Dinner for Breakfast
Have you ever had breakfast for dinner? When I was a kid, we did it all the time. Scrambled eggs or cheese omelettes, bacon, hot buttered toast and orange juice. Sometimes even pancakes or waffles. Sometimes we tossed the eggs and bacon with spaghetti and had Carbonara.
Now that I'm the Mom, we still do breakfast for dinner. My Spaghetti Carbonara is a little more embellished...with nutmeg, Grana Padano, and pancetta. My kids love to over-ride traditional dinner fare and have breakfast for dinner, it's fun. It's a special night when you get syrup instead of ketchup, after all. Breakfast for dinner is a welcome change when the family is so over my comfort food.
But me, I like dinner for breakfast. I have never been a big breakfast eater. I find cereal cold and impersonal. I only like oatmeal as a color, or in cookies. Eggs bore me after a while. I think the real culprit is my coffee and the half bottle of creamer I put in my heaping cup of Joe every morning. It fills me up.
Brunch I can do, though...since we're talking about food and childhood, a few times every year when I was a young, my parents would take me to Gladstone's for Fish in the beach cities of Los Angeles where brunch was done right....cracked crab, Eggs Benedict (my absolute favorite of all time), potatoes many ways, omelette stations, sushi, oysters on the half shell, chocolate everywhere. I could do that everyday, but I would soon be dead. And if it's not brunch the Gladstone's way, I don't want it.
I'm sort of Veruca Salt about breakfast. I want indulgence, and if I do not get it, trouble is imminent. I spite myself with low blood sugar, a caffeine crash, and an excess of calories the rest of the day.
Unless there are leftovers in the fridge from last night's dinner. I have been known to eat dinner before 10:00 a.m.
Tuna casserole, pasta with steamed shellfish, baked potato and steak are all fair game. I justify it this way...pre-workout, I need complex carbs and protein for an optimal exercise session. Or post-workout, it's good to eat dinner and re-fuel, to recover, with hearty food.
Now that I'm the Mom, I have no time to indulge myself at breakfast time. If I'm lucky, I get a Carnation Instant Breakfast down before we walk to school. Or I wait until I get home from dropping the kids off and sit back to have dinner again. It's something about my life that makes no sense, it defies convention, and I find that so tempting. Like the way kids think eating breakfast for dinner is so silly they just can't say no.
To me, seeing a styrofoam container denoting restaurant leftovers, or a well-seasoned Tupperware on shelf #3 with shrimp and rice satisfies my hunger and keeps me out of a rut. It separates me from the "part of this nutritious breakfast" facade that the media wants me to buy into. My body does not know if protein comes from an egg or a fish stick. I get the fuel I need, I get plenty of exercise, and I drink lots of water. Does it matter what I eat, when I eat it?
Only to me.
Dinner for breakfast is a harmless little domestic rebellion and it tastes soooooo good.
Now that I'm the Mom, we still do breakfast for dinner. My Spaghetti Carbonara is a little more embellished...with nutmeg, Grana Padano, and pancetta. My kids love to over-ride traditional dinner fare and have breakfast for dinner, it's fun. It's a special night when you get syrup instead of ketchup, after all. Breakfast for dinner is a welcome change when the family is so over my comfort food.
But me, I like dinner for breakfast. I have never been a big breakfast eater. I find cereal cold and impersonal. I only like oatmeal as a color, or in cookies. Eggs bore me after a while. I think the real culprit is my coffee and the half bottle of creamer I put in my heaping cup of Joe every morning. It fills me up.
Brunch I can do, though...since we're talking about food and childhood, a few times every year when I was a young, my parents would take me to Gladstone's for Fish in the beach cities of Los Angeles where brunch was done right....cracked crab, Eggs Benedict (my absolute favorite of all time), potatoes many ways, omelette stations, sushi, oysters on the half shell, chocolate everywhere. I could do that everyday, but I would soon be dead. And if it's not brunch the Gladstone's way, I don't want it.
I'm sort of Veruca Salt about breakfast. I want indulgence, and if I do not get it, trouble is imminent. I spite myself with low blood sugar, a caffeine crash, and an excess of calories the rest of the day.
Unless there are leftovers in the fridge from last night's dinner. I have been known to eat dinner before 10:00 a.m.
Tuna casserole, pasta with steamed shellfish, baked potato and steak are all fair game. I justify it this way...pre-workout, I need complex carbs and protein for an optimal exercise session. Or post-workout, it's good to eat dinner and re-fuel, to recover, with hearty food.
Now that I'm the Mom, I have no time to indulge myself at breakfast time. If I'm lucky, I get a Carnation Instant Breakfast down before we walk to school. Or I wait until I get home from dropping the kids off and sit back to have dinner again. It's something about my life that makes no sense, it defies convention, and I find that so tempting. Like the way kids think eating breakfast for dinner is so silly they just can't say no.
To me, seeing a styrofoam container denoting restaurant leftovers, or a well-seasoned Tupperware on shelf #3 with shrimp and rice satisfies my hunger and keeps me out of a rut. It separates me from the "part of this nutritious breakfast" facade that the media wants me to buy into. My body does not know if protein comes from an egg or a fish stick. I get the fuel I need, I get plenty of exercise, and I drink lots of water. Does it matter what I eat, when I eat it?
Only to me.
Dinner for breakfast is a harmless little domestic rebellion and it tastes soooooo good.
