5 Important Things About Breakfast
A topic on which I do not waffle.
It is has been said that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. I can understand that. Breakfast provides fuel to get your day going and helps everything from staying alert in school to Erin not getting so hangry in the mornings. (There have been many many many studies on the latter aspect.)
However, there are five more important things about breakfast that I rarely see discussed.
- Breakfast shows you where you came from.
My dad eats Honey Nut Cheerios with fruit every morning, most often blueberries. He has done this for as long as I can remember. When we lived in a foreign country, my grandparents brought over boxes of Cheerios when they visited.
My dad ate Cheerios growing up. What we reach for in the morning is most often what we grew up eating. Because really, who wants to put any more thought than necessary into your morning routine?
2. Breakfast represents tradition.
My mom-mom made scrambled eggs in the microwave. I did not learn until college that not everyone makes them this way. (I learned this when I visited a friend in her dorm, and she said that I could make scrambled eggs, and I looked around for the microwave. She did not have one. I ended up lying and saying I wasn’t that hungry and would eat snacks in the car ride home.)
But you know what? I like my scrambled eggs in the microwave. They taste like my mom-mom made them, which is meaningful to me, so I continue to make them that way.
3. Breakfast is ingenuity.
Let’s be honest. Most days, we don’t have all the ingredients to make a lavish breakfast in the morning. We aren’t sitting down to Irish breakfasts consisting of sausage, eggs, toasts, etc. In addition, unfortunately, for many people, breakfast is the meal that gets skimped on if they are short on money.
For example, I don’t believe my grandpa’s family had a lot of money growing up. One of the things they did was put on sugar and butter instead of syrup on their pancakes. This way of eating pancakes was passed down to my mom and her sisters, then passed down to my generation. I didn’t realize this until I talked with my cousin and learned that she did it.
Making breakfast for ourselves and others often forces creativity and ingenuity.
4. Breakfast is home.
Last weekend my mom made fried eggs and bacon. I didn’t know she was going to do this, so walking into the kitchen and smelling everything; well, it smelled like home to me. It was wonderful.
5. Breakfast is love.
When mom does something special like make fried eggs and bacon as a surprise for lunch. Or when she makes breakfast in bed for a birthday and dresses up the tray with a single flower. Or the many years she spent pouring my cereal in the morning and making sure there was a banana cut-up in there, that’s all love.
Breakfast is an underrated meal that features history, ingenuity, traditions, home, and love. So I hope you have many happy breakfasts in your future, nay dare I say I hope that they are egg-celent!
