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Yes, I am one of those most annoying people – a "morning person" who wakes up bright and cheery, clucking about the chirping birds and hungry for the experiences of the day – and for breakfast.
Breakfast – le petit déjeuner, desayuno, in any language – is definitely one of the most pleasurable moments of the day. It is a ritual I have maintained throughout my life, while living and travelling in Canada, the Middle East, Europe and Asia.
For the past few years, my morning breakfast has become fixed and, perhaps, not unlike myself, increasingly rigid – unsweetened muesli, yogurt, caffé latte and fruit, accompanied by reading the morning news. And yes, I still cling like a dinosaur to my two daily newspapers, delivered with a Luddite thump on my steps every morning.
But, it has not always been so. I have experimented with many types of breakfast over the years. I recall the pale yellow corn flakes of my childhood, probably the best of the worst choices.
As a young teenager living in Turkey, my eyes and taste buds were awakened to the Turkish breakfasts of salty cheese, olives, delicious bread and great slices of juicy melons of various types and colour: pink ones, orange and the most delicious honey dew melons fit for a pasha.
Later in Switzerland, I gobbled great thick slabs of bread slathered in honey or Marmite at my boarding school, the only palatable item of the day and what saved us from returning home to our parents as scrawny specimens.
In University in Montpellier, France, my breakfast consisted of a coffee, often an espresso, a croissant and a Gitanes cigarette, certainly not a healthy choice, but I fancied myself an intellectual, inhaling the works of Gertrude Stein and Jean Paul Sartre and observing the life around me. Such an affected flâneuse was I. In Japan, I enjoyed miso soup, green tea and little rice snacks.
In Britain I could carry on all day fuelled by the "full English," a massive artery-clogging fry-up of sausages, bacon, beans, tomatoes, eggs, hash browns and – the crown jewel – blood pudding.
Spain offered crema catalana, a rare delight, sugary churros or simple bollos (rolls) and the best café con leche in the world. Finland and Sweden provided an array of cold cuts, boiled eggs, onions, open-faced sandwiches and, of course, a variety of pickled herring.
I recognize that most people do not love breakfast as I do. While travelling several years ago with my young daughter in France, she was content with a coffee or smoothie to go and stared at me in abject disappointment as I pleaded to sit quietly in a café enjoying my café crème, tartine and croissants. In my view, the real generational divide is over breakfast.
Please don't get me wrong; I enjoy as much as the next person meeting friends in a local coffee shop, with its ritual of a café latte, prepared by an over-educated barista. Drinks after work is also a wonderful way to connect. To see and be seen. But breakfast to me is an anchor, the privilege of time alone and a way to reset the clock and start afresh.
I recall a few breakfasts that were in a class of their own and enjoyed outdoors where the appetite is keenest. Once I had breakfast on the top of the Dent de Jaman in Switzerland. We left our boarding school in the middle of the night and hiked four hours by flashlight to be at the top of the mountain for dawn. I can still taste those hard boiled eggs and apples, eaten while perched amidst the alpine bees and flowers as dawn broke. Even my fear of heights could not diminish my enjoyment of that remarkable experience.
Many years later, I camped with three friends in the mouth of the ancient Nabatean tombs of Mada'in Saleh in Saudi Arabia. We shared a simple breakfast on a shabby oriental carpet outside those majestic reddish tombs: flat bread sprinkled with za'atar, a delicious mixture of thyme, sesame seeds and sumac, served with olives and fresh dates fallen from a date palm tree, all washed down with sweet tea. As lovely as this breakfast was, it ended abruptly when a scorpion scuttled across the carpet.
Many societies value breakfast and do it much better than North America's bland Egg McMuffins, toast and coffee.
A world of breakfasts beckons. I have yet to be introduced to shakshouka, an Israeli dish of poached eggs, the chilaquiles of Mexico, the curries of Myanmar or the kaya toast of Singapore. I understand Venezuelans do breakfast very well with their arepas, stuffed with a variety of tasty fillings, but given their political and economic unrest, I doubt I will be travelling any time soon to Caracas for breakfast.
Lately, the discussions about breakfast are usually earnest debates on school children eating nutritious meals so they are "ready to learn," which is of course very important. But these debates do not touch on the pure unmitigated pleasure of breaking the fast at the beginning of each day.
At breakfast, there is always hope!
Carol Sutherland-Brown lives in Ottawa.