LIfe This Week 12/3/2018: My Last Meal Was…


Breakfast.  It’s also my favourite meal of the day because breakfast can be an adventure, a luxury or a comforting and nourishing routine at home.  I just don’t get all those people who can happily start the day without a meal that sticks to your ribs and a piping hot mug of something that clears your mind and readies it for the day ahead.
I have so many breakfast memories.  Here are just a few.
Waiting at Bowan’s bacon and egg roll stand for my very own breakfast in a bun to sauce up as I saw fit.

Visiting the local markets for breakfast and a wander is the perfect way to explore a new city.  You get to see the city come to life as the serious business of nourishing its residents for the day ahead begins.  There’s routine and order to the process, there’s lively banter and then there’s the tempting aroma of food as it is being made or delivered.

One of my favourite memories of London is visiting the Borough Markets in London and having my breakfast in the shadow of cherry blossom trees and gracious buildings.  I remember how I forgot about how cold it was as I waited patiently for my Raclette.

It was made before my eyes.
And I still remember how delicious that cheese tasted when my steaming plate was finally handed over to me.  It was if I’d discovered cheese for the very first time.

My first day in Downtown LA was spent exploring its Grand Central market and picking up fruit for breakfast.

There was a surreal moment in Dubai when I found myself ordering coffee and a pastry from an outlet of Melbourne’s Brunetti that looked exactly like the original on Lygon Street in Carlton.   Oh Melbourne, I have many happy breakfast memories of you too.  Especially Lygon Street which is where I once stationed myself for a fortnight as I did a course at the university up the road.

Such is the power of an Australian breakfast purveyor that Master SSG and I found an Australian cafe on Orchard Street, Singapore that served fabulous pastries and coffee.  They even did babycinos.

Closer to home, eating even the simplest breakfast at my favourite cafe down the road makes everything good again.
Sitting at its familiar tables each weekend is a sign to me that the weekend has begun.  It might be one filled with fun, it might be one filled with work, it might be one the comes off a particularly trying week but for that moment I have good food, good coffee and my family around me and that’s a wonderful thing indeed.

Breakfasts at home are special for more mundane reasons.

Large mugs of tea that are worth their weight in gold when you’ve just come home from a week in the US where water has to be boiled in a hotel room coffee maker rather than in the proper way in a kettle.

Familiar, hearty breakfasts like baked oats that set you up for a busy morning at work.  Making the oats is part of my weekly kitchen routine and again, that productive familiarity is reassuring even when life gets a bit hectic.
The humble breakfast at McDonalds.  So loved in Australia that many of its options are now all day offerings at its restaurants.  The coffee is decent, the has browns always hit the spot for fussy five year olds and the English muffins are softer and fluffier than any I’ve found in the bread aisle at the supermarket.
For a then Toddler SSG, McDonalds hot cakes were life.  Not only an easy to eat and delicious food, they were things to be experienced with all the senses.  Sometimes under the watchful eye of the local constabulary as this photo from Christmas Day 2013 shows.

I wonder if McDonalds Australia will ever sell oats with strawberry jam and PG Tips tea as they do in the UK…..

What was your last meal?  Was it a favourite?


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