Breakfast Perfection

I gave my Senior Foods students the following assignment after they cooked and shared a family-style breakfast the previous class:

Tell me about your most perfect breakfast. It can be an experience you have actually had or your fantasy meal. Use detail and description. Talk about the who, what, where, when, why and hows of this experience. Remember that perfection, when it comes to food, has as much to do with our environment and mood as it does with the food.

Before I gave them the assignment, we looked at this article on The Insider. The assignment was designed to address the inquiry question: "How are our tastes for food and (food) experiences determined?", which was an alternate entry point into the larger question we are exploring in this class, "What is the best diet for humans?" I thought I would do the assignment too. This is my contribution to the conversation.

My perfect breakfast is a combo deal. No, not bacon, eggs, and pancakes—though I have been one to partake of that meal on more than one occasion! By combo deal I mean a bit of real-life lived experience and a bit of fantasy.

My perfect breakfast begins in the summer. I am alone and somewhere warm. Every winter and spring break I go to Palm Springs and this seems as good a place as any to be. I love the desert in a way I never thought I would. Living in downtown Vancouver for 15 years (2 and a half in Victoria) instilled in me a big love of the ocean and the beach. Some of my fondest memories are of walking the seawall with my (now dead) dog, Ira. But the desert is an altogether different beast. I love the wide expanse of it and, unlike the ocean, it is traversable by foot. I am a big fan of wide open spaces and, these days, the desert is just about as perfect as it can get.

The sun rises early in the summer and it gets hot fast so the time is about 5:30am and all I can hear are the rustlings of lizards and the plaintiff call of the mourning dove. It smells like the heat that is about to overwhelm the air and the night moisture evaporating as the sun rises. I am alone but for my dog.  

Don't get me wrong: I love the people in my life very much. However, there is a peacefulness in solitude that, in my opinion, is very close to perfection. Part of that is the fact that it is fleeting. Soon the day will be teeming with activity, conversation, and pool noodles.

But, for now, I and my dog can be quiet together. The food is simple. I love big breakfasts but not in the wee hours of the morning. I generally adhere to a dietary regime called intermittent fasting whereby I relegate my daily eating to a window of about 8 hours between 11am and 7pm. On this day, I am changing that up (as I do each weekend) and having my breakfast on the porch, over-looking the desert, with the dog at my side.

My "meal" consists of 3 things: a 4 shot Americano served not hot but on the cool side of warm with a LOT of cream; 2 pieces of sourdough toast, generously greased up with grass-fed butter (few things in life are as sublime as grass-fed butter in its delicious, salty, butteriness); and a few thin slices of white cheddar. I am a connoisseur of simple flavours presented simply. I like my coffee tepid and my dairy full-fat.

As the sun comes up and the day begins to get warm, I drain my coffee, pick at the few crumbs of toast left over on my plate, and sigh contentedly. Time to walk the dog.