Good Breakfasts I Have Known

Good morning!

I said yesterday that the best breakfast I've ever had was in Ireland.  And it was, for the fresh taste and quality of the pork items.   The sausage was sweet and rich, the bacon just cured enough.  The eggs were delicious, and believe me, not all eggs taste the same!!!

However, I have known a lot of good breakfasts, breakfasts worth noting. So I thought that today I'd remember some of them.

In 1959 Theodore and I were in Mexico for several months, killing time and spending money.  We traveled all over by bus and by train.  The train part was when we went down to the south.  We went from Mexico City to Cuatzacualcos, where we had to get off the train and be ferried (in a very small boat) across the Cuatzacualcos River to take another train system which plowed through jungles inaccessible by any other vehicle, rocking along on its wide rail bed.  As I lay reading in my berth at night, fleas jumped merrily on the pages of my book.  On this part of the trip, we disembarked at about 2:00 a.m. near the ruins of Palenque and were carried by a jeep towards who knew where.  I'll tell about that part of the trip at another time. Anyway, we traveled on and eventually ended up one morning in San Cristobal de Las Casas, where after consulting our travel book we went to the door of the Bloms. The Bloms, Frans and Heidi, were internationally famous archaelogists who opened their door to travelers.  Open the door they did, at seven in the morning when our bus got into town.  When we had settled in, I asked about breakfast and Mrs Blom sat us in the kitchen where a cook made us the very best scrambled eggs I have ever had.  They were full of herbs, and I did not know what the herbs were. I asked Mrs Blom and she said, surprised that anyone was enough of a nincompoop as not to know, "Fines herbes!"  She had an immense kitchen-garden outside the door.   Having learned long ago  how to compound fines herbes  myself, I 'd like to say that I have never equalled the subtle taste of those scrambled eggs.

Another wonderful breakfast was found in Texas just a few years ago, when Theodore and my nameless sister no. 3 and I were driving through.  At breakfast time, we found ourselves in a little town whose name escapes me now as so much else does. Wish I'd written this blog three years ago.  Oh well.  Smoke was arising from a little tree filled hollow by the road, and we saw a cafe. In we went, and ordered "Huevos a la Mexicana."   Oh how delicious they were.  Well prepared food is such a blessing.  I have had lots of huevos a la mexicana, but those were the best.  Well--there were some good ones prepared at my house by the brother in law husband of nameless no. 5--they were awfully good too.  But there was something about being on the road, hungry, early in the morning, finding civilization, and being welcomed into such a wonderful cafe--matchless.

All the breakfasts prepared by my mother were good. Her menu was almost invariable. Bacon. Eggs. Toast with butter.  She used the best bread she could find, which was often Pepperidge Farm white bread.  It used to be very high in quality; I can't say that now.  Their raisin bread just isn't what it was, sorry.  Ditto the white.  Anyway, mother's breakfasts were simple and unvarying in my memory, and always worth eating and enjoying.  She and my dad would sit in a sunny room, in their older years, and breakfast like kings on this sensible menu.  The cat got one piece of bacon out of that, every day.  Probably spared my parents' lives.

When my grandmother made breakfast (when we were kids) she was more ambitious with her menus.  She was fond of creamed dried beef on toast, and so were we.  Many a breakfast of Postum and creamed dried beef on toast was savored hungrily by all of us.  Well, the grownups had coffee.  My grandmother also made creamed chicken fried steak bits from the leftover pieces of chicken fried steak and this was particularly good.  And she made French toast, served with tomatoes, as I have told before.

When I was a child we only had tortillas made of corn, but when the younger batch of no-names came along, my mother was into a frenzy of flour tortillas.  They all had them (I was not living there by then) every morning. My mother or the maid would make up the dough and pinch off pieces for the maid to roll and bake on a griddle as the family sat at breakfast. One after another, these hot thin delicious tortillas de harina would be served up, to be consumed with butter and jam.  I have never liked commercial tortillas de harina, but I like the homemade kind pretty well. I can make them well enough to suit myself, but have never passed the "Pretty, good--but they need--," test with other consumers.  YAZZYBEL