There are people for whom breakfast is the high point of the day. I’m not one of them. I’m ornery as a bear in the early morning, but I don’t have Bruin’s appetite. Give me coffee, and lots of it. That’s all I’ve ever really wanted. My mother and I even had running battles around the breakfast table when I was a kid. She wasn’t about to send her brood off to school without food in their bellies. I had little enthusiasm for anything but toast, however. (Coffee wasn’t on the breakfast menu for us kids.) Dark‑brown toast dripping in butter, that is, not the dried‑bread (with‑a‑smear‑of‑grape‑jelly) surrogate that my brothers wolfed down. But my mother was every bit as stubborn as I was. She didn’t have time to cater to singular tastes, not when she had only one two‑slot toaster and lots of mouths to feed. The upshot? More often than not, breakfast meant oatmeal. And I hated it.

I hadn’t heard of Samuel (“Dictionary”) Johnson back then, of course, and I doubt I’d have had the patience to unravel his intricate, 18th‑century prose even if I had. But I’d certainly have nodded approvingly at his dictionary’s famous definition of oats if I’d known about it. “Oats,” the notoriously curmudgeonly lexicographer noted, were “a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.” Don’t get me wrong. I’ve always loved horses, and I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for Scots, too. But Dictionary Johnson’s rather arch putdown would have resonated with me, nonetheless. So you’ll understand why I regarded my mother’s oatmeal as something little short of gruel and unusual punishment. Still, I seldom escaped to school without first scraping my bowl clean.

That changed when I left home. At last I could indulge my passion for coffee‑only breakfasts without stint, though I occasionally had a couple of slices of toast, as well. Toast done my way, obviously. But then, in my twenties, I joined up with a mountaineering expedition. It didn’t take long for me to learn that breakfasting on coffee alone was no longer an option. I’d have to change my ways if I didn’t want to fall behind.

I didn’t. But guess what was on our breakfast menu high in the mountains? A hint: It wasn’t toast…Read more…

 

 
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