Breakfast Recipes
When I was married my wife always slept later than I did and one of my joys during those years was making her breakfast in bed. She didn't have my problem with eating as soon as she woke up and so I'd get up around 8:00 and have coffee, read the paper and on some Sunday mornings (our only mornings together) I'd make pancakes or biscuits, some sausage, maybe an omelet or a Spanish tortilla patatas.
If I'd planned in advance I might include a glass of wine, a mimosa, or a Screwdriver in addition to the absolutely required coffee. Then I'd wake her with a kiss. She'd swat me. She'd grumble at having to get up at 10:00. She'd sit up all rumpled from sleep and glare at me. I'd kiss her again. She'd swat me again. Then we'd eat. This was the perfect breakfast.
We're told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day - which makes sense. After all by the time I get up in the morning I probably haven't had a meal in more than 12 hours. Even if I had a late snack the night before it was likely I ate a bowl of cereal or some crackers and cheese - at best I had a piece of cold, leftover pizza. By the time I get up my blood sugar is low and I've exhausted my ready reserves of protein and sugars.
These days my standard breakfast is a cup of yogurt with a spoonful of jam and a banana. This is about all I can handle in the first hour after getting up. When I went in to an office every day I'd sometimes stop at a fast food joint and get an egg and ham on a muffin or a croissant with cheese or a ham biscuit and by the time I got to the office I'd been up over an hour and felt like eating.
But I like the traditional big American breakfast of eggs, biscuits or toast, fried potatoes and bacon, ham, or sausage best at dinner time.
Nevertheless, some weekend mornings, when I have nothing on my plate (so to speak), I do get an urge for a genuine breakfast. Most recently I fried a couple of rashers of bacon, then fried a couple of eggs, made cheese grits, toasted some bread and pulled out some homemade blueberry jam my sister made. A fresh cup of coffee, All Things Considered: Weekend Edition on the radio, and the morning paper and I was in heaven.
This week some of us in About's food channel are focusing on breakfast. Even without the romance of a rumpled, grumpy wife who swats me, breakfast remains one of my favorite meals - even if I tend to do it as brunch or supper more than breakfast. So join in and participate in the reader response your on favorite breakfast. And please, include your favorite homegrown recipes - we want to know how to do it.
Some Sunday mornings, though, I didn't make breakfast. I just woke my wife with a kiss, got swatted, then… and we'd go out for breakfast after a communal shower. And if you want other ideas for breakfast, stay tuned to Cooking for Two the rest of this week and check out these ideas from other About.com food-lovers.