Coffee Breakfast

Here is a photograph, taken over the holiday weekend, featuring my fantastic breakfast. If I had to rank meals in order of how excited they make me, breakfast would be number one. I don't really know how to rank lunch and dinner, because, eh, they're not breakfast.

The late night bowl of ice cream however, rates right up there with breakfast.

The most important thing about a really good breakfast is that it takes place in a diner. I give extra points for diners that serve breakfast all day long, because my disappointment at being told that, "we're no longer serving breakfast but you can have lunch" is a very sad thing to behold. Once I even broke into tears.

I guess I cry easily.

But back to breakfast. You can see that I had eggs (over medium), hash browns, three or four strips of bacon (it's a generous diner), hot chocolate (since I'm off the coffee), and yes, three blueberry pancakes. When I asked if I could substitute regular pancakes for blueberry pancakes (I guess it goes without saying that I'm one of those restaurant patrons who will always ask for some sort of substitution) the waitress hemmed and hawed and then said, "Well, blueberries are expensive, so it'll be 3 dollars extra."

Of course I said, "Oh that's fine! Bring on the blueberries!"

You can make good breakfasts at home, but it's not the same. Unless you happen to live with a short order cook, asking for a dozen combinations of breakfast food is just bad form and will usually lead to the cook grumbling about how she/he is not a chef and will only make one thing for breakfast.

Breakfast at our house usually consists of me tossing four boxes of cereal on the table, some bowls and spoons, and a fair amount of yelling at my children because they have to get up and get dressed NOW otherwise we will be late for school and work and please don't forget to brush your teeth and rinse the milk out of your cereal bowl.

But oh, diners. You can order eggs and grits and six pieces of sausage. Or pancakes with hash browns and scrambled eggs and bacon, but not cooked too stiff, could you make the bacon cooked just until the bacon is a little bit limp?