GREASY CRUNCHY SUGAR

For someone who doesn't eat breakfast, I know an awful lot about it. It's kind of unavoidable, and almost everywhere most people will consider it normal to eat something. When one is barely awake. And both physical co-ordination, AND dexterity, are at their lowest ebb. My apartment mate, for instance, sometimes prepares a porkchop for herself, or flapjacks, or both. Or has a toasted bread product either with creamcheese and smoked fish, or jam, or Gouda cheese. Or a slice of cake.

At that hour I'm lying in bed listening to her clanging about in the kitchen and running water for a hot beverage and wondering if I should go pee.

She's of Cantonese stock. So wide awake and full of beans from the git-go.
It's one of those baffling survival instincts they have.
Ready to riot at the crack of dawn.


Many Cantonese people have congee and a fried dough stick for breakfast, plus something nibbly and savoury, though Hong Kong people tend towards noodle soup with Spam, a fried egg, toast, sometimes pork chops or fried chicken, and either milk tea or even hot Coca Cola with lemon.
Chive and pork dumplings are also a popular option.
Plus pork offal in noodle soup.
And bakery items.


Filipinos, especially in the Bay Area, tend toward good fun solid food. Their breakfasts, especially at eateries near the house, will be garlic fried rice and eggs (sinangag at itlog, silog for short), pork, garlic vinegar for sourness, and a big mug of hot chocolate.

Plus champorado, which is confusing; sticky rice chocolate porridge.

Bangsilog: egg, rice, and garlicky marinated fried milk fish (bangus).
Longsilog: egg, rice, and longanisa sausage.
Tapsilog: egg, rice, tapa (cured meat, barely fried).
Tocilog: egg, rice, and sugar cured fatty pork (tocino).

Itlog, in case you hadn't figured it out yet, is egg.

There will also be pandesal (buns) on the table, sometimes with coconut jam, bibingka (glutinous rice cake), puto (rice muffins) and as an absolute essential substance for Filipinos, almost mother's milk, vinegar.


A Japanese breakfast has rice, miso soup, grilled or fried fish, plus pickles (tsukemono), seaweed (nori), and nasty fermented soybeans (natto).
I cannot emphasize enough how acquired a taste that natto is.



BUT ELSEWHERE

Dutch breakfasts are boring and solid; bread, and whatever goes on top of bread. Ham, cheese, smoked meat. Eels. Plus coffee or tea. Or, if you are a student at the Technische Hooge School, instant noodles and last night's leftover Indonesian food bunged into the microwave. But the coffee is good. Not that American or English slop, but quality beans, and strong.


The English are berserk. Bacon, black pudding and fried tomatoes.


The French and other Europeans do coffee, cocoa, buns, and jam.


An American breakfast, of course, is an ugly disgusting nightmare. Often sugary cereal (why do you people eat that horrid stuff?), accompanied by fried bacon, fried pancakes, fried potatoes, fried egg, fried luncheon meat, fried sugar sausages, and pepto bismol. And donuts.

That said, a plate of rice, sausages and an egg, doused with hot sauce, is a great occasional lunch with the Sunday paper at a diner. Plus lots of coffee.
It absolutely requires a smoke afterwards.



For me personally, it's coffee, a cigarillo out on the front steps (because my apartment mate has not yet left for work) and eight pills. Remarkably the medication does not bother my digestion. I am made of stern stuff.
Reading the news at some point is essential.


Maybe in a few hours I'll have a snack.


Don't ever ask me to make you breakfast in bed.
Here's coffee, the paper, and a cigar.
Enjoy them quietly.




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