[astigmatic much?] pith.org content, daily-like
most recently
archive

Sunday March 12, 2006, 01:07

As any New Yorker knows, brunch is a meal to be savored, to be taken in with friends, early if one wishes to avoid lines, later if one wishes to sleep in. In either event, brunch is an event, and one that can take hours, if one is so inclined.

Breakfast, on the other hand, is a meal of utility. The most important meal of the day is often the quickest devoured on the way out the door, or even out on the street, en route to work, while running errands, or liquid, in the form of coffee.

Brunch is never eaten on the fly.

Brunch is also not a particular kind of food, nor necessarily a time of day, but more of a state of mind. That said, brunch must be eaten on the weekends, though never in the evening, even though one may be eating "brunch food." At the same time, "brunch foods" must involve eggs, or foods that would probably go nicely with eggs. One could not, for example, have a soup and a sandwich and honestly expect anyone to describe that meal as "brunch."

I only mention this because I have been eating more breakfast than brunch lately. Brunch was a fairly late development for me. Though many of my friends were eating brunch when we were in Providence, I did not start down the brunch route until New York. In fact, I'm not sure I started brunch until after I'd been back in the city for almost a year. I try to think back to a time in my life before brunch, and I can't really picture it. I don't know what I did on the weekends in a time before brunch, or what I ate. It is possible that weekends consisted of the same foods that weekdays did (cold cereal perhaps), though it is possible that I was just not eating as much back then.

With my schedule what it is, with my working habits finding myself at the computer all hours of the day, with "flexible" hours and, for that matter, flexible days, I find that my eating habits do not need to confine themselves to particular times of day or days of the week. I am a big fan of pre-workday breakfasts with friends, though that works better when the days are longer and morning does not seem so dismal and bleak. But that meal is decidedly breakfast, and though it often can take on the feel of brunch, it has a definite cap where at least one, if not both members, of the party must head off to work, thus removing the leisurely pace at which a brunch can proceed.

I have been eating much more breakfast, and mostly on my own. Breakfast is an easy meal, an egg perhaps. Some toast. More recently for me, an egg mixed in with a sheet of matzoh, getting back to half of my roots in the form of Matzoh Brie. I re-discovered this culinary wonder when I was standing over my stove with an egg, realizing that I did not want to just eat yet another egg. Scanning the apartment for a vehicle for the egg and realizing that I was out of anything resembling a grocery, I stumbled upon last year's stash of matzoh and rediscovered a childhood favorite.

A snag has developed on the hot breakfast front for me, however. This past week (which was, overall, an entirely horrible week for reasons which, on their own, would merely constitute annoyances but which, taken together, represented a life so unbearable I was having, on a daily basis, the feeling that I should not have gotten out of bed at all that morning) brought with it the smell of gas in my apartment and with it a note from the building handyman reading "stove no good, gas is leaking + I shut it off." After 30 years of service, the cooktop in my apartment has given up the ghost and I am left without a flame on which to cook my breakfast. Or lunch. Or dinner.

The obvious solution would be to replace the cooktop. But if you knew my kitchen, you would understand that the obvious solution is far from the ideal solution. Were it simply a matter of replacing a stove, I would be at the nearest Home Depot (15 blocks away) picking up a new range. As it stands, however, my kitchen situation is such that the cooktop and oven are separate units, arranged in such as way as to minimize counter space and maximize inconvenience. The solution, of course, is to combine the units, which, in the current arrangement, is quite impossible. Add to that my desire to renovate the kitchen as well as the bathroom, and my inability to do so quite at this time due to timing considerations stemming from work and personal complexities and I find myself staring down a future consisting of a single-burner hot plate.

Now granted, most residents of this city couldn't find their kitchens with a map, and I admit to being right there with them, at least when it comes to the non-morning meals. But I do love a hot breakfast to kick off my day, and the lack of stovetop, though really only an inconvenience in a city where food is readily accessible 24 hours a day, is just another in a long line of things that I just do not want to deal with at this point in time.

I think that Cheerios and I are going to become really good friends in the coming months.

[ permanent link ]

[ email love | your love | consumer love ]

------------------

search the past

remember the past

1999
    aug 04 05 06 08 09 11 12 15 17 22 26 30
    sep 01 03 07 12 20 28
    oct 04 14 18 22
    nov 02 07 12 19 25 26 27
    dec 12 15 18 28 31

2000
    jan 02 06 11 12 18 29
    feb 03 10 14 17 21 23 28 29
    mar 05 06 20 22 25 26
    apr 02 05 06 08 09 10 12 13 17 20 21 24 25 28 29
    may 03 05 08 11 12 15 17 17b 18 18b 21 23 25 29 30 31
    jun 01 01b 03 06 07 08 10 13 14 16 18 21 23 25 30
    jul 03 06 09 10 13 16 26
    aug 02 03 04 08 10 17 21 25 29
    sep 06 07 12 13 18 24
    oct 06 11 12 19 30 31
    nov 08 11 22 26 30
    dec 01 10 14 21 30

2001
    jan 01 09 14 16 30
    feb 11 15 20 22
    mar 06 08 09 21 25 30
    apr 01 04 05 09 13 18 23 24 25 28
    may 04 09 11 14 16 17 21 25 31
    jun 02 08 20 21 28 29
    jul 07 13 17 28
    aug 14 24 26
    sep 09 12 23 24
    oct 10 26 28 31
    nov 11 17 18 28 30
    dec 02 08 15 18 26

2002
    jan 03 07 08 18 20 23
    feb 04 05 17 19 22
    mar 06 10 13 15 17
    apr 13 16 19 26
    may 03 13 16 21
    jun 08 15 21
    jul 03 05 10 18 24
    aug 03 18
    sep 11 20
    oct 03 05
    nov 10
    dec 30

2003
    jan 19
    feb 04 14 27
    mar 10 23 31
    apr 11 15
    may 26
    jun 16 29
    aug 17
    sep 15
    oct 08
    nov 30
    dec 11 24 28

2004
    jan 06 23 30
    feb 01 21
    mar 04 09
    apr 15
    may 02 10
    jul 03
    aug 02 16 30
    oct 04 17
    nov 28
    dec 28

2005
    jan 03 24
    mar 24
    may 28
    aug 01 10
    sep 03
    oct 12 28
    dec 25

2006
    jan 01 07 16
    feb 02 13 28
    mar 12 13
    apr 17

other things to look at

back home