I’m having a crisis. You say: “What is it noo?” What it is noo, madam, is breakfast. Yes, the most important meal of the day, though an influential health lobby advises going without if you want to lose weight.
That’s possibly true, the idea being that you’re extending the hours of fasting already racked up inadvertently in sleep. On the other hand, a part of me thinks some folk just enjoy sucking all the joy out of life.
Generally speaking, it’s the thought of breakfast that gets me up in the morning, even if there isn’t much to it these days. I used to eat huge bowls of cereal, often as many as three a day (two at breakfast and one at supper-time), little knowing how stuffed with sugar they were.
In retrospect, the title “Sugar Puffs” should have been my first clue. I think I just thought: “Puffs? That sounds right healthy.” But, even when a sense of responsibility started to set in and I switched to muesli, it was revealed that they’d rammed that with sugar too and, when they did produce sugar-free versions, folk said the dried fruits weren’t much better. You couldn’t win.
So toast it is then. Perhaps, on a rare day, one might have an egg with it, though that was easier in the past when eggs took three minutes to boil. Today, for some reason, they take two hours.
This morning, I’ve Just had a roll halved and toasted with plant-based margarine. Tasty enough but, by mid-morning, hunger pangs will impel me to eat several sausage rolls and perhaps a cheeky wee bridie.
The trouble with toasters is that they’re temperamental. I’ve never met one you could trust. Sometimes, they appear to go on strike, barely toasting at all. At other times, they incinerate everything within a two-yard radius, singe your beard and set fire to your curtains.
Of course, one needn’t toast a roll, but toastie things are always cosier. I hate to say it, because even I suspect I’m talking tripe, but I’m sure morning rolls in particular aren’t the same these days, particularly the packet ones that never taste right. I think they’re all, packeted or otherwise, full of stuff that makes them last longer.
For many years, I had porridge in the morning but, one day, I just couldn’t take it any more for some reason. I think it ended up too rammed with additions like seeds, raisins, honey, pies and Mars Bars. I still have it occasionally, particularly when I can add berries from the garden, but there’s something gloopy about the arrangement that my body came to deplore.
So, lastly, we come to the fry-up. Oh, guilty pleasure! Haven’t had one for ages. Generally, I like to keep them as a treat reserved for B&Bs, part of the whole pleasurable experience of eating in a tall-ceilinged dining room, with napkins to hand and a selection of marmalades in wee glass bowls. I love a good old-fashioned B&B, me!
And someone else does all the cooking! I don’t know how they do poached eggs so well. Always been a bit beyond me. Well, I’ve only gone and made myself hungry now. Yet another way in which I’m like one of Tolkien’s Hobbits: I have two breakfasts.
