A breakfast debate

Breakfast easy going, coffee hardline

There's nowhere to hide. Not with DLL and BLISS coming at you out of the blue corner and looking for a knockout blow. All I said was something about healthy eating. That was me pounced on:

“Yeah, like all those heathy fry-ups.”

I must admit, I'm aware of some negative points about a cooked breakfast, English-style. High in protein and delicious, it's also high in fat and high in calories and high on the deputy headmistress' disapproving look list. Honestly. All those builders in their filthy clothes!

The plus points? Well, it reinforces a will to live. It's a celebration. The artery-hardening and belly expansion must be offset against the stress-reduction and blood pressure lowering effects. Try saying this out loud to see how this works:

“Fancy a fry-up?”

Or:

“Shall we go down the café for breakfast?”

Compare with:

“Fancy a bowl of wood chippings muesli soaked in milk?” or “shall we go to the cereal section of Tescos and hang out with the other brown cords, socks and sandals folk, compare beards and discuss the latest issue of ageing hippie times?”

So, with all the good grace I could muster, I said:

“Fat chance. We've got no eggs.”

Well. That lit the blue touchpaper. What is and isn't essential to a cooked breakfast? BLISS and DLL are hopeless. Plainly and obviously it's like this:

• Bacon, sausages: both is plainly preferable, but this is either / or, at a pinch.
• Black pudding: clearly preferable, now not essential thanks to the new squeamishness that will see mankind die out. As an asteroid strike killed off the dinosaurs, sanitisation leading to a lack of resistance will see us off.
• Eggs: fried (sunny side up or over easy), poached, or scrambled, are absolutely essential and don't even think about starting without them.
• Tomatoes / beans / mushrooms: yes to all if available, none of them (alone) amount to a deal-breaker. Tomatoes can be fresh or tinned. I prefer tinned. Or both.
• Potato stuff: chips, hashbrowns: bring it all on, but all non-essential, really.
• Bubble: yes, yes, yes. Something that tastes delicious and keeps vegetable matter out of landfill. What's not to like. There's no end of prescriptive recipes (some are spud and sprout only – do these people live in a perpetual Boxing / Groundhog day?) but bashed up leftovers crisped to a crusty, tasty wedge – again, what's not to like?
• Bread? Yes. Buttered, or toasted and buttered, or, preferably, fried.

Anyway, I'm the one with the louche attitude. Rice is good, with smoked fish, or special fried, or with a miso broth. A great breakfast. Kippers. Curry in both forms: leftover takeaway or doggy bag; and specially made: chickpeas with a lighter spicing and heat than usual, with naan or chapati.

Coffee though? I have to take a hard line on coffee.

The milk thing. Some cultures see it my way. Google it. Locally, we would raise eyebrows at a five year old at the breast, yet accept a middle aged man unable to take tea or coffee without the breast milk of another animal.

Wierd.

No milk. No sugar. Nothing strange. Just strong coffee. Thanks.

That probably sounds a bit hardline. Which is the way I see it. If you need a skinny latte or similar, just have a sugary strawberry milkshake, you juvenile-tastebudded retard. My way or highway on this one, son.