“Who came up with pancakes?

‘No, Dear, you can’t have cake for breakfast, you can have fried cake with syrup for breakfast.

Load up on that and try not to nap.’”

-Jim Gaffigan

I can remember getting up in the morning to the smells of my father cooking breakfast. One of his favorite ways to break the fast was by cooking blueberry pancakes. He didn’t use just ordinary pancake mix however. Oh, no. That wasn’t good enough. He would fry up blueberry muffin mix into the shape of a pancake. These blueberry monstrosities were then covered in butter and syrup. These things were so thick, so heavy, and so rich that two bites were usually good for me. As a kid, I remember enjoying those first few bites, and then I’d be sorry. A few days later though, I was at the breakfast table awaiting a serving of blueberry muffin-pancake hybrids.

The strangest thing about this ritual was that sweetened cereal was not allowed in the house as I was growing up. My mom would use maybe a third of the sugar you’re supposed to use in Kool-Aid. Needless to say, my brother and I grew up not even adding sugar to cereals such as Corn Flakes and Rice Krispies.

I remember a time when my cousin came to visit, and we brought in food items that before were forbidden: his favorite cereal Corn Pops, and his favorite soda Mountain Dew. This was a bit different than the Corn Flakes and Diet Pepsi that generally populated our cabinets and refridgerator. If memory serves, this resulted in several sugar-induced comas for me and my un-acclimated little body.

So now I find myself a father, writing this blog while eating a bowl of Kellogg’s Frosted Krispies. We generally keep the sugary cereals to a minimum in our home, but I can explain the Frosted Krispies! This is pretty good actually.

When I saw that such a cereal existed, I nearly walked right on by. But then I stopped and saw the promotion on the front of the box: with only 9 tokens or $9.99 plus 1 token, I can have my very own Starfleet ensignia T-Shirt, in honor of the new Star Trek movie coming out May 8th!

The box only pictures Science blue and Operations red, but I’m holing out hope that the order form will include Command gold! ‘I am Captain Kirk!!!’

But I digress.

The questions I have for all of you is this: What traditions for ‘the most important meal of the day’ did/do you have? Do you do anything different than your parents did? How do you keep breakfast healthy when we’ve been trained to think that the only thing that ‘sounds good’ for breakfast is something completely sugary or cholesterol ridden (I didn’t even get to sausage and bacon…) ?

Any thoughts?

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