Breakfast

I've heard breakfast called "the most important meal of the day," and I agree. It jump-starts your day and gets you going. With the recent onset of "regular school mornings," and getting Younger Son up, fed, and out the door to the bus, this is what our kitchen looked like at 6:30 this morning. (That bottom picture is his first piece of French toast. I think his usual number is FOUR pieces.)

Right now, I'm sticking with a couple or three basic things to get Younger Son started for his school day - scrambled eggs and toast, or French toast. They're both easy, and include some protein to stick with him. Will probably add sausage or biscuits to the lineup as I'm able. This fixing a couple of things in an alternating manner, though, made me think of Grandma W. Either she or Mom told me that out in western Kansas during the "Dirty '30's," Grandma would alternate mornings fixing either biscuits or pancakes for breakfast. Biscuits, pancakes, biscuits, pancakes. It may not be much variety, but it feeds a person, and that's what matters.

Mom would try to fix me some breakfast on school days when I was younger. She and Dad had a regular breakfast time every morning, kind of early (at least by my standards, ha ha). Well, I was a slug-a-bed, waiting until the last minute to drag myself around for school. By then, the breakfast she had left sitting at my place at the table was cold. Now bacon or toast or pancakes or cereal might survive such treatment, but Cream of Wheat did not. It turned into a mass of cold rubber - totally unappetizing! I wonder if my own self-inflicted breakfast lack might have contributed a little to my love of school lunches. Because I was always plenty hungry by the time that lunch bell rang!

In recent years, I've had opportunity to sub in our local school lunchroom. When I was growing up, school just had lunch, and up where I'm from, they still do. But in this school here, they have a breakfast menu as well as a lunch menu. Usually just something simple, a couple of items, such as pancakes and sausage and fruit, or something like that. That syrup can sure be a mess to clean up even with the dishwasher! I think there may be kids that these are the only meals they get, and that's sad, but thankful they can eat good at school. They always have a bunch of kids for breakfast.

Lately I've enjoyed seeing things on the internet about "cowboy cooking," using chuckwagons, campfires and cast iron Dutch ovens and skillets. We enjoy cooking with cast iron even here at home. (You can see our much-used cast iron griddle in the middle photo above.) I always have lovely mental images of a big skillet of "breakfast potatoes" or something, sizzling over a campfire, and a big ol' coffee pot near the fire, ready to help open a person's eyes the first thing of a morning. Served in a tin cup, of course. With a background of jingling spurs as cowboys get ready to ride and work for the day. Maybe I should be a ranch cook. ha ha

Related to all this (and a little repetititve from what I already said about my own school mornings and the cold food), here's one of the stories from the notebook:

"Why Does School Start So Early?"

My poor mom. I tested her so badly. It was next to impossible to get me up in the mornings for school. I think that also lasted the whole 13 years.

School began at 8:30. I did get there well before that for the most part. I'm sure Mom began in plenty of time to holler at me to GET UP. After several unsuccessful tries of that, she'd turn my light on. That would usually do the trick. I'd finally drag myself around and get ready around 5 minutes till 8:00. Of course, Mom had fixed breakfast LONG (well, probably 7 or 7:30) before that. When I finally ambled into the kitchen after getting dressed, I'd find my helping still sitting at my place. Sometimes toast, a piece of bacon, etc. But other times it might be oatmeal or cream-of-wheat, and that got interesting. Through no one's fault but my own, it by then was a congealed mass of bland stuff that you could bounce a quarter off of. If I'd gotten up on time, it would've been good and hot, and tasty with milk and brown sugar. But at this disastrous point, I wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole.