The Anatomy of a Hearty Breakfast

Food's underlying theme. If home is where the heart is, it may be useful to question its whereabouts during the previous week. A monk can draw a line between two points on a graph, but that isn't regression analysis, no matter how many colors might be available on the tablet of the day. While yesterday's tablets have already begun to dissolve in the acidic pre-holiday shopping environment that promises ever deeper cuts to those with the stomach to wait it out, the sensible shopper will err on the side of breakfast, leaving to others the vertigo and weakness that come from ignoring the most important meal of the day.

Nothing says home for the hollandaise like a buttery blend of yolks and muffins, though some might argue that the same can be said by a synthetic voice issuing from speakers on the front lawn. There, nativity meets inflatable approximations of holiday spirits in a joyous explosion of color and poorly executed plastic seams, leaving benediction as the only remaining salve for the swollen eyes of children who shouldn't have been allowed to add lemon juice to the recipe in the first place.

This year, as I sit down to the unsavory task of eating my heart out over my neighbors' superior visual and culinary holiday displays, it will be with the courage of my convictions, none of which have resulted in hard time, soft time, or indeed any time that isn't divisible by zero. More to the point, my future repast is predictable, but someone had to collect the data, someone had to do the shopping, and someone had to make breakfast before shoveling all three into the gaping maw below Rudolph's unfused nose, just before it blew.

Not that any of this will matter a week from now.

 

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