BREAKFAST is a meal Scott and I can do without. At the most for us it is usually a cup of herb tea, of our own growing and drying, and a glass of rose hip juice, of our own growing and bottling. If we linger over the meal with talk amongst guests, we might serve bananas or apples, chew a handful of sunflower seeds, raisins or nuts. But usually before starting work in the morning we drink our herb tea with honey, and the rose hip juice for vitamin C. We feel lighter, brighter, more buoyant and brisker with this light repast.
He felt as fresh as a two-tailed tadpole, strong and ready for anything, although he had not yet had a bite of breakfast. Or perhaps exactly on that account.
KURT ARNOLD FINDEISEN,
Abglanz des Lebens, 1950
There have been times in our food experimentation (which we are always attempting) when we ate fruit only, and other times when we went without breakfast entirely, figuring the body had done nothing all night but rest, and needed the stimulus of some outdoor activity before it had earned the right to break its fast.
It is right evydente to every wise man that to a man having due concoction and digestion as is expediente, shall in the mornynge fastynge, or with a lytell refection not onely have his intuecion quycker, his jugement perfecter, his tonge redyar, but also his reason fressher, his eare more attentife, his remembraunce more sure, and generally al his powers and wittis more effectuall and in better astate, than after he hath eate abundauntly.
SIR THOMAS ELYOT,
The Boke Named the Govenour, 1531
The stomach needs time for rest, as well as any other muscular organ.
WILLIAM A. ALCOTT,
The Young Housekeeper, 1842
The body has utilized the sleeping period to assimilate the previous day's food, and does not need to be immediately plugged full again with food. With little energy having been expended throughout the night, the body's needs are nearly nil. The inner organs, particularly the stomach, can have sixteen hours on its own (from a six o'clock supper to noon lunch the next day) if no breakfast is taken. Breakfast is a good meal to skip.
Our theory is: the less food the better in life, as long as you get enough. You can train your body to expect and demand a big breakfast daily, or you can train it to accept little or nothing. No breakfast at all can become as much of a habit as eating a large amount of food with which to begin the day.
We agree with Thoreau who said, "The best breakfast is a breath of morning air and a long walk." Robert Louis Stevenson, writing on Thoreau, spoke of his abstinence from tea and coffee. "He thought it bad economy and worthy of no true virtuoso to spoil the natural rapture of the morning with such muddy stimulants."1 Of Talleyrand, the French statesman of the late eighteenth century, Alexander Dumas said: "Dinner was the only meal he ate, for in the morning all he had before getting to work was three or four cups of camomile tea."
It is remarkable, that notwithstanding the period which elapses between the meal of the previous day, and the hour of rising in the morning, there is generally little inclination to eat on first getting up from bed. This appears to arise from the condition of the stomach after a night's rest. This organ having during the night digested all the food remaining in it, probably falls in a state of quiescence; so that until the system is stimulated by exercise, or the stomach itself by food, hunger is not excited.
SIR JOHN SINCLAIR,
The Code of Health and Longevity, 1833
Two meals a daye is suffycyent for a rest man; and a labourer maye eate thre tymes a day; and he that doth eate often lyveth a beestly lyfe.
ANDREWS BOORDE,
A Dyetary of Helth, 1542
Most people eat for breakfast what the neighbors eat. If they are French, they drink coffee and consume croissants; if British, porridge, bacon and eggs, and always coffee or tea; if Dutch, bread and slices of cheese and their milk-coffee. In India they may eat bananas and chappatis; in China, rice, and tea. Most Americans relish orange juice, toast and coffee, often with puffed, boxed cereals, easy to buy and to store and no effort to prepare. Custom and tradition dictate these breakfast habits.
What more elegant breakfast can possibly be prepared—what more likely to raise the heart in thanksgiving to the bounteous Author of all good—than a basket or dish of strawberries, just from the native vines and stems, with all the richness of fragrance and deliciousness of taste, which in these circumstances cluster around them? And who is there, what with his mixed, heated, greasy breakfast, might not well envy (were envy ever admissable) his more fortunate neighbor, that can command for himself and his rising family, such simple, nutritious, cooling, wholesome and truly philosophic viands.
WILLIAM A. ALCOTT,
The Young Housekeeper, 1842
In our time we have feasted on one kind of fruit for meals pretty well all over the globe. In Singapore we've eaten all we could hold of ripe and dripping-sweet pineapples for a morning meal; in India, luscious mangoes or tiny finger-length bananas; in China on juicy persimmons; in southern France, on melons of all types; in South America on papayas. We have had cherries in Oregon and Washington states; peaches in Ohio; grapefruit or oranges or prunes or pears for breakfast in Florida and California. In New England we grow plenty of strawberries, raspberries and blackberries, which make fine breakfasts. But the prize fruit of all in our estimation, of which we never tire, is the apple. It does not cloy the taste. It is neither too sweet nor too sour. No matter how many you eat you can never get sick on them or of them.
