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What’s Your Greatest Breakfast Ever?
I’m tapped out on the heavy stuff, so here is something lighter…
Is your favorite meal of the day breakfast? If so, this post is for you.
What is your greatest breakfast ever?
For me, it was when I was working in England in the late 1990s. We were working at night, writing software for a currency sorting machine that was being prepared for shipping during the day. The pressure was on, but that was part of the thrill.
We would get up at 3:00 in the afternoon and head to the local pub for breakfast. Fried eggs, sausage, mushrooms, toast, baked beans, fried tomatoes, and a pint of beer. Yeah, that’s right, beer for breakfast. It was paradise. I went from weighing in the 180s to over 200 lbs for the first time in my life and loved every minute of it.
What is your greatest breakfast ever?
Published in General
The wife and I honeymooned in Tahiti – we spent time on 4 different islands and the highlight was our last stop at the Hotel Bora Bora. I would have Eggs Benedict every morning there while overlooking the most beautiful water you have ever seen.
I worked in China off and on from 1983-1997. One of the great perks was staying in fantastic hotels in Hong Kong. One of the most spectacular breakfast buffets ever was at the Island Shangri-La. It had everything from all of the British favorites listed by others, to dim sum and char-sui pork buns and pork fried rice, to Swiss muesli, and anything else you can imagine.
And of course the eggs poached in olive oil in a cast iron pan served with a fresh baguette while on a drilling rig in Jerez de la Frontera Spain was quite note worthy too.
I didn’t much go for the hundred year old eggs served on the train from Hong Kong to Guangzhou but the congee was pretty good.
Sirok (we pronounced it ced-dak – Slovak) is still one of my favorite Easter dishes. We would have smoked sausage (that my Dad made and smoked starting weeks before Easter), sirok, hard boiled-eggs (that were cut into eighths and shared around the table), and fresh bread (oohh, that fresh bread!). I know there was homemade beet horseradish, ham, and other dishes that I didn’t care about at the time. Looks like I will have to make some sirok in the next couple of weeks. I have my mom’s recipe if you want it.
My very favorite breakfast is steak and eggs. Scrambled eggs with sirloin tips seasoned and sautéed in butter just long enough to give them a nice crust and juicy insides. A nice cold V-8 provides the ‘healthy’ vegetables.
I love biscuits and gravy. I don’t have a cooking gene, so my tragic story is I have no idea how to make it. But if I could, I’d make it every day. The best kind you get in a USMC chow hall. It has to have a sausage mixed in the gravy that is just a bit spicy. And then drench two biscuits. It’s so uncomplicated, yet so yummy!
There are places, along the highways of the great big center of the US, where truckers stop to fuel up, shower up, coffee up and then head down the road, and where you can get chicken friend steak, eggs over easy, biscuits and sausage gravy. If you live through the meal, it will be one of the best you’ve ever eaten. And you won’t need another until the tanks are dry and it’s time to refuel once again.
Really?!?!? Absolutely!!!! I’dbe honoured to have your Mom’s recipe. Thank you so much.
I have a similar memories–fresh venison the second morning of a deer hunt on a crisp, frosty day in Wisconsin; steak and fresh trout in Idaho in the spring; even pbj’s on a cold West Yellowstone outing–something about the outdoors, I’m sure.
I still treat myself to these breakfasts, despite my age, but only after a 10+ mile run. I’m running a half marathon in a couple of weeks and there will definitely be pancakes, eggs, sausage and chocolate milk in the aftermath.
When I lived in Chicagoland, I dearly loved breakfast at the Walker Brothers chain, especially their Apple Pancakes.
oh Yes, this was very traditional, and very familiar. Especially the Placek https://www.thespruceeats.com/polish-coffee-cake-recipe-1136943
Bananas Foster Pan Perdu’ at Chef John Folse’s B&B (Lafitte’s Landing) in Donaldsville, Louisiana made with the leftover French Bread that had been served at dinner the night before. H-E-A-V-E-N!!!!
Here is a recipe for Creme Brulee Lost Bread (Pan Perdu’)
http://www.jfolse.com/recipes/breakfast_brunch/breakfast20.htm
Sounds like heaven even though I don’t smoke.
Pecan waffle at Waffle House. Don’t have a WH near by which is probably God’s way of keeping me under
300400200 lbs.I so want some pork buns – husband and I have been plotting a dim sum run. I like congee too. Sounds like some great trips.
My husband (from Louisiana) makes a mean pain perdu and sometimes does a Bananas Foster version. I’m sure it’s hard to beat Chef Folse however.
But, no matter how luxurious the setting, you can’t have bacon, or sausage, or ham…
So sad.
Sounds rather like our old family recipe for Sweet And Sour Meatballs. The from-scratch recipe is somewhat daunting, but I get close by pouring a bag (28 oz or so) of frozen 1″ diameter “dinner” meatballs into a skillet, adding 2 cans of Manwich sauce, a small (8 oz) can of crushed pineapple with the juice, some red wine vinegar, and simmer for 60-90 minutes (since the meatballs were frozen).
One caution: many of the pre-made frozen meatballs are mostly chicken. I get the Cooked Perfect brand, Italian style, which as I recall are mostly beef with some pork, and maybe some chicken too. Their “Traditional” meatballs are mostly chicken, I’m not sure how traditional that’s supposed to be… It’s also possible to get all-beef, and Angus beef too.
