Weekend Assignment #243: Breakfast

I have a job interview in the morning. Since I don't want to ask you about jobs (maybe some other time), let's focus on the "morning" part:

Weekend Assignment #243: The founder of the Weekend Assignment, John Scalzi, is infamously fond of bacon, not necessarily attached to a cat. Setting aside the whole cat thing, what do you like to eat for breakfast?

Extra Credit: How often do you actually eat breakfast?

When I worked at First Magnus, my typical breakfast was tuna salad and crackers because it was cheap and easy and not horrendously unhealthy. When I worked at Beaudry, my breakfast was usually a bagel or nothing, except for the office pot luck breakfast on Fridays. During my 90-day contract working in Oro Valley and commuting with John, who still works near there, we were in the habit of stopping at McDonald's nearly every day. John typically got a plain scrambled egg (or as McDonald's called it, a "folded egg"), while I usually ordered an Egg McMuffin. (At right: an actual breakfast, circa late 2005.)

Since that last job ended, I've been having things like half a peanut butter sandwich or a bagel with cream cheese for breakfast, or no breakfast at all. This morning I did something extremely self-indulgent. I went and bought my first Egg McMuffin in over two months. I know: wicked, huh? It's not just a question of the carbs and calories and fat; I shouldn't have spent the money, either. But on the good side, there's good protein in the egg and cheese and Canadian bacon, which as far as I'm concerned is a traditional but misleading term for a thin, round strip of low grade ham.

If I had tons of money to throw at breakfast, and if all options were both nutritious and wonderfully slimming, I would probably vary my choices a lot: bagel sandwich with egg one day, a blueberry pancake the next, a ham, cheese and tomato omelette the day after, and maybe oatmeal or shredded wheat after that. I'd love to eat at Denny's or IHoP a couple days a week, and get a slam or its equivalent. But when time or money is tight and you're not much of a cook, it gets entirely too easy to do the same thing every day, whether it's a stop at McDonald's or all natural peanut butter on a slice of bread. I suppose that's healthier than all those Grand Slams, anyway. (At right: pumpkin pancakes with apple topping, November 2006.)

Do I actually have a favorite? If pressed, I will probably admit that a nice stack of pancakes with some kind of fruit topping, plus bacon and sausage and perhaps one egg over easy, would be best of all. But part of the appeal of something like that is the rarity of its appearance in my actual diet. Even a daily trip to Denny's or Millie's Pancake Haus would get dreary over time.

Your turn! Tell us about your favorite breakfast(s), if any, and how often you eat them. Write about this in your blog along with a link back here, and leave a link to your entry in the comments below. I'll be back in a week with a roundup of your responses. Here are the ones from last week:

For Weekend Assignment #242: Local TV Host, I asked you to tell me about local tv shows you grew up with and their colorful hosts. Our sampling was small, but nearly nationwide:

Julie said...

How about a whole string of 'em? When I was a kid I lived in Wichita, KS. KAKE-TV had a puppet chef called Cakeman. One of the big shows at Christmas was "Santa's Workshop,", which featured Cakeman. The guy who did Santa moved to another station and took his workshop with him. Cakeman became (I kid you not) Toyboy!

Florinda said...

My sister and I did watch Wonderama on Channel 5 whenever we could on Sunday mornings. For years, I wasn't sure whether that was a local NYC show or not, since I rarely met anyone from outside the Tri-State are (NY/NJ/CT) who had ever heard of it; as it turns out, it originated from New York, but it was only broadcast there and in five other cities (one of which was LA, which explains why my SoCal native husband and brother-in-law remember it too), so I'm going to count is as local.

Mike said...

We have a local channel, WGN-TV, that is also a superstation. I don't know how long it was that way, but I remember being amazed at seeing the local news guys on the TV in Michigan when I was visiting once. I did know that the news was local by the way. There are three shows that I remember from the channel, let me know if you have seen them in other areas. We had Bozo's Circus, The Ray Rayner Show, and Garfield Goose.

That's it for now! I hope you'll take the time to participate this week. Write about it in your blog or journal, and include a link back here. Then leave a link to your entry in the comments below. Please don't forget your links! I'll be back in a week to highlight the results.

Also, I'm still running low on ideas here, so I need your input. What would you like to see as a Weekend Assignment topic? Email me your suggestions (mavarin at aol.com). If I use your topic you'll get full credit and my undying thanks.

Karen

P.S. The Tucson Citizen story that mentions me is now online:

Job prospects grow dimmer as Arizona unemployment rate hits 6-year high

Let's hope this is the last day of me being part of that grim statistic.