To the individual of perfect appetite (though I do not yet know where such an individual can be found) the best way probably is to make a breakfast now and then of apples alone.
WILLIAM A. ALCOTT,
The Young Housekeeper, 1842
We aim at not mixing the fruits we eat. You can only eat so many peaches or strawberries at one sitting. Then you've had enough. You tend to overeat if you take a bit of one thing and then on to another or back to the first. Eat all you can or want of one thing and then stop. It is better for your weight as well as easier on the digestive system.
Although Scott and I usually carry on our morning's work with a cup or two of our herb tea drink until noon, I realize that we are country folk who stay at home from morning to night, day in and day out, and can have a solid lunch. Many of my readers may work at jobs that allow time for only a quick sandwich and a cup of something in the middle of the day. Their feeding situation must perforce be quite different than ours. So I am setting down some simple, hearty, homemade, harmless filler-ups for those whom Izaak Walton, in The Compleat Angler (1653), counsels to eat "a good, honest, wholesome, hungry breakfast."
POPCORN
Instead of buying cornflakes or any other of the boxed varieties of breakfast foods, why not try popcorn for a quick, easy, cheap breakfast? A big bowl of fresh popped corn, to be dipped into with one hand, and a good ripe banana in the other hand, combines to a fine and filling breakfast. And what could be easier for the cook, especially if someone else volunteers to pop the corn.
We buy a 50-pound bag of popcorn kernels wholesale, and can use up to two bags a year, as we serve popcorn on any occasion from breakfast to lunch to evening gatherings. One-pound bags or smaller cans of popcorn are available in most food stores.
The earliest way to pop corn was to put a cup of kernels with a little oil in a heavy pan with a tight lid over a hot fire. The pan must be shaken back and forth to keep the kernels moving. It is not a long process. A friend of ours makes quick and easy popcorn this way in a large cast-aluminum pot on his electric stove. There are also long-handled wire baskets available, made just to pop corn over an open fire or stove. We have an electric corn popper which is very efficient. Melted butter and salt may be added to the corn just after it is popped, but we prefer it plain or with a little sea salt.
HORSE CHOW
In the early 1930s, before health foods and granola became household words, I made up a dish we called Horse Chow. At that time raw oats were not being eaten by humans. This is the simplest granola of all and perhaps one of the earliest. It was dreamed up in the Austrian Tyrol, where we holed up one winter in a village far from supplies and with a very slim larder of hit-or-miss articles, but with great appetities.
4 cups rolled oats (old-fashioned, not the quick-cook kind)
1/2 cup raisins
Juice of 1 lemon
Dash of sea salt
Olive oil or vegetable oil to moisten
Mix all together. We eat it in wooden bowls with wooden spoons.
WHEAT BERRIES
Wheat berries is a prettier name than common ordinary wheat seed, which is all it is. It can be bought in health food stores or in a feed store (where it may have been treated with pesticides, so watch out). The ingredients are the simplest ever:
2 cups wheat seed, soaked overnight in a quart of water
In the morning, drain and drink the resulting elixir water, or feed it to your houseplants. Put the seeds in a kettle with enough water to cover by at least one inch, and let boil gently for up to 2 hours, adding more water as the seeds become absorbent.
On the back of my wood stove, the berries might cook up to 3 or 4 hours till they become tender. We eat them hot or cold, with honey, chopped apples or bananas, or (my favorite) a dash of olive oil and sea salt, or Scott's invention and daily addition to whatever grain is served at lunch.
SCOTT'S EMULSION
1 tablespoon honey
2 tablespoons peanut butter
Stir vigorously together into a smooth emulsion in your own bowl. (This is where the guest and eater has to do the work, not the cook.) Then fill your bowl with wheat berries (or kasha or millet). Again give all a good old stir and consume unlimited quantities.
MUESLI
One uncooked cereal dish that has become popular in the United States during the last decade was known in Europe years ago. We first came across it in the 1930s at the Bircher-Benner clinic in Zurich, Switzerland. When I made it at home in Vermont forty years ago, people liked it but couldn't pronounce its name: Bircher-Benner's Muesli. A facetious friend called the dish Bishop Brown's Mucilage. The original recipe called for soaking the rolled oats overnight, but I don't find that necessary.
