I Love Breakfast

I love breakfast. If I had time to sit down to a huge breakfast everyday I would be a happier woman. If I could design my perfect breakfast it would have to include at least most of the following: thick cut French toast with butter and real maple syrup, corned beef hash splashed with hot sauce (Tabasco or Texas Pete), runny eggs, slices of crumbly sharp cheddar cheese, sautéed mushrooms, fresh fruit and did I mention the hot, fresh coffee, black. Give me my crossword puzzle and/or a really good Spenser novel and I will be happy for hours.

Let’s compare that to the typical American hotel breakfast. First, there are coaster shaped eggs that are thawed and placed in a warmer. There are identically shaped sausage patties in the next warmer. The toast bin is filled with dried out English muffins and thinly sliced bread. The fruit bowl is brimming with tasteless oranges, mealy apples, and dark brown bananas. The juice machine makes weird pumping noises as your juice splutters out, either too watery or too concentrated, and the coffee is “just water dressed in brown.”

Of course, the waffle machine is gleaming in three day old Pam non-stick spray and the paper Dixie cups of waffle batter are bubbling its leavening out into the breakfast room. The waffle syrup comes in those jelly, peel off the label, plastic containers. The expiration dates are rubbed off. And there is a crock pot filled with oatmeal, globbed and solidified around the plastic ladle stuck in the pot.

The muffins are previously frozen and individually wrapped, as are the ancient Danishes. Of course only cherry or blueberry are left usually, no cheese; stupid Danishes. Yes, there are hotels that have better breakfasts, but my work does not send me to those places.

My experience overseas spoiled me with amazing hotel breakfast. My first great breakfast experience was in Knightsbridge, London at a tiny place that was about $300 USD a night. The breakfast had sliced cheeses and meat, dried fruit, fresh toast and hot tea; Croissants and yogurt and delicious preserves. Yum. The other great breakfast experience was at a Hilton in Paramatta, Australia, a suburb of Sydney. Now, the breakfast was about $25 AUD, but it was totally worth it. (And I ate that breakfast for weeks at a time.) Bowls of fresh fruit, piles of pastries, sliced meats and cheeses, cheesy scrambled eggs, sautéed mushrooms, roasted tomatoes, fried toast, crispy bacon and sausage links, and fresh squeezed juices. Amazing.

I am looking forward to many more sexy breakfast experiences in my life. I am sure our time in Greece and London during our honeymoon will help my cause. But in the future I am going to have to go live overseas, start staying in fancy boutique hotels, or just wake up at 4am everyday to make breakfast for myself. The loss of sleep might totally be worth it for that kind of happiness.