouch.

What needs fixing? Start with breakfast.

(Published in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, January 9, 2024)