If I want to give my husband a treat, I cook eggs and sausage for dinner. Breakfast-for-dinner has always been a favorite for my family.
Where did the idea of certain foods for breakfast come from anyway? I remember reading the Laura Ingles Wilder books to my children. She described a breakfast of leftover squirrel stew as her family traveled by wagon across the country. On the other hand, her husband Almanzo grew up on a farm in New York. He started the day with eggs, meat, and apple pie.
As a child of the sixties, I ate boxed cereal every morning. Sugary cereals were all the rage. Remember Cookie Crisp? Click on the picture to listen to their jingle.
Cereal was originally manufactured by Ralston Purina, the dog food company.
Apparently, cereals were developed as a healthy alternative to big farm breakfasts. When people moved from the farms into urban areas, they didn’t change their eating habits right away. Eating too much in the morning gave them indigestion. Grains instead of meat and eggs solved the problem. Cereal manufacturers made them easy to prepare and touted their health benefits.
The high sugar content was added later. As a human race, we specialize in over-doing things. I don’t think anyone touts the health benefits of Cookie Crisp. But, they add vitamins, so it’s all good, right?
By the time I was a teenager, I had learned that cake or pie made a perfectly fine breakfast, especially fruit pie. These things are no worse than boxed cereal. So, why not? I once heard a comedian read the list of ingredients in chocolate cake and compare it to the ingredients in breakfast cereal. It’s all the same.
Researching for this blog, I found an article entitled, Chocolate Cake For Breakfast Helps You Lose Weight, Says Science. I can get on board with that. I’m not sure I understand their explanation, but it’s on the internet, so it must be true.
Why don’t we eat salads for breakfast? Google showed a report about how few people eat salad in the morning but provided no explanation. I’ve never seen a salad on a breakfast menu.
I tried to find out where the three meals a day originated and how breakfast ended up being breakfast. Information was fuzzy. One source said the three meals started with the industrial revolution and revolved around factory schedules. Another reported that ancient Romans ate three meals a day, at least the wealthy ones did. That’s well before the industrial revolution.
Each society ate to suit its own circumstance, which had to do with work schedules and food preparation time. Higher class people ate three meals a day, while poorer classes didn’t. Farm workers ate heavy breakfasts to fuel up for the day.
Eggs and bacon are relatively quick to prepare, which is why breakfast-for-dinner is a treat for me, too. And it leaves the morning time slot open for cake.