I've never been much of a breakfast eater.
I grew up with cereal, of course, like most American kids. But somewhere in college more sleep became more desirable than eating breakfast, and I've never really gone back. Nowadays I will usually have a morning snack - which will be elaborated upon below - but whereas many people are forgoing their full breakfast when they pick up a doughnut or a breakfast bar, I am actually increasing my morning food intake with such.
There are two breakfast items I choose between most workdays. From Happy Donuts on Battery I might pick up a chocolate-covered old-fashioned doughnut; or, from Specialties Bakery on Sansome, I might pick up an apple cranberry muffin.
Annoyingly, the Specialties which is located on Market Street does not carry the apple cranberry muffin, and thus I do not patronize them despite their slightly greater convenience. On a similar note, my wife and I discovered yesterday that, although the Cold Stone Creamery local to us has ceased carrying the Sinless Vanilla sugar-free fat-free all-plastic-but-yummy ice cream, the one in Pleasant Hill has not ceased to carry it, and continues to get more in. (Brad DeLong take note.) Although one might think that all chain stores carry the same inventory, this is decidedly not the case.
So it's an apple cranberry muffin or a chocolate-covered old-fashioned. Sometimes I will depart from those choices if I stop in at one or the other establishment and they are out of my first choice, leading to a carrot-raisin brain muffin or perhaps a chocolate-covered cake doughnut, but those are clearly secondary choices.
What I would really like, of course, is a real bearclaw. With marzipan-poppyseed filling, the way God intended bearclaws to be. Sadly, although San Francisco has by and large proven to be a gourmand's delight, the financial district at least is utterly lacking in good bakeries. I can find the chocolate paste bearclaws, and even (if I go out of my way a little) almond paste bearclaws, but the real and true bearclaw is nowhere in evidence.
So, muffin or doughnut - those are my options most days. On Saturdays I sleep; on Sunday I will generally have a restaurant breakfast, because it's my turn to take the child out and thereby allow my wife to sleep. This generally takes us to a diner where I order something with eggs that I may feed the eggs to the child. Later, we go to a park.
On Thursdays, we are granted breakfast by our merciful corporate overlords. This means that on Thursday I have a bagel. I like bagels, and on random occasions I will stop at the Noah's adjacent to Happy Donuts and pick one up. Plain or cinnamon raisin or, recently, asagio cheese, with cream cheese spread and nothing else. Do not toast it. Toasting is the work of the Devil. Who else would enjoy taking a perfectly good bagel, or slice of bread, or immortal soul, and turn it from a soft and tasty thing that comforts one's mouth into a sharp-edged crumbly piece of char?
Hitler, that's who.
As a matter of fact, Thursdays when our masters provide the bagels they also provide bearclaws, but of course they are the sort of bearclaw without poppyseeds and with far too much puffy dough and not enough filling. Decent, had one no recourse to a bagel, of course, but not a real bearclaw.
I would purchase more bagels and fewer doughnuts (or, I suppose, "donuts", given the name of the establishment) were the cream cheese not such a ripoff. The bagels are, I believe, eighty cents, but the "schmears" are two ten, and somehow plain cream cheese will therefore cost me a buck forty. Damn near the cost of two plain bagels.
The Hell with that. Oh, I could bring in my own cream cheese, but if I have to bring food with me I might as well just stash some frosted Mini-Wheats in my cube and milk in the fridge and eat those. No, we're talking about purchased, ready-to-eat food, and if they are going to charge me two whole bagels' worth for a simple jot of cream cheese, they can go toast things in Hell. With Hitler.
Speaking of Mini-Wheats, I saw the most excellently marketing-stupid thing the other day. Yes, you guessed it. Jumbo Mini-Wheats. That's right. Rather than simply purchasing Shredded Wheat - the original form factor, from which Mini-Wheats were taken and mini-fied - you can now buy extra-large Mini-Wheats.
Extra-large. Mini. Wheats.
I don't recall the exact name of this marketing monstrosity (it probably involves the adjective "extreme"), and in truth the upsized miniatures are only about eighty percent the size of a Shredded Wheat. But still. At least "jumbo shrimp" aren't "jumbo miniature shrimp".
Those would be prawns. And not, thank God, for breakfast.
- Sun Ra