The Skinny on Big Breakfasts

Breakfast. It is an event I live for. I could have and maybe should have been married to a farmer just because I like a belly-full of breakfast anytime after 3:30 am on any day of the week that ends in Y. The nostalgic notion of me and my other half rising to the rooster crowing each and every morning is a scenario that I hopelessly romanticize every 24 hours when my alarm goes off at 5:45 am. The aromatic percolation of my automatic coffee maker is music to my ears and sweetly sipped though my nostrils. It not only signals to my brain that chemical help is on the way to assist in my waking, but it reminds me that I have an empty stomach that needs to be filled shortly if it is to sop of the three cups of medium roast I intend to ingest before I get my face fully on this morning. When I get ready to prepare breakfast, which is never a wimpy yogurt or fruit suggested by well-meaning friends who diet endlessly, I picture myself in an apron, a Swiss-dot apron to be exact, and I see the same old 1940’s farm kitchen I have cooked breakfast in over and over in my mind; the one with a large white and chrome cook-stove that is warmed and ready to sizzle whatever I toss in the skillet. The kitchen of my mind has a view of an outdoor clothesline through the window above the big farm sink and has red, wooden-handled utensils at my disposal in big clear glass canisters on my Hoosier cupboard... Farm breakfasts. Something about that term not only conjures up images of perfectly cooked sunny-side-up eggs that could have been on the cover of a Denny’s menu, but I imagine all of my eggs collected in a wire egg basket after my swollen apron pockets could hold no more of my shelled loot. My bacon and ham are farm-fresh also, but I beg to leave the details out of how that was collected and prepared for my use. Nostalgic or not, I have a weak stomach and prefer to reside in my own naïve existence about where bacon and ham come from. Perhaps I have read Charlotte’s Web too many times, but I skip this part. I like potatoes with breakfast, any kind, preferably hashed and slightly salted and fried until the edges are crispy and break sharply when sliced with the edge of my fork and yes, douse them in ketchup, please. Farmers eat bread with breakfast, I reckon, and I will take it in any way it’s served. I like big, bloated blueberry muffins that spill over their paper liners and fancy seeing them snuggled together in a wicker serving basket lined with a flour sack cloth and then slathered in sweet cream butter so thick it runs down my wrist when my teeth puncture the muffin top as I bite down. Other mornings a few slices of buttered toast and strawberry jam simply sweeten the deal. I make large breakfasts every morning. My breakfasts are usually eaten alone, in bed, and I go over the day’s game plan with God. It is not eaten over the Formica-topped table as it is eaten in my mind’s kitchen, nor eaten with my husband the farmer who wears overalls and a ball cap, always eating too fast as there are chores to be done. For the farmer, breakfast is utilitarian, not sleepy or to involve leisurely conversation in between bites of American fries and gulps of juice. It is the mornings I get out the waffle iron, special and occasional, he knows I am hot under the apron and chores will have to wait…






On weekends in the summer, I like to rise extra early to attend a good old farm auction. This is where I stand elbow to elbow with my fellow breakfast eaters and bid on items purely for the nostalgia of it all. The auctioneers know me by name and recognize easily my hot pink jacket amidst the sea of John Deere green and camouflage. They wink at me when they know something I fancy is about to be put on the block and they graciously help me load my wares when the auction has concluded. I carry tow-straps and tape measures and drive a pickup truck I have lovingly dubbed “my big shopping cart.” I would never dare think of not eating a man-sized breakfast before I go toe-to-toe with my competition. My auction mornings are somewhat ritualistic and the other morning I happily decided to eat my breakfast at the local café where the stools still spin and the breakfast specials are written on a dry erase-board next to the day’s pie selections. I perused the paper from my chrome-plated perch and swilled hot cups of black, tarry coffee. The opposite side of the horseshoe-shaped counter hosted 5 or 6 old farmers who nodded politely at me as I ate. As I broke chunks off of my omelet and shoveled fork-fuls of syrupy pancake into my mouth, I eaves-dropped on my fellow breakfast doer’s as they evaluated each other’s menu selections as the waitress brought out plate after plate of auction fuel. One short, ruddy gentleman who wore striped overalls remarked to a tall, lanky fellow who wore a ball cap with the logo of a corn fertilizer on it how bad eggs were for people to eat and that he had recently changed his breakfast diet to include sugar-free juice and oatmeal for weight control. I looked up slowly with a strip of bacon hanging out of my mouth holding the end like a lit cigar to hear them exclaiming about their weight. “Earl, how much do you weigh, you old fart?” Earl placed his hands on his love handles and said, “You know, Don, I haven’t weighed this much ever. I need to start eating more fruit I think. I hear they have a yogurt with fiber in it.” They all nodded in agreement with their arms folded across their flannel shirts as if they were Congressional members voting on a legislative measure. I wanted to weigh in on this nonsense and slam my strip of bacon down like a judicial gavel. “This can’t be, “I thought, “All farmers eat eggs, at at 4am, at that. It’s seven am! What about the bacon, fried potatoes, ham slices, orange juice, sausage links, cinnamon rolls? Are you nuts? You aren’t real American farmers. What have you done with them? You are fakes! You must be dairy farmers from California! Isn’t that where happy cows and health-nut farmers come from! I bet you aren’t even wearing work boots…bet those are Birkenstocks you are hiding behind the counter!



