A cooked breakfast, or cereal?
August 7, 2009 (Friday)
They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Do you eat breakfast? If so, what do you usually have for the meal?
When our children were growing up, we had bacon and eggs for breakfast on school days. We cooked a dozen eggs and a pound of bacon every morning. Usually we had toast with that but sometimes we had biscuits. Milk rounded out the morning routine.
As the children grew up, we gradually made a move toward cereal.
Many people eat cereal. They can choose from a great variety of different kinds. I go to the store these days and am always impressed by the many different kinds of cereals on the shelves. I may be wrong, but I don’t think there used to be so many, like when I was just a kid. Back then we had oatmeal, and sometimes grits. These were our hot cereals.
The cold cereals were few in number on the grocery shelves. As I recall, they were either “Kellogg” or “Post.” The main ones I remember were Post Toasties, Wheaties (“breakfast of champions”), sold by “Jack Armstrong, the all-American boy,” and Grape Nuts. These were followed at some point with Grape Nuts Flakes, and somewhere along the way we started hearing about Kix (“shot from guns”). And the exciting cereal, although not very filling, was Rice Krispies with its “snap, crackle and pop.”
Around 1940, a free box of a new kind of cereal, “Quaker Oaties,” was delivered to every home in our neighborhood, and, I suppose, to every home in Houston, and perhaps beyond. But I don’t think that cereal hung around very long.
Maybe you prefer donuts, cinnamon rolls or just plain toast. Some folks drink a pre-packaged liquid meal. There are a lot of people who pass up food altogether in the morning. So be it.
What did you have this morning? A healthy, nutritious meal, a quick cup of coffee, or maybe you pulled down the old faithful box of cereal, added milk, and crunched your way to a great day. What did I have, you ask? I’ll never tell.