Monday, January 13, 2014

The MISSING meal!!



After a Friday and Saturday of gloomy rain and an odd severe thunderstorm warning thrown in, we awoke yesterday pleased to see the sun illuminating a relatively calm river.  Beautiful morning.  With (for once) not much pressing, we had a leisurely breakfast of eggs and bacon.  If we are able, my usual ritual of a Sunday morning is play some classical music, have some food, coffee, and read (generally in order) the Washington Post magazine (briefly looking at Date Lab) and the Tom Sietsema restaurant review (this week he handed out a one and a half star rating to “Bluejacket”), and then the Sports section, usually the Travel section, and then the Arts.

Anyway, I got to musing on Breakfast.  Although MFO usually eats something every morning, I usually don’t, and yes I know it’s the most important meal of the day, yadda yadda.  I suspect the vast majority of the people either skip, or just do a grab and go (I’m lovin’ it) or hit a cart on the run, and off to school/work/business, etc.

Readers will remember (painfully, perhaps) that besides dinner, I relatively often extol the pleasures of “lunch” as an oasis in the whirlwind of a day, a time to reboot the mind perhaps.  And we’re talking here about an at least an hour, sit down, nice tablecloth, china and glass, not money in a slot or another fast food experience.  Excuse me, that term is no longer in vogue; I should say “quick service” food.  So for me, breakfast is generally a forgotten/missing meal.

However, comma, like lunch, breakfast can hold a special charm, and probably I’m speaking of Sunday here in general.  You’re fresh, probably feel the best you will feel all day (with apologies to the famous Dean Martin quote: “I feel sorry for…etc.”), and the cares of the world have not yet settled on your shoulders.  So it is a great time to linger, enjoy maybe some special food, perhaps a glass of bubbly or a mimosa, and generally slide yourself into the rest of the day.  It’s a chance to have food that you probably wouldn’t eat at other times of the day, and can have something special.  One of my favorite books kind of characterizes it.



Even though I seldom take time to make the recipes contained therein,  just the photos are worth lingering over.. you could make this if you wanted to…



And while preparing it yourself does have a certain amount of satisfaction, I find that a lot of my memorable breakfasts are taken “out”.  Probably my most cherished memories of breakfast are those I have had at the Hotel Del Coronado near San Diego.  Enjoying the soft California morning weather, seated outside overlooking the ocean and the magnificent “Del” is so nice. I have never had bad service, the food is always good



(From a 2010 Visit)

Another breakfast experience I always remember (keys? no; breakfasts? Yes!) is from the “pre-MFO” days when I was living alone here in Pax before she joined me, which means late ‘90s.  1990’s lest there be any confusion…  Generally we were working six days a week on the Hornet test  program, so Sunday was my only respite from the rigors of flight test.  Being a creature of habit, during those days I would buy a (Sunday) Washington Post, and go to the Roost.  In those days, they still had tablecloths, glasses, and nice servers. I could usually find a relatively secluded table in a bay near the window and spread out.  And, I would ALWAYS have the fried chicken livers.  I don’t remember if they came with eggs or not, but I do remember the crispy crunch of the coating followed by the creamy warm liver interior.  Wonderful.. and then it was the Phyllis Richman restaurant reviews.

And probably I should mention that if you feel like it, a special type of breakfast can still be had (I hope) at our local “Linda’s Cafe”.  It is the perfect example of the genre of the greasy spoon breakfast (like St. James Pub USED to be for lunch).  Red checkered oilcloth table coverings, water in a tumbler, white board menu besides the regular one, red basket of “stuff” in the middle of the table, ads on the placemats, the whole gamut.  The food follows suit, greasy fried eggs, mammoth omelets, sausage patties, and yes, you can even get scrapple.  Oh yeah and that basket of dryish toasted bread coated with (?) and the little tubs of Smucker’s grape or strawberry jelly.  Heavy china coffee mugs…  Perfect stuff.  Something to enjoy once in a while (and I am NOT being sarcastic)

So there you have it, a little trip down my memory lane for “petit déjeuner” which would be a whole other entry..once again, France has it…

And I guess maybe any treatment of the first meal of the day would be incomplete without a mention of the ubiquitous “Sunday Brunch Buffet” so common these days, which can be anywhere from simple to a major production.  Let me say right up front, this is highly subjective, so it only reflects my personal feelings and I won’t criticize anybody for enjoying their buffets.  First of all, I do not like buffets for any meal. Period. If I am paying money to go out to eat, I don’t want to serve myself from tubs, I want it brought to me on a plate, presumably prepared to order, not held over Sterno for hours.  Yes, there is a chance for great variety, but I think breakfast foods in particular suffer from sitting.  Bacon grease congeals, eggs dry out, sausages harden, French toast gets doughy and so on.   Again, that’s only my personal opinion.  Obviously some places do take care.  It’s just me.

And I am not quite sure what to say about


DF??? (B?)

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