2 cups raw oats (old-fashioned, not the quick-cook kind)
4 apples, unpeeled and grated
1/2 cup grated or chopped nuts or sunflower seeds
1/4 cup raisins
1 tablespoon lemon juice (the grated rind can also be added)
Mix all together and eat immediately.
Variations: If sweetening is preferred, add a bit of honey or maple syrup, or moisten with a bit of apple juice or orange juice.
In those unholy days before we were responsible for inscribing our food-eating habits for posterity, sometimes for a birthday breakfast or special occasion we sweetened our muesli with a few spoonfuls of super-saturated-with-sugar condensed milk, and topped it with thinly sliced bananas, or with strawberries or raspberries or blueberries. When served for dessert our guests called it Apple Ice Cream. It is really too voluptuous for a breakfast food, unless for a once-a-year celebration.
MIRACLE MUSH
2 apples, unpeeled
1 carrot
1 beet, peeled
1/4 cup grated nuts
Grate apples, carrot and beet and mix together. Sprinkle with grated nuts.
Variation: If too dry, moisten with some apple or orange juice.
DO-IT-YOURSELF GRANOLA
There are many granola recipes with a dozen or more ingredients. Here is a simple one.
3 cups rolled oats
3 cups rolled wheat
2 cups wheat germ
1/2 cup cut-up dates or dried apricots
1 cup chopped nuts
1/2 cup raisins
Mix all together, and store in a cool place or refrigerate. It can be browned in the oven until it is crunchy. When serving, some eat it with hot or cold milk.
Variation: You might add any one or more of the following: a teaspoon or two of sesame seeds, flax seeds, flaked coconut, brewers' yeast, pumpkin seeds, or even a dash of spices.
HOMINY GRITS
6 cups boiling water
3 cups ground cornmeal, soaked for an hour in water to cover
3 tablespoons butter
Dash of sea salt
Honey or maple syrup to taste
Add boiling water to soaked cornmeal and cook in double boiler till thick and smooth, about half an hour. Add butter, salt and honey or maple syrup. Serve hot.
Variation: Chopped or ground-up figs or dates may be added before serving.
SIMPLE BAKED CEREAL
11/2 cups cornmeal
2 cups rolled oats
1 cup wheat germ
1 cup grated coconut
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup honey
1 teaspoon sea salt (optional)
1 cup water
Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl, then add the wet. Spread on a large shallow pan and bake for half an hour. Put into individual bowls, and serve with honey and milk.
Variation: A small amount of sesame seeds, raisins and chopped dates may be added.
HEARTY BARLEY
Soak 1 cup barley overnight in a quart of water. In morning, bring to a boil, then cook slowly for 15 minutes. Drain off any excess water and save same for soup stock. Serve with honey or maple syrup. This can also be eaten cold for a dessert, with cream and more sweetening.
BROSE
This Scotch "stirabout" is not cooked at all. It is made by pouring boiling water on oatmeal and stirring briskly till thick and smooth. Use as much oatmeal and as much boiling water as will bring it to the thickness required. When hot soup stock or butter or oil is added instead of boiling water, it is called Fat Brose in Scotland, and Budram if the hot cereal is turned into cups or small molds and eaten cold.
Whether Brose or Budram, it is good with honey, maple syrup and milk.
BREAKFAST WARMER
1 cup cracked wheat or bulgur
1 apple, chopped
4 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup shelled nuts
1/2 cup raisins
Bring 4 cups water to a rapid boil. Add the wheat gradually while stirring. Simmer for 15 to 20 minutes, only till wheat is chewable. Do not overcook. Remove from the stove and add, stirring, the apple, butter, nuts and raisins.
SUPER CEREAL
2 cups cracked wheat or bulgur
6 dates, chopped
2 tablespoons sunflower seeds
2 tablespoons sesame seeds
1 ripe banana, sliced
Honey or maple syrup or applesauce, optional
Stir the bulgur into 3 cups cold water and stir until smooth. Cook over low heat for 15 to 20 minutes, stirring frequently. Take off stove and add dates, seeds, and banana. Sweeten as and if desired with honey or maple syrup. If too dry, I have stirred in some applesauce.
OLD SOAK CEREAL
1/2 cup millet
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup buckwheat groats
1 cup raisins
2 tablespoons butter 1/4 cup sunflower seeds
Honey or maple syrup
Soak the above ingredients overnight in ample water to cover. In morning bring to a boil, adding more water if needed. If kept just at boiling point, the grains will stay separate and not gum up. Add a dab of butter and a handful of sunflower seeds on serving, with honey or maple syrup to taste.
1 Robert Louis Stevenson, Men and Books, 1888