The Age of Breakfast: The Age of Extravagance
This is part one of a short series about keeping food simple, living in the moment, and how current day trends often take us away from this.
A while ago I started dubbing these last few years as The Age of Breakfast: The Age of Extravagance.There seemed to be a trend of photos cropping up of one of my favourite things: breakfast food. I’m sure you’ve seen them: frames filled with wooden pallets or modern cut plates, clean utensils, heaping mounds of food, juice and coffee, and crusty bread. All of this held together by a mixture of earth tones and wood. I had two thoughts: what an excellent composition and how the hell is one person supposed to eat all of this?
Insert side note: I am not trying to knock these photos or the people that take them. In fact, if this is the breakfast you love, keep on eating on! We all have different preferences, and that is what makes this world a beautiful place. Besides, I won’t deny that the above looks pleasing.
I found myself mesmerized by these photos. Plates filled with multiple types of meats, eggs, and whatever else you can find stashed in your kitchen. To me it looked less like breakfast and more like the moment you cook everything in the fridge before it goes bad. I started seeing this less as a meal and more as a statement. Breakfast surpassed dinner as the materialist’s meal. It all led to me finding a more minimalist approach to my own dishes.
For me, I have always enjoyed a simpler breakfast. Well, simpler in terms of food stuffs, but richer in deliberate flavours. I prefer to taste each item and exploit it to the fullest. I mean, if you’re eating four types of meat, are you really tasting each one? My favorite morning meal is what I call The Simple Breakfast: rice vinegar poached eggs, hash browns, salt and pepper, paprika, and a bit of spice to bring out a kick. Oh yea, you need coffee–er, well I do. Don’t get me wrong, there is a fair bit going on here, but the flavours all work to bring out the magic within two simple things: hash browns and poached eggs. It is the fact that it is all based around two things, and not twenty, that led me to call it a simple breakfast.
Maybe it’s just me, but being lambasted with more types of meat and produce than I can count takes me out of the moment. The focus becomes all that is in front of me, the material and dollar signs, leaving the joy of each bite behind. The simple meal seems to keep me in the moment. And, I think we could all do well by living a little more in the moment at hand, don’t you agree?
Newfoundlander Does 