Sunny side, time to get up
On embracing breakfast.
Many couples in the throes of family planning set out rules – do’s and don’ts. We’ll be a “no TV on the weekdays” family. We are a “never put our kid’s face on Instagram” family. We are a “never use the word ‘no’ to our child” family. A “gluten, sugar, butter-free” family. For context, these last clans would not, could not live in France. In my partnership’s path to parenthood, we set out a short, mostly relaxed set of non-negotiables, much of which came naturally (no capital punishment, for example).
As with many, our articles of faith were scribbled in pencil, rather than etched in stone, and have been swiftly amended as time and experience progressed – and also, especially after meeting our children and finding out who they are. We reasonably seek out what works for us as a unit.
But one immutable that has become a pillar of our home is breakfast. On 99% of mornings, we break bread together, sat at the table as a unit of four. The origin of this neo-tradition is my wife. L is French, and in her upbringing, spent most mealtimes properly sat at the table with her family, through the warm sunshine of youth, the storms of adolescence, the breezy flow of her 20’s and beyond. In hindsight, we even organized a family breakfast as our first gathering act right after our 9 AM wedding ceremony in 2017.
Breakfast consistently and properly sat at the table is foundational, elemental to who we are. A pillar to our temple. The reasoning is layered with sound principles. Sustenance provides the body energy while time together nourishes our unity and ways of being. Setting the tone for the day is grounding. And being greeted with a plate of food that has been considerately prepared is unquestionably better than the alternative. The kids are asked to set the table, stay at the table, and chat about whatever they want so long as forks and spoons move from plates to mouths. Sometimes we’ll even cook together, depending on parental patience, which further depends on kiddie sleep patterns.
Breakfast chez nous is generally salty – more hummus than honey, though sometimes the two marry well. It may present itself as thinly sliced avocado toast on sourdough or raisin bread with optional sun-dried tomatoes or radishes, feta or 12-month aged comté, a spinach/banana/ginger/something else smoothie at least once per week, and near-daily eggs of all styles – omelette, bain marie, hard or soft boiled, fried over-medium, hard or soft scrambled, poached… With the right ingredients on-hand, this may also transform into a breakfast burrito or croissant sandwich to really get the crowd going. Blueberry pancakes make a cameo every couple of weeks. Pomelo from Corsica (bravo la France) will feature seasonally. Lastly and not leastly, we fresh grind coffee beans for American-style drip coffee, a relic of our stateside selves that we cannot do without.
These aforementioned inventive offerings lean on prior professional experience as a sandwich maker (and I daresay virtuoso) in a charming Vermont market known as Powers for the first half of 2012. In the scramble of initial student loan debt payments, I learned that waking up at 5 am to make industrial-format trays of bacon, and pounds of different salads, only to transition into hours of serving a menu of well-established sandwich orders was a very formative, albeit not very lucrative, trade.
I learned to quarter an avocado and filet it for both coverage and aesthetics, to pinch and place right amount of sprouts for a veggie burger without it becoming unmanageable, and that strategic layering is the key to building a sandwich that will last until lunch time. It was a meager foray into caring for people through food, but one I applied myself to generously. An invention of mine – the Lotus Avocado Bomb – even made it onto the iconic, handwritten permanent menu (which was erased from existence following the store’s sale nearly two years ago). No one short of a high-level mystic could have predicted that those skills would provide a core memory of our kids’ childhood mornings.
In thinking back on my own breakfast odyssey, the findings are mixed. Having grown up between two households on opposite sides of Central Park, there was native inconsistency in this ritual. Like many children fortunate to not have to think about what was for breakfast, I didn’t. Options consisted of catching pop tarts, stacking a selection of Entenmann’s cakes and donuts (drools for Fudge Iced Golden Cake), finding the very specific absorption level between crunchy and soggy Frosted Flakes, drowning Raisin Bran half gallons of whole milk, saving the rainbows to eat last out of the Lucky Charms, and conclusively going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. On Sunday’s when I was on the westside, my stepmom would zip off to Zabar’s and harvest the morning’s warmly bloomed croissants & pain au chocolat and fresh squeezed orange juice – rapture.
To this rotation, in high school years, was added the iconic $2.50 bacon egg & cheese on a roll, the delectable sausage egg & cheese on a cinnamon raisin bagel, the refined toasted & buttered sesame seed bagel, or the rarified scallion cream cheese on toasted everything. These delights were inhaled half-dressed, standing while scrambling through unfinished homework, swaying between strangers on bus and subway, in motion as I trudged through my prep school’s doors, more often than not, alone.
This is not a knock to my parents, our situation is just different – different time, different jobs, different nutritional science information. It was the 90s and the Internet had not yet become every household’s third eye (shoutout to our current nourishment matriarch, The Glucose Goddess). All said, they kept me fed and instilled autonomy, and I salute that. And I doubly salute it because I recognize how hard it is, and frankly how inconvenient it is to set in motion and maintain such a time-consuming method for breaking our fast.
In the 1% of mornings where we’re really running late, we will eat a croissant from the local boulangerie on the go. The kids will chomp away on the back of the cargo bike as I frantically pilot them to school. The frenzy is not related to tardy arrival so much as hoping that they will not hold this paltry meal against us. As we cross the threshold, I recall that the fancy French organic school lunch menu will make up for it – I regain composure.
Truthfully, there’s gratification sprinkled and smeared on to the self-imposed inconvenience. Doing something that requires rigor and organization and thoughtfulness, that walks us in the opposite direction of the easy thing, is symbolic of what the day may bring. Maybe it’s also a revolt against my personal youth’s breakfast journey. And maybe it’s just that we’ve gone a bit crazy, as parents of little kids tend to do at some point.
Whatever our explanation, even on the days that it really drives us cuckoo (for organic, fair-trade choco puffs with unsweetened almond milk) (joking, not joking?), having that face-to-face rapport never leaves us indifferent before facing the world beyond our door.
We humble earthfolk Yet prepared to greet the sun Rise, breathe, and so feast.