Memory of all the wonderful breakfasts

Many of us believe that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. We have been advised, at some time or the other in our lives, to eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper. As children, this did not make any sense to us because we were hungry at every meal and made a clean sweep of the meals fit for royalty that were placed on our table!

However, as we grew older, we tried to concentrate less on our meals and more on our figures and it was customary for one or all of us to announce, “I’m not eating breakfast today!” in an attempt to keep our weight in check.

Why did we choose to miss breakfast?

One, we could ignore the morning alarm and spend a longer time lolling in bed; two, we could then rush past the dining room and out of the front door without looking at what lay on the table and once we got our bus to school or college, the company of friends made us forget hunger pangs; and three, how much variety could that first meal of eggs and toast and porridge possibly have?

Of course, we didn’t take into consideration the culinary creativity of our parents: Father was an early riser and a great believer in a substantial breakfast, so he would rummage in the vegetable trays, chop up onions and tomatoes and whatever else he found, crack open eggs, whip them up with a flurry of flying foam, and create such a din in the kitchen that option one of spending more time in bed was lost to us.

After Father had taken out leftovers from the fridge and added them to the toast or the parathas, option two of rushing past the dining table was also almost impossible because none of us could block out the aromas from the dining table.

As for lack of variety, Mother’s unending supply of pickles and jams and jellies put paid to that theory — and soon all of us were wolfing down the delicious fare, our resolve and our announcements forgotten!

With adulthood and matrimony, it came as a shock to discover that the man of my dreams was a bit of nightmare with his attitude towards his meals: He would eat them without a word and be gone from the table before I had a chance to serve myself, his idea of expressing appreciation lying in the simple fact that he had actually eaten!

As for breakfast: that was always skipped!

While I managed to make my peace with no breakfast for him — and was even a bit relieved not to be compelled by my conscience to rush into the kitchen first thing in the morning — I refused to have it when his son, all of three feet high, decided to follow in his footsteps and traipse off to school on an empty stomach!

Suddenly, the memory of all the wonderful breakfasts of my childhood returned — along with ghastly visions of the boy remaining diminutive, deprived of vital nutrition — and there was no way I was going to let my child leave the house without something substantial inside him! Thus began a decade of breakfast-time battles and all kinds of creative kitchen camouflage — pancakes, baked custard, iced custard, whole wheat cookies, dry-fruit slices — to make sure a good amount of eggs, milk and wheat or oats made their way into his digestive tract before he got onto the school bus at 7am.

And now, when I read that a study shows eating breakfast early may prevent risk of diabetes, I can at last stop squirming at the memory of that early-morning unpleasantness and tell myself that it was worth it — and time will tell if it made a positive difference!

— Cheryl Rao is a writer based in India