Eat Up

It's been a long week, so when I woke up this morning I thought "fuck it" and rolled over again. Consequently by the time I got up it was well past time for "breakfast" but not yet close to "lunch". I know I could have had "brunch" but that term always seems so, well, gay, that I can't utter it with a straight face. Real men don't have brunch do they? I can just imagine Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry Callahan responding to an offer to go for one: "Brunch? Brunch is for assholes." So instead of having brunch I had a fried breakfast.

When I'm traveling I rarely miss the cooked breakfast - eggs are excellent protein and a good way to set yourself up for the day - but I can't be arsed to cook it myself at home, partly because of the time involved and partly because afterwards the kitchen ends up looking like someone had oil, grease and egg sex on all the counter tops. Today, though, Bison Daughter wanted scrambled eggs so we cooked up some sausages and bacon to go with them. It was good, and the kitchen disaster was only classified as "Moderate - some eggshell distribution and scattered greasy pans". Admittedly the presentation suffered from "bloke cooking syndrome" where the ingredients were all served but the presentation was sadly lacking; on the other hand, who cares? In 24 hours I'll be flushing it away anyway.

I always enjoy a big breakfast, especially if someone else is cooking it for me, and I still remember the first time I came to the US: I arrived on a Saturday night and woke up on Sunday morning with my first experience of transatlantic jetlag. I wandered down to breakfast in the hotel and was confronted with a gigantic buffet. "You mean I can eat all this? As much as I want? For as long as I want?" I was in large breakfast heaven - eggs, bacon, sausage, toast, waffles, cereal, fruit, tea, juice, yoghurt and some other stuff that I can't remember - and I didn't so much walk back to my room as roll. Of course the novelty wore off (which is a good thing, or I'd be a fucking fleshy whale, complete with the inability to see my own penis without the aid of a mirror on a stick) and I returned to eating like a normal human being again.

The main reason for this is that the initial joy of being confronted with so much hotel food is overcome by the eventual realization that much of it is, in fact, completely shite. Scrambled eggs (which risk having the texture of vomit at the best of times) are often sloppy. Bacon is cremated to a crisp and not the thick, meaty, flexible stuff beloved of Englishmen. Sausages are thin, blackened dogs' penises. The bread for the toast is insubstantial and tasteless, and the yoghurts are "low calorie" with sweetener. Tea is made with tepid water and Liptons "essence of piss" teabags, and cereal is either over-sweetened and over-colored kids' varieties or colon-cleansing bran crap. When I first encoutered "biscuits and gravy" I had a hard time imagining what it could be, especially since gravy is something that comes with roast beef, and biscuits are something you eat with a cup of tea. What I saw appeared to be nothing more complicated than scones and mushroom soup, although the "gravy" was usually congealed, and somewhat reminiscent of porn-film jizz. (Although not so much as "grits", the recipe for which, I am convinced, is primarily based on horse semen.)

I'll leave the last word to Clint:

"I know what you're thinking - did I eat five eggs or six? Well, to tell the truth, in all this excitement I kinda lost track myself. But being as these are Magnum eggs, the most powerful binding agent in the world, and will close your colon right up, you've got to ask yourself one question, do I feel lucky? Well, do you, punk?"

Tomorrow I'm back to bananas and protein shakes. Probably.


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison