“It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious”
Alfred North Whitehead, “Science and the Modern World”
Despite my lack of recent blogging, I’m not dead, though I am slightly closer to death than usual on account of a cold that won’t go away (before you accuse me of being a wuss, notice that I did say “slightly”).
Anyhow, enough on my health, let’s talk about my dietary quirks. I don’t like breakfast cereal. I haven’t consumed cereal for breakfast on a regular basis since I lived at home. For me, breakfast is usually orange juice, yogurt, and maybe a banana or a bagel.
In the morning, when my systems are still coming online and I am shaking off that feeling of dying that goes along with waking from sleep (I understand most people drink coffee, but in my case the hyperactive cure is worse than the disease), I am picky about what I eat. The idea of sitting down to a bowl of wheaty blobs slowly turing to paste in a pool of milk made increasingly lumpy by little cereal fragments first thing in the morning is enough to turn my stomach inside out and make me want to crawl back under the covers.
Other people eat cereal, and apparently derive some benefit from the experience. At least, that’s what I was thinking while I detoured down the cereal aisle at the grocery store the other day. By the time I’d reached the end I’d picked up a box of brown sugar frosted mini wheats and resolved to give them a try. Try them I did, that evening before bed. They still dissolved in the milk in that awful way cereal does, but I found, with my body awake and thus my constitution fully up to the task, I didn’t mind as much. I was able to ignore the texture and focus on the taste. I think I might make a habit of eating breakfast in the evening when I am able to enjoy it. I wonder why they market cereal as a breakfast food…
I wonder if, with this blog post about breakfast, I have strayed into that murky realm of blogging about the mundane details of my life that no one cares about. If so, dear reader, I apologize.
Reminds me of one of those New Online Trends(tm) that Ric Romero will be reporting on in a few years: video blogging. I’m not talking about polished efforts like Ze Frank’s, but rather the semi-stream of consciousness 10 minute webcam soliloquy popularized by YouTube. Apparently there is a vibrant community of people on YouTube discussing all sorts of interesting topics by posting monologues to each-other. I say apparently because I’ve never really managed to sit through one, they are far too painful. People speak much more slowly than I can read. If you think reading drivel is bad, try listening to it word… by… word… with… ah… none… of…. the… ah… ums… and… ah’s… removed.
What is interesting about this phenomenon is that people aren’t really talking to each other, they are making short speeches to each other. The format is more like a debate than a conversation. Perhaps, even as YouTube and its ilk bring about the death of the written word, there will be a corresponding resurgence of oratory?
In the mean time, here’s an appropriate episode of the comic called “Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal”.
in my mind, frosted mini wheats are among the best cereals…
i too have been one to eat cereal at non-morning times, and it reminds me of my common pet peeve about north-american breakfast: it is very limited in its style. sweet cereal or pancakes or other grain based, or egg-cheese-veggie-meat things. basically an unusual set of foods eaten only at breakfast, and breakfast will be only these foods…
i love to depart from this by breaking fast some mornings with cold pizza (a seriously underrated breakfast) or cold curry from the night before (particularly thai massaman curry).
I often go the cold pizza route when I’ve ordered pizza the night before, but as I usually get pizza on the weekends and thus sleep until noon the next day, I’m not sure that entirely counts.
As to the homogeneity of the North American breakfast: I know when I wake up early I’m extremely picky and won’t eat things I’d happily eat at other times. Perhaps I’m not alone?
a credible theory. i’ve learned not to count out north american fussyness.
makes me think that if i had a brunch restaurant, i would have cold pizza on the menu…
also an interesting breakfast: rancher’s eggs (they are traditionally called by the same name in spanish, but i’d mangle it). i’ve made them by putting a bunch of salsa in a pot, brought to a boil, then put a raw, unbeaten egg into a little well in the salsa. cover the pot and reduce to a simmer. gotta love eggs poached in nontraditional liquids. standard pasta sauce might be good, or perhaps even curry, and not even for breakfast… just because.
I haven’t eaten cereal in eons either…when I was a kid I ate honey combs, fruit loops, etc. but never anything ridiculous like lucky charms or count chocula. When I was about ten I graduated to honey bunches of oats, oatmeal crisp, mini wheats….but I never could go in the complete opposite direction, and eat cheerios or corn flakes without any sugar. In high school I had stomach problems in the morning that were solved by me cutting out breakfast in the morning; a month later I started eating breakfast again, but not cereal. I only just recently bought some Special K.
Mini wheats are tricky, because you want the frosting to soften up, but you don’t want them to get mushy and dissolve. There’s a fairly small time window where eating them is appetizing.