I was somewhat saddened by my encounter that morning and I fretted all weekend about the condition of the American farmer. Their farms have dwindled in numbers, mom-and-pop farms have been swallowed up by factory conglomerates and now farmers exist on a banana and a yogurt for breakfast? I am a lover of the nostalgic, the classic, and the time-worn. I prefer a flea-market to an outlet mall and a set of cracked, old baking bowls to a set of new, registered-for wedding china that collects dust in a cabinet from Slumberland. I realize that time and technology have pushed past me and I am content to live slightly in the past, left to relish the last of the farm auctions and gather their fossils into my apron pockets as they disintegrate into the precedent. I guess the kitchen in my mind cannot be outfitted by the Home Depot or other mammoth box-stores and I am content with that. I will ponder the ways of the world from my kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a short-stack. Breakfast, my first love.

The Accidental Italian...she didn't see it coming. Like a bicyclist peddling upstream into oncoming traffic, she was hit head on, thrown from her comfy seat and suffered a momentary lapse of reason. My childhood dream of becoming a freelance writer once seemed a road-blocked prospect, shunned by well-meaning relatives who thought I should pursue more "practical" professions like nursing or accounting. "Writers go hungry," they told me. After a decade and a half of living off the fat of other occupations far more "sensible" in the eyes of suburbia, my hunger pangs for a career as a writer were gnawing at my backbone and eating holes in my heart. Here I am...an Italian by shear accident; a born-again writer by pure happenstance, but a destiny by no simple chance.....I want this. Move over, bacon...I don't claim to write about everything and anything. I offer no literary smorgasbord for the like. I fancy Italy and all things Italian. I love God. I like broken furniture (stay tuned). I am a good girl who is simply a bad girl who thinks she will never get caught. (God knows better) I own a pair of love-handles and a cordless drill. I can fix things but I have more experience breaking things. Primarily promises and my teeth. (God is fixing me on the first of the two!) I swoon over subtitles and all Italian music makes me cry. I get irritated when grown-ups wear Disney and I am morbidly fearful of frogs ( I heard they can choke out a grown man). I like big,deep bathtubs and I have read the same magazine issues over and over again in them. I like wine and if I could find an acceptable way to have it with breakfast, I would. ("I'll have a bowl of Grape Nuts, an english muffin with jelly, and a glass of Pinot, per favore.") Instead I drink coffee and lots of it because they won't let me have crack at work.


I have learned a few valuable lessons in my short go-round on this earth. My time-worn toast adopted from an Irish saying and heard by many of whom have "clanked" cocktails with me:

"Here's to those we love, may they always love us back. Here's to those we loved, who have never loved us back. May God turn their knees around to the backs of their legs so we recognize them by their stinkin' limp all the days of their lives!"

A domani, mei amici...

