Breakfast thoughts
Monday, January 16th, 2006 10:09 amLittle packets of instant oatmeal (especially maple & brown sugar) remind me of camping trips with my parents, sitting in the motor home looking out at the trees of wherever we were. Mom & Dad fixing their coffee, pulling out maps, deciding what we would do today. Or maybe just fixing the coffee, planning to spend the day relaxing at the campsite, reading magazines, doing cross-stitch or macrame, playing darts with the board they carried everywhere. Instant grits bring up the same memories.
Plain rolled oats, however, bring no particular memories. They're just a cheap and filling food. To make plain oatmeal interesting, you have to add things to it, fruit or peanut butter or something. It's too much like work.
Dry cereal is a typical morning food. Eat a bowl of cereal, a piece or two of fruit, then get dressed and go off to school. Though "typical" sounds boring, there's nothing wrong with the typical things. I've got a weakness for fancier cereals, ones with dried bananas or cranberries and clusters of rolled oats. But Grape Nuts are good too, if you've got good amber honey to trickle into the bowl.
On certain weekend mornings growing up: Pancakes! My father had an old cookbook full of a variety of pancake recipes. What would this week's pancakes be? Blueberry pancakes, buttermilk pancakes, banana pancakes, buckwheat pancakes, whole wheat pancakes? What kind of syrup do we have? Store-bought maple-flavored syrup, real New York maple syrup given to us by my brother, Karo corn syrup, some funky flavored syrup that sounded like a good idea at the time, blackstrap molasses? Sometimes Dad would get out the food colorings. We might have green pancakes and ham. Any color was good except blue (there are no blue foods).
When I was small, I was also curious. Before my parents woke up on Saturdays, while the cartoons were playing on TV, I'd go into the kitchen cabinets, get out the milk, protein supplement, and a wide variety of flavorings, and make my own breakfast. Since I also liked to experiment with food colorings, I would also usually make a big mess as well. After a while, my parents banned me from playing with the food colorings and flavorings on Saturday mornings.
Plain rolled oats, however, bring no particular memories. They're just a cheap and filling food. To make plain oatmeal interesting, you have to add things to it, fruit or peanut butter or something. It's too much like work.
Dry cereal is a typical morning food. Eat a bowl of cereal, a piece or two of fruit, then get dressed and go off to school. Though "typical" sounds boring, there's nothing wrong with the typical things. I've got a weakness for fancier cereals, ones with dried bananas or cranberries and clusters of rolled oats. But Grape Nuts are good too, if you've got good amber honey to trickle into the bowl.
On certain weekend mornings growing up: Pancakes! My father had an old cookbook full of a variety of pancake recipes. What would this week's pancakes be? Blueberry pancakes, buttermilk pancakes, banana pancakes, buckwheat pancakes, whole wheat pancakes? What kind of syrup do we have? Store-bought maple-flavored syrup, real New York maple syrup given to us by my brother, Karo corn syrup, some funky flavored syrup that sounded like a good idea at the time, blackstrap molasses? Sometimes Dad would get out the food colorings. We might have green pancakes and ham. Any color was good except blue (there are no blue foods).
When I was small, I was also curious. Before my parents woke up on Saturdays, while the cartoons were playing on TV, I'd go into the kitchen cabinets, get out the milk, protein supplement, and a wide variety of flavorings, and make my own breakfast. Since I also liked to experiment with food colorings, I would also usually make a big mess as well. After a while, my parents banned me from playing with the food colorings and flavorings on Saturday mornings.
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