I’m not sure what it is about breakfast that has such a vice grip on our collective human psyches. Isn’t it just another meal?
Not so much.
The fact is that how and what a person eats for breakfast speaks volumes—not only about that person, but about the culture in which they exist. Breakfast is a delicious memory creator; it’s deeply personal and often comforting. It can sometimes be erratic, and often erotic. It defines who we are: what one nation eats for breakfast another may only ever eat for dinner, like miso soup, or pho, or smoked fish. What we eat first thing in the morning can be a metaphor for just how willing we are to break the rules: after all, wasn’t it M.F.K. Fisher who enjoyed a glass of white vermouth for breakfast every once in a while, just because she could?
However and wherever we eat breakfast, there is no doubt: it is a deeply evocative meal. We can be sent careening headlong into fits of delicious swooning at the mere mention of an early morning repast that marked the beginning of a new relationship, or a return home, or familial safety, or a basic need for peaceful sustenance.
Every week, Poor Man’s Feast will be dedicating a column to this most important meal of the day. Contributing their tales (and recipes) will be familiar names, but also everyday readers who, like you, might define gustatory perfection as a quiet sit-down in an empty diner, head down over a plate of eggs and bacon and the local newspaper.
The stories will be eye-opening.
