What we Talk About When We Talk About Breakfast

As if the pending election news and impeachment hearings aren't enough, the sustainable food movement has now forced me to reconsider the very fundamentals of traditional meal priorities.  Contradictory to everything our mothers assured us (and we in turn indoctrinated our kids) about nutrition, it seems breakfast is losing ground as a frontrunner.

I grew up in the 1950's with cereal boxes as the morning centerpiece on a black formica deco table, sitting in a Breuer-style chair upholstered in indestructible woven yellow vinyl.  We read the box text over and over  while we shoveled in the contents, motivated by the promise of some small toy at the bottom.  Tony the Tiger-- the athletes and cartoon heroes... My mother read the paper next to me with first a cigarette and coffee,  then a single warmed doughnut.  My Dad ate toasted buttered Italian bread with 'the boys' at a Trattoria near Grand Central Station and drank mugs of dark roast.  It set them up for an energetic workday.

As a teenager, I discovered hot cereal and Wheatena... I had to get up early to walk the dogs, and cooked myself a hearty breakfast with melted butter and cream.  The box looks nostalgically identical today on the supermarket shelf but nothing tastes the way it did then-- it was just so good...

In college I had instant Cream of Wheat and electric-kettle boiled eggs.  Someone was gifted the first Mister Coffee machine which improved our lives.  Among the Ivy League boys I dated initially was a privileged one who introduced me to Sunday Eggs Benedict and Vodka Screwdrivers at a local French restaurant.  He also showed me how to produce wonderful coffee with a Chemex beaker and filters.  There was French Roast-- Kona, Jamaican Mountain... it was a new world.

My first gallery job in New York was on 69th Street.  There was one delicatessen on Madison.  One.  They provided a buttered roll and coffee for something like 50 cents.  I was poor-- a student-- and this was a ritual... I traded bus fare for morning food and walked to work.  Those were sacred days... things happened... I could smell sweet butter on my fingers as I typed and people like Andy Warhol came through the door.

When I was pregnant I craved McDonald's eggs and biscuits.  I ate multiple orders and fantasized about them at 5 AM.  As a mother, breakfast was important-- cereal, pancakes... my son was an athlete.. I tried hard to force something on him at 6:30 AM and also signed him up for free BOE morning meals.

While my son was in school, I took on extra jobs.  Once, to earn the extra cash to pay for a double bass, I painted kitchens for a contractor; I learned how to carefully finish cabinets.  My 'boss' flirted inappropriately with me... but brought the best mandarin orange muffins every morning from a place called Petak's.  I can still taste these-- how I collected any stray crumbs from the brown bag.  One day my 'boss' pulled me into a bedroom and asked me to paint his dick.  That was the end of the muffins.

Since middle age, I've been a slacker musician-- making my own schedule according to gig ETA's... staying up nights... I abused Starbucks for a while, and traded morning meals for massive amounts of coffee.  Milk, for adults, is not a priority.  On the days I'm awake early, I see most of the world brown-bagging bagels, biscuit sandwiches, Whole Foods hearty oats options... yoghurts.  Even Taco Bell has pre-11 AM specials.  While I shun food until I'm fully awake, I love the sense of breakfast-- the human coffee-and-muffin line, the scent of croissants.

Recently I bought a box of cornflakes.  They were god-awful... they tasted medicinal and synthetic.  I haven't found a muffin that compares to those Petak masterpieces from the 1990's.  I've binged on pancakes while on the road and don't have much desire except occasionally a hotel buffet of scrambled eggs somewhere feels nostalgic.  I remember having breakfast with Lou Reed in Amsterdam in a darkened dining hall...  trying to order an omelette with my first husband in Times Square where we were refused service because of his dreadlocks.

So now even Dr. Oz has conceded that the whole culture of breakfast is a hoax.  The quality of contemporary cornflakes made it feel less sad, but for those of us who grew up in the 1950's-- and my own father came from farm country where they ate leftover popped corn with milk in bowls-- this requires something of a cultural reset.  Of course I begin to suspect there is some marketing or financial reason for the 'demilitarization' of breakfast.  Steering us away from the cereal box heroes and milk-carton tragedies, somehow aiding the coffee culture to fill some nutritional vacuum and eventually sell more lunch options... to increase morning productivity by taking away the line-waiting and desk-eating.  I'm not sure.

I do know that no 2020 Wheatena comes close to the stuff I cooked in the 60's; no butter or cream has the fragrance of the small glass bottles and tubs of my school years.  And the muffins-- well, I am jaded now, and poor-- food stamps cannot buy a croissant on Spring Street.  Even bagels are a disappointment.  Every now and again I walk through Zabar's on Third Ave. and they are giving out
chunks of crumbcake or bread.  I am reminded that, unlike  Les Miserables, there is a hierarchy-- it is not simply a loaf of bread-- but there is a class system of food.  Maybe breakfast is simply too pedestrian and proletarian for our current food-fad and weight-obsessed culture.  Still, I can't imagine those workers in the old photos, sitting astride steel beams above the city with their bags open and their thermoses steaming hot.. without a hearty morning meal.  I am quite sure that drive-ins and truck-stops will be forever serving bacon and eggs-over-- French Toast, hotcakes, whatever.  For the rest-- the Dr. Oz followers and the Trump voters-- well, let them have their noontime cake.  Or, as some of the senators were served this week-- a glass of milk.

I will forever remember the funky diners with the taped-up vinyl booths where we sat smoking and talking after gigs in the 1970's until the sun came up and the early birds-- especially the loners and bachelors--  came to start their day... where the posted menu in the window, like a loyal friend, announced in bold red italics 'Breakfast All Day!'