I hate breakfast. Back in 1996 I had an oral surgeon crack the front of my upper jaw back into place before the Novocaine set in. That was more fun than any breakfast I’ve ever had.
I’ve never been a big fan of breakfast, but now I just don’t like it. It’s not so much breakfast itself, it’s the foods that are generally involved.
I woke up this morning and started smoking a brisket. That’s why I’m wasting a post on breakfast foods – because I woke up early, cranked up some Jimi Hendrix and started toking on the Angus dooby. No, really, I have a slab of beef on the grill with a makeshift electric smoker (more on that in a later post). I decided to cook a standard American breakfast for the wife and myself: scrambled eggs, toast and bacon.
What’s with scrambled eggs? Chicken embryos that are quickly stirred into a yellow snot and heated to the point where they become a solid that have no signficant protein strands to make worthy of even chewing. And the taste – how would you describe the taste of scrambled eggs? Eggy? So we add salt and pepper so we can eat salty and peppery eggy nothingness that requires little more than a tongue and gums to pass through the food tube and into the stomach. I know there are dietary values of eggs but that’s not the point. I’m going on 30-years-old and I’m questioning the really important issues these days.
Toast? It’s really just a big crouton. Not much flavor there either if you’re using plain ol’ bread. Most people put butter on their toast. That takes so much time. And what if you just pulled a stick of butter from the freezer? How are you going to butter your toast? Now you have to chisel shards of butter into some sort of vessel so you can microwave it. You microwave your butter and now you have soup because it’s early in the morning and you don’t want to take the time to reprogram the microwave so it cooks at 24.67% power. Now you have to pour your salted milk fat soup onto your crouton so you have a soggy peice of charred bread that has the same consistency of your salty, peppery eggs.
What about jams and jellies? Some call it “preserves” – those are “preservatives” – so you have a soggy crouton with a sweet, gelatinous embalming fluid spread atop.
I cooked bacon. Now I like me some bacon. Bacon’s probably the best invention since the pig. But what is bacon? It’s pork belly. A fried-up swine’s digestive sack that’s 86.42% fat and pumped full of water, sodium nitrite and phosphates.
When I think of food, I don’t think of waffles, French toast, toast, bagels, pancakes, scones, fritters, scrambled eggs, Girl Scout cookies or Pine Sol.
For breakfast yesterday I had barbecued pulled pork butt, a beef rib and blackened chicken with a jerk barbecue sauce. Then I went outside and worked on my motorcycle. That’s breakfast in my book.
Brunch? Don’t get me started.