The Joys of Being a Basement Employee

Dreams are funny things.  I don't mean the kind that have woken me from a dead sleep and have left me staring at the ceiling wondering about what I ate before bed that made me dream I was rolling a giant powdered donut down the interstate.  Not those kind of dreams.  I mean the kind that burn rubber on my brain in the middle of a slogging afternoon, shoulder to the wheel at a job that tested slighlty below average and recommend only by the unchoosy, impartial moms who didn't choose Jif.  "Hi. You have reached the voicemail of Jamie.  I am away from my desk right now.  I have sailed away to Margaritaville in seach of a  hot tub with my name on it.  Everyone else thinks I have diahhrea from a not-so-stellar salad bar selection at lunch today and assumes that I am spending the afternoon in the stall of the faculty lounge, but in reality,   I have absconded in hot pursuit of buried purpose and hidden meaning and will not return again until my soul-searching (ahem, I mean gut rot) wears off.  If you find my purpose in life, please place it in an interoffice envelope and kindly return it to me. I would greatly appreciate it.  Beep." 

Though I envisioned myself escaping my 40-hour a week existence via knotted-up sheets  and repelling down chucky brick-faced walls like a business-casual SpiderWoman, I was quickly reminded that I have a basement office.  When you work in a basement like I do, the only way out is up. When others in my place of business come down the 3 or 4 flights of stairs to see me and place orders or request equipment, I often resist the urge to say in my best Phantom of the Opera voice, "Don't look at me. I'm hideous!"  One might expect my skin to be the palor of a wax worm seeing as how the only light I receive for 8 hours out of my day is from the pole-barn sized flouresent lights that scream "we got enough killowatts to guarantee your sterility or your money back" and "we gotta blue light special on scratch and dent catheters in aisle 5!"  I distract them from my dermal-deficiency like the way a matador would distract a bull, by roping yards of bright, heavy jewely around my neck each day to divert their attention from the excess face foundation I have spackled on this morning with a grout trawler.  "Ooh, I like your necklace today!" the nurses exclaim, when they really want to proclaim, "Wow, you might need to up your Vitamin D intake. Your heading for a case of the rickets, young missy!"
 My current gig, though predictable and safe, sterile and sometimes isolated, is cut off from all forms of natural light and incoming air.  My workspace is oxygenated by the artifical, dry air that is pumped in to me to keep me sustained much like a goldfish in a Wal-Mart pet aisle who depends upon a algae-encased bubbler to keep it alive.  If you don't clean a fishtank, your fish will suffocate on dirty, recirculated, tired air.  Though an aquaruim is considered safer than say the Great Barrier Reef, it affords the goldfish a ho-hum existence in an environement devoid of any natural light, food sources, and opportunites to thrive and create. It won't die, but it certainly won't thrive. I, like my friend the goldfish,  swim in circles, lethargically, startled when someone taps on the glass unexpectedly.  They wave and make funny faces at me.  I make fish lips at them and they usually leave in disgust and I am left to repackage rectal tubes for the afternoon until the next well-wisher stops by and asks for the fish lips. I typicaally refuse. Unless its Friday....its my favorite and I like to put on a show on Fridays.
When I am not making fish lips or trying to take a nap while treading water behind the back rack of urinal cakes, I am dreaming.  I dream when I am awake, with my eyes open and my mind blank but noisy like static on a television station that doesn't run anything after midnight.  It is when I dream my best dreams.  I like a little fish, rise to the surface, swimming upwards from the basement toward a light that hovers overs the murky waters.  Swim harder, swim faster, kick your legs, lift your head,dog-paddle if you have to.  Just don't stop.  To my chagrin, someone will ultimately decide to give me the Royal Flush one day when they deem my fish lips aren't funny anymore or my urinal cakes just don't bake up as fluffy as they used to.  I know in my heart, sometimes a flush is just what you need to be forced out in to the big, nutrient-rich sea. A sea full of natural light and food sources to fill my belly and extend to all corners of my soul, a kaleidoscope of creation that sways in the gentle waves of my imagination await and beckon me with fishy kissy-faces that make me swoon the way dreamers do. Sometimes we have to get flushed and endure the one-way red-eye express through the poop-chutes of life to ultimately reach the sea.  Don't be discouraged by your fishtank in the basement, little fish.  That plastic castle anchored in the purple aquarium rocks? Why its just the right spot to hide out and dream until your ticket arrives.  Don't be afraid of the flush, though the waters swirl and sploosh, the dizzying descent only lasts a minute.  Hold your breath, it can be stinky. Close your eyes and take the opportunity to dream, your time in the poop-chute can be productive...SPLASH!  You have arrived.