The Most Important Meal of the Day

Carole and Kat have devised a new weekly project for us - Think ... Write ... Thursday!  They will provide prompts every week, and those who participate give it some thought and write something based on said prompts.  Well, I like to think and I like to write, and I thought it would be fun to give it a try, using someone else's ideas for a topic.

This week, they want us to write about The Best Breakfast I Ever Had.

Hm.  I didn't used to be a big breakfast eater.  As a kid, the only day we ever had what most people would call a proper breakfast was on Sunday, after church.  My dad would make eggs, sausage or bacon, and toast.  Some weeks it would be fried eggs (or as I called them until adulthood, "church eggs") and other weeks it would be scrambled eggs.  It was a big deal, and the only time we ate breakfast as a family.

My mother worked, my father worked, and my sisters and I went to school, all on slightly different schedules.  Once I was old enough to make it for myself (probably third grade), my favorite breakfast was a bowl of this:

I would put soy sauce on it, and along with my cup of tea, I was one happy camper.  This was the only rice we ever had growing up, and I LOVED it!  (Now it makes me gag ...)

I still love a big, yummy weekend breakfast, but am usually not that interested in fixing it just for myself.  And during the week, I generally eat cereal in the summer, and oatmeal in the winter.  Both are quick, filling, and I like them.

The Tim and I have lovely holiday breakfasts, and they are pretty amazing, especially when he makes hash browns!

But I think the best breakfast I ever had was the summer that I was 9 years old, and we were at the Jersey shore for a week of vacation.  My dad did not believe in making reservations, so we stayed at a somewhat sketchy place - but it did have a decent pool, and a reasonable diner attached.  My mother used vacation to sleep late, but my father was an early riser, and would get my sisters and I up every morning bright and early to walk along the beach.  This made my sisters miserable; me, not so much, since I was always sleeping on a terrible cot that was brought to the room, and was usually uncomfortable.

So we had taken our walk on the beach, and we were at the diner, and my father said we could get whatever we wanted for breakfast - we were, after all, on vacation.  I have no memory at all of what my sisters got, but I ordered a Pixie Cup.*

(For the uninitiated, Pixie Cups were small, individual cardboard cups of ice cream with cardboard tops, and little wooden spoon.  When you took off the top, there was a picture of someone famous on the other side (as shown above).  We *never* had Pixie Cups at home, because I'm sure they were not cheap to buy.)

The waitress said, "Oh honey, I don't think you should have ice cream for breakfast," and I was ready to have my soul crushed by this strange woman who wanted to ruin my vacation, when my father said, "I told them they could have whatever they wanted for breakfast.  If she wants and goddamn Pixie Cup, bring it to her."  He didn't say it in a mean way, just very factually.  The waitress was clearly shocked, but took the order, and brought all of our food shortly after.

And I sat there as pleased as I could be, enjoying a Pixie Cup for breakfast.  As I continued to do the entire week we were there.  Because we were on vacation, and my dad said so.  ;-)