It’s the great breakfast debate: Should breakfast be comprised of only “breakfast” foods - or can it be any food?
Myself (Ken) and Jason Carr both happened to cover the topic -- with opposing views -- in different Local 4 newsletters this week. (Take the poll at the bottom!)
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In the Morning Report Newsletter today, I (Ken) wrote about a pro-breakfast breakfast. Here’s some of that:
There are two types of people in this world: People who like breakfast at any time of the day -- and people who are wrong.
Breakfast is the best meal of the day, hands down. It’s undefeated in the meal world. And it’s a great option for any meal of the day, including dinner.
It doesn’t work the other way around. You can’t eat a burger for breakfast. You can’t have lasagna for breakfast. It just isn’t right!
So grab the eggs, shred some potatoes and throw the toast in the toaster -- it’s breakfast for dinner tonight!
In the Live in the D Newsletter, also today, Jason Carr recalled his recent trip to Mexico and suggested breakfast get a big change. Here’s what he wrote:
Roast beef with gravy for breakfast is a thing? Or it’s not. I don’t know. Help!
Ok so… I know about the English and their proper breakfast. It’s like eggs and beans and dry toast and bangers and mash and - just a plate full of random food stuff. And then there’s Americans... and our eggs and bacon, hash browns and toast, omelettes, oatmeal, uh… Carnation instant breakfast powder - whatever.
But recently, I dined abroad (fancy speak for eating at an all-inclusive buffet in Mexico) and I might never be the same. Were there beans? Yes. Tamales? Yes. Chorizo? Yes. But those are to be expected. I mean, you’re not standing there plate in hand going, “chorizo at a Mexican buffet at breakfast?! What the heck!”
What I’m getting at is the UNexpected. Seafood soup (not gumbo—squid, shrimp and clams in broth), pork loin, an entire side of roast beef like Sign of the Beefcarver (only you’re the carver and there’s no chef’s hat for you to wear). Also, beef in red… sauce? (hard to explain), shredded spicy chicken, deli-style cold cuts (also saw this as a morning staple in Spain), and all manner of potato incarnations instead of just hash browns.
One morning my first plate looked like something a first grader would assemble if all the different entrees and sides were pure candy. Somehow I ended up with two slices of deli pastrami, peach halves in fruit cocktail sauce, pineapple chunks, French toast (that definitely had granulated sugar inside and was insanely good), cheese quesadillas, and bacon. Then came a bowl of Choco Krispies. Then the aforementioned beef in red sauce/meat juices/oil (still hard to explain), grapes and eggs over easy.
Another morning it was eggs over easy, potatoes and those medium rare roast beef carvings with gravy. And more pineapple. And the most delicious fresh-squeezed orange juice in the history of mankind.
It sounds nutso I know. Or at the very least, weird. I get it. But until you’ve broken open your egg yolks, and mushed the meat and potatoes all around in the yolk and the gravy, you simply haven’t lived. I mean, no one thinks twice about steak and eggs, right? Now add some fruit and maybe something spicy on the side and - voila! - breakfast reinvented!
By the way, I’m writing this blog while simultaneously grieving over the end of my Mexican holiday AND being ravenously hungry. So there’s that.
To conclude, I think we need to open up breakfast. We need to be more like the English with their weird plate of incongruity AND the sheer lunacy of a Mexican breakfast buffet. Live a little, people! Yesterday’s gone! Bring on the seafood soup!
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