A few months back I encountered a gastro-crisis of sorts. See, I'd recently left my regular 9 to 5 job and because I was liberated from having a particular wake-up time, found myself arising from sleep at all hours, ranging from "morning" to "late morning" to "early afternoon." Ah, bliss. But I digress. I found that the irregular times at which I awoke created some confusion as to what I ought to eat first thing. Normally, I'm a big fan of breakfast and all of its attendant foodstuffs. Most regular days I'd have kicked things off with a yogurt or an omelet or a bagel egg and cheese for the days when I was a bitsy hung over. And of course there were also the times that sadly I skipped brek altogether and coasted onward to lunch, which provides a veritably endless array of food choices.
Now I was in a quandary: What if, say, I woke up at twelve or one but still wanted breakfast food? Certainly this is the premise that brunch was based on, but brunch is a special weekend meal. Even the leisure class doesn't indulge in brunch during the week. Ladies Who Brunch? No. I rest my case.
Even more troubling were the times when I arose BEFORE noon and found my meal options limited by the understanding that until noon, only breakfast foods were, loosely speaking, allowed. I mean of course I KNOW that I'm an adult and I could've eaten anything I damn well chose, but for some reason . . . for some strange reason, breakfast seemed to have these unspoken rules that are blindly followed. Perhaps that's why when the rules of breakfast are flouted, like say when you eat cold pizza for breakfast, or better yet, when you eat "breakfast for dinner," the act always seems like some delicious, naughty transgression.
Why are there so many rules and regulations regarding the breakfast meal? Is it because, as we're taught from the time we can swallow cream of wheat that it's 'the most important meal of the day'? Why does such staunchly protected ritual surround this meal, when all bets are off for lunch or dinner?
What really got me thinking is the fact that if you're more of a savory than a sweet person, the only options you have for breakfast are eggs and egg-based concoctions. Sure you could have toast or cheese grits or hash browns, but I'm talking the main even here. If you don't feel like eating an omelet or cream cheese on a bagel, what, really does that leave you?
It is my goal to inquire into the codified world of the breakfast meal -- to understand its rules and deviations, to explore the culturally and regionally specific foods that inhabit the breakfast spectrum, and to, whenever possible, document my own breakfast eating as a sort of social experiment. And also to make sense of the various and sundry morning and breakfast related idioms that pepper our every day speech. The early bird gets the worm, and half off the breakfast buffett at Big Boy.
