The word breakfast is one that doesn't need to be looked up. Literally, it means a meal at which we break our fast. I do have a small quarrel with that, because I don't consider that my hours of sleep are in any way a fast. They are a time for calm digestion and whetting of the appetite for the next day of well-planned eating.
Sometimes, breakfast is described as the most important meal of the day - usually by makers of breakfast cereals. Once again, I have an issue. A dedicated eater such as myself ranks the importance of daily meals entirely by their size. On the scope of food and drink offered, on the amount of fuss that has gone into preparation, on the number of hours set aside for its consumption.
In my life here on Galiano Island, breakfast is definitely the smallest of our three meals. But in other homes, other cultures and other times, the scale of breakfast was entirely different. I read about an early Victorian breakfast for two that included a whole ham, a huge bologna sausage, pyramids of muffins, half a pork pie - and that was just the buffet. Eggs, kidneys and mutton chops were served from the grill. I got that from one of Robert Surtees' comic novels about his fox-hunting grocer, John Jorrocks.
Here's a more recent book, The Book of Breakfasts (1929) by Marian McNeill, a Scottish woman. Her Scottish Artisan's Breakfast is substantial - porridge and milk, fried kippers or bacon and egg, baps, oatcakes, butter toast and marmalade, washed down with tea. In contrast, her Bright Young Person's Breakfast consists simply of an apple and a glass of hot water, taken in bed.
My husband Chris has, over the years, developed a Semi-Retired GoldCardHolder Breakfast that, using only two bowls and six ingredients, allows for infinite variations. No two breakfasts need be exactly the same.
First comes the coffee, made and poured, but not necessarily drunk immediately. Next comes the checking of the emails. After that, back to the kitchen and the two-bowl assembly. One is a Chinese rice bowl of yogurt. Plain yogurt, two per cent fat or less, probiotic, sweetened by a spoonful of one of many kinds of jam in the pantry. It's like a custom fruit-bottom yogurt every day. The other bowl is Italian, with classic proportions, containing one of the three or four breakfast cereals in the cupboard, crowned with sliced fruit or berries, sprinkled with brown sugar and moistened with 2% milk.
All this is carried to a spot at the end of the table, where piles of magazines are within reach.
The coffee is eventually drunk, but so slowly that the mug has to make several trips to the microwave and back. This is a perfect beginning to a day of leisurely and sometimes intellectual pursuits.
As for me, I am all over the place. Whatever's available I chop and whip and poach and scramble until I have a enough interesting flavours to declare my fast broken for another 24 hours.
There are two other kinds of breakfast that may be celebrated in our home.
If someone has been to town and brought back a bag of croissants, then it's continental breakfasts until the bag is empty, which is usually at about 10 a.m. the same day.
The other is the Full English Breakfast, which may not be as full as tradition requires. It always contains bacon, egg, tomatoes, and bread, all fried, but it never contains sausage, black pudding, baked beans or mushrooms. And it is never served for breakfast - available at lunchtime only.
Except sometimes when I return from a few days offisland, I suspect that in my absence the Full English has also migrated to the supper menu.
No words are spoken, but the general greasiness of the cooking area and the low rasher count in the meat drawer of the fridge do get me thinking.k
