If there is one thing that my various visits to Poland have taught me, it is that for many, many years I had been starting the day with a lacklustre breakfast.
As a child and for as long as I can remember, cereal, in one of its various guises was what breakfast was. Shredded Wheat, Weetabix, Rice Crispies, Sugar Puffs and many more. Cereals, we lapped them up, we loved them, we must have.
Once in a while at weekends there was a fry-up, not one of those Full English affairs that all foreigners think we eat every day, but a more modest affair. Bacon or sausages, baked beans, egg, fried bread.
In the winter there was porridge occasionally and then some magical stuff called Ready Brek that made you glow in the winter’s morning light or so the advertisements would have us believe. I remember looking at my hands on the way to school one morning after a Ready Brek breakfast, squinting at my un-gloved fingers and trying to convince myself that I was glowing. I wasn’t.
Toast was always an option, usually with marmalade, sometimes with Marmite (or even Sandwich Spread) but even toast is basically processed cereal. So, cereal then; by and large and for most of the time, breakfast was a bowl of cereal.
At some time in the 1970s I became aware of the notion of the Continental Breakfast, it was something that was laughed at, something that was made fun of on TV. Our archetypal Brit abroad when faced with coffee, croissant, and gauloise, demands to know where his fry-up is.
Oh, how we laughed at those pesky foreigners and their funny breakfasts. Where were their Shredded Wheat? Why didn’t they have Weetabix like we did?
A bowl of cereal made soggy with milk, this was the breakfast of champions, this was what forged the empire!
When I was younger there were any amount of sugared-up cereals aimed at children, now of course sugar is seen as the enemy. I for one have never been too keen on having sugar on my cereal. Something like Frosties though (They’re Grrreat!) was different, the sugar was already added and I have to admit to liking the odd bowl of Frosties and other pre-sugared cereals, but they are not something that I would eat a lot of which is a bit odd because I do have a sweet tooth. There’s just something about sugar and breakfast that doesn’t sit quite right with me.
Family holidays skewed the picture, guest houses and B & Bs that had breakfast buffets with cereal and fry-ups and other stuff, stuff for the more cosmopolitan or dare I say continental palate. Over the years I dabbled with different breakfasts; cooked and cold, bacon sandwich, egg sandwich, egg and bacon sandwich, salads in the summer.
Triple Decker:
Take three slices of white, pappy, supermarket bread. Using a mug, cut a circular hole out of the middle of one of the slices. Fry or grill some bacon and set aside. Cut some thin slices of cheese, place some of the cheese on one of the whole slices of bread. Fry the slice of bread with the hole in some hot fat. Halfway through, flip the bread/egg slice over to ensure that both sides of the bread are properly fried and crack an egg into the hole in the bread as you go. Place some of the bacon on top of the first slice with the cheese on then add the fried bread/egg slice on top. Add more bacon and cheese on top of the fried bread/egg slice with ketchup to taste, finish off with the third slice of bread on top.
OK, not the healthiest thing on the planet but it sure was tasty. But even so, somehow, I always fell back to cereal.
Now look, I’m not saying that cereal isn’t good or nourishing or enjoyable. I for one certainly do enjoy a bowl of cornflakes and cold milk, no sugar thank you, but I get to asking the question; “Why cereal?”
I have often been tempted and given in to eating the remains of the previous evening’s meal to break my fast. Leftover pizza, curry or Chinese. It’s a thing, it’s what you do at a certain age, and I have never suffered any adverse effects from scoffing the remains of the previous day’s spicy food for breakfast.
Why then is it the done thing, the accepted norm to have a bland, cereal based meal to kick-off the day?
Arriving in Poland I really didn’t know what to expect for breakfast. Making my way down to the hotel’s dining room I was presented with a vast array of foodstuffs. Cereals of course, scrambled, and fried eggs, slices of bacon, sausages – not British bangers but a sort of frankfurter affair, mushrooms, baked beans, toast, hash browns.
All things to make a Brit feel at home I suppose, but look, over there, What’s that? Bread rolls, cheeses, cold meats, pickled peppers, gherkins, herring, sausages (Polish, not Brit sausages) of different shapes and sizes, tomatoes, hard boiled eggs, and other interesting looking stuff including fruit and cakes, yes cakes for breakfast. It took me a day or two to pluck up courage, but I’d soon abandoned the identikit Brit breakfast in favour of the home-grown affair, and I have to say that I’ve never looked back.
I haven’t gone totally polskie śniadanie, I still have cereal, the occasional bacon sandwich, I’m quite fond of a sliced conference pear, sultanas and a dollop of yogurt, but I do enjoy my version of a Polish breakfast; dark rye crispbread, pâté, pickled gherkins (these have to be a Polish brand, because the Polish version is much more tasty), cheeses and cold meats.
Then of course there’s the whole subject of drugie śniadanie, the Polish “second breakfast” but that’s probably another story. 😀
No to śniadanie, smacznego!
A Point of Views, A Polish Odyssey, and Other Stories. 