As mentioned previously, the Breakfast Sampler at IHOP is similar, but with less ham. What I’ve noticed when suggesting other people order it, is they don’t realize that the photo in the menu isn’t just the platter with the eggs etc: the pancakes are included too!
My dad LOVED to fish. In the summers, he went down to the river on Sunday afternoons in those hip boots that every other day were worn to the fields to move irrigation dams around. He came home after a couple of hours with a string of rainbow trout–big, lovely, yummy Wyoming salmon. Every Monday morning in the summers, our mom would fry them up for breakfast, along with the eggs and potatoes. We’d have her homemade bread with butter we had to make (she said she could taste a nasty weed flavor in other people’s milk that the creamery used to make the butter in the summer.) I think she fried the trout in leftover bacon grease, too.
That is my favorite breakfast. It was 60 years ago.
That sounds like heaven too @Cowgirl. Fresh fish, leftover bacon, fresh butter – oh my.
If frying fish in bacon grease makes it taste and smell like bacon instead of fish, then I might go along. But in general I can’t stand any kind of seafood. (Or lakefood, riverfood, pondfood…)
Midnight Chow at a Launch Control Center (LCC) somewhere on the vast plains of North Dakota when I was stationed at Grand Forks AFB with the 321 Strategic Missile Wing (1975 to 1979). After 12+++ hours on a Minuteman site, all the bologna and pbj sandwiches lovingly packed by Mrs. Beatfeet before daylight that day being long gone, and the noon high of 20 below but a fond memory, Job Control would tell us to RON (Remain Over Night) at a nearby LCC. After a grinding day we could manage to stumble across the parking area, enter the Support Building, and – BAM! – there it was! Midnight Chow! Breakfast at the midnight hour, courtesy of the best cooks in the USAF. Unlimited fresh steaming coffee, OJ, and milk; pancakes with butter and syrup (fruit in the flapjacks if you so chose to ruin a good cake that way…); bacon, ham, even a steak if you wanted; eggs cooked to order; toast and jelly; and, of course, grits (most NoDaks and other assorted Yankees have never experienced grits, but the good GI cooks from below the Mason-Dixon line make sure they’re on the menu). Take what you want but eat what you take was the only rule for Midnight Chow.
We got up the next morning and drove the many hours back to Grand Forks AFB – after we had breakfast again!
I only had one breakfast at a Russian Hotel, maybe 2000 or 2001. It was a buffet that mainly had boiled eggs and cabbage. Lots of different potato dishes.
I was doing internet dating before it was cool, and had travelled to Russia to meet a profile I hoped to convince to be my fiancé. She seemed to really like the buffet, but I mainly remember going through the line and not choosing anything.
I wouldn’t say it was the ‘best’ breakfast. But I do remember it. Does that make it memorable?
Later that day we got on a train from Moscow to Kostroma. It was January, so the scene outside the windows was mainly snow, and mainly more snow. But, lots of tea. Served in fancy glasses, and served often. It reminded me of the scenes in Dr. Zhivago.
Once I convinced my internet sweetheart to actually be my fiancé, and then to actually marry me, we honeymooned in Hawaii. She complained about the humidity, but she really liked the breakfasts. I did too.
I think we were staying at the Sheraton on Maui, and they had a killer breakfast buffet. All kinds of tropical fruit, omelets, pancakes, waffles, too much to eat.
And then whale watching, driving around in our Hertz Mustang convertible, scuba diving, you know, just the regular vacation stuff.
So now, 20 years later, we have one son just about to turn 18, another turning 16, and a daughter who thinks she’s 18 but will be 6 in June.
I rolled the internet dice and hit the jackpot.
But now… I’m thinking, where could I get another really good breakfast?
I like to find restaurants that are off the beaten path, as a truck driver the national chains get old quick. My team driver and I were picking up a load in L.A., got through early and had time to find a gem in downtown L.A. The locals told us Nick’s Cafe has been around since the 20’s and owned and operated by the same family since opening. We were here the week Lord Gavin lifted the 2nd or 3rd lockdown inflicted on the locals. Amazing breakfast and worth every penny.
Eggs seem to be a common breakfast food around the world, however I have noticed the flavor varies significantly in other countries. European eggs have much darker yolks, must be the difference in feed.
Bacon too. Eastern European bacon is less smokey and more sour. Recently bought some bacon from Costco that was made with European pork bellies. Had slightly similar underflavor, despite traditional American smokey curing.
My favorite breakfast was years and years ago, on a beach in Ipswich, Massachusetts, at sunrise. We took a boat to a small uninhabited island my dad had found. We brought a huge cast iron frying pan. We had eggs and bacon and coffee and orange juice. The bacon and coffee and the open fire as the sun was breaking through the clouds were just magical.
I remember a breakfast at a hotel in Amsterdam. They had a Japanese clientele, and adjusted the menu accordingly. Everything on the buffet was the antithesis of breakfast, but, well, when in Amsterdam, do like the Japanese!
It was horrible, all of it.
On weekends I make a classic American breakfast – scrambled eggs with cheddar, pepper jack, Hatch chiles; hash browns; a mini bagel with jam; a sausage patty enlivened by Cry Baby Craig’s hot sauce. Can’t wait.