The Perfect Breakfast, Among Other Things
I will not apologize for the horrible pun I buried in the final paragraph.
Since no one likes to wait the next sentence will consist entirely of what goes into a perfect breakfast. Two eggs, a meat, coffee, orange juice, two pancakes, toast, and hash browns. A more perfect breakfast does not exist. Your fancy brunch places may sling Burnt Ends Brisket Hash, Spanish Mackerel Scramble, or Chorizo Eggs Benedict, but these dishes can never reach the levels of The Perfect Breakfast. Don’t get me wrong, fancy brunch places provide wonderful palate-altering world-changing meals. If I had more money, I’d get the lox plate at Lula Café at least once a week. However, I am not the scion of a railroad baron, so I get the lox plate twice a year and have to live with it. But before this goes off the rails, I should mention that the inequities of capitalism are not the focus of this article, surprisingly enough. The power of The Perfect Breakfast lies not in some essential class character of hash browns but in the adaptability of its dishes.
Take pancakes for example. You like sweet stuff? Throw some syrup on those bad boys. Make them chocolate chip pancakes. Savory pancakes more up your alley? Bourbon Pecan pancakes will rock your word. Not a syrup fan? Eat them with butter, or by themselves. Hell, turn them into crepes. Wrap one around a slice of bacon and use it to cut the saltiness of the bacon. It’s up to you. Let the pancake work for you,
Similar case for the toast. Add jelly for sweetness or leave off the preserves and turn it into a tranche for wiping up the egg. Or just add butter and eat it plain. Sourdough, wheat, white, and English muffin? You can choose whatever you want. Similarly, hash browns also a playground for varying tastes. A vehicle for various sauces, they can be whatever texture you want. Eggs too can be made in a myriad of styles. The Perfect Breakfast, which I really need a better name for, is a blank canvas. The many levels of customization make it perfect.
Essentially The Perfect Breakfast allows for personal taste to shine. The dishes listed above, the brisket hash, the mackerel scramble they only allow for the chef’s taste to shine. Indelibly marked by the cook’s imprimatur. The Auteur Theory of Breakfast if you will. This lack of a professional chef’s stamp is why I like The Perfect Breakfast. But I don’t want to go too far. Allow me to take a moment to defend to the death society’s need to allow creators, for lack of a better word, to create, and our need to interact with their creations. Interacting with other people’s art is a necessary part of life, a moral imperative even. But, at the same time, partaking in someone else’s art should not stop us from making our own.
Of course, many metaphors better than breakfast exist for describing the consuming/creating spectrum. Other writers can use them. I will not waffle on this point. Case in point, a meal at Alinea and a homecooked meal serve different but equal roles. The act of creating something, a perfectly calibrated breakfast for instance, is an important one. Too often, I’d argue, Americans rely on consuming something that a “master” of the craft has made, a movie, TV show, or meal. When you only ever consume, and not create, you end up living in an unbalanced world. Making your own products, even if it’s “small” or not particularly “good” is important. By understanding what you like, and how you create, you learn more about yourself and the world around you. It is a way of re-appropriating the value of your labor. You’ve made something just for yourself, and not for anyone else. In a world where more and more jobs are service-economy jobs people almost never really make anything. The fruits of their labor, ephemeral as they may be, are all done for the benefit of someone else. So even if it is as small as making chocolate chip pancakes instead of regular, you have still made something that you like, and not because your boss told you too. The Perfect Breakfast forever!