Flashback Monday? Just go with it.

Now that I got my little "I'm rubber and you're glue" hissy-fit out of my system, I can get on with more important (and more importantly) fun things.  Like my 3-days late Flashback Friday.  But hey, that's who I am.  I'm late.  At life.  I was late to work this morning even.  (Though that one really wasn't my fault.  Have you ever been boxed in at the daycare drop-off line for 15 minutes?   As inconsiderate and rude as it was of those slow-moving front parkers, I think handled it quite well.  There was no horn blowing and my blood pressure didn't even rise...outside of the already elevated norm anyway.  Thank you very much.)

I've always been a creature of habit.  Always.  This hasn't gotten better with age, and I don't anticipate that it will.  So when I got up Saturday morning and did the dishes that I had left in the sink on Friday night (because I always do that), it was all part of the routine.  I got the coffee started, unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher, and started thinking about what we'd have for breakfast (that would use up the 2 extra loaves of bread I'd gotten to make ham sandwiches for the daycare kids end-of-summer party - how many kids did I think I was feeding?!).  That's when I remembered Saturday morning breakfasts at my house growing up.

During the week, we had quick breakfasts, if we had them at all.  My sister and I were never really breakfast-eaters growing up.  And to call my mom an early-riser would be, well, a blatant lie.  By the time we were old enough to get ourselves ready in the morning, we did.  Before that, our breakfast consisted of a Little Debbie that my mom would hand to us, which we would hide behind the couch in it's unopened glory.  Then we'd lie straight through our teeth and say that we'd eaten it.  (True story.  I'm sorry, Mom.  The jig is up.  Though I'm sure you figured out where those forty Star Crunches came from whenever you moved the couch.)

Saturdays, however, were an entirely different story.  On Saturday, my dad cooked breakfast.  And he did it right.  There's just something about waking up to the smell of bacon frying and coffee brewing to lure you right out of bed when you'd otherwise want to be sleeping.  It didn't matter what was on the menu for breakfast, he cooked it all in the electric skillet.  Swapping flavors and grease between all of the elements.  The list of menu items seemed endless and varied from week to week.  There were fried eggs over-easy (which we lovingly referred to as dip-it-in-it eggs), scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage patties, sausage links, pan-fried ham, and scrapple, that beloved mid-atlantic mystery meat that still makes me salivate when I think of it.  There were the various baked goods made with love by my grandmother who would bring them over when she and my grandfather came over to visit every Thursday night, like peach cake, zucchini bread, and stollen.  And then there were the countless pieces of toast my dad would make in the toaster oven, because for some reason, we never owned a toaster in our house growing up.

I would sit at the bar watching him cook it, no doubt jabbering my little brains out.  When it was finished, he'd set us out two plates (because I was the only one who ever got up with him to enjoy the feast).  Then he would sit down, open the paper up, and work on the Jumble and crossword puzzles in the paper while I read over his shoulder.  Every 60th clue or so, I'd actually know the answer and I'd chime in (though I'm sure he was just letting me have it, like I do with Ben now).

And between the two of us, we consumed an incredible amount of breakfast meats.

I guess this is why, flash forward to now, I cherish my Saturday morning routine so much.  We do breakfasts big on Saturday.  Though the choices are (ever so slightly) healthier and less saturated in crossed-over grease, my kids do love some extra butter.  Among our favorites: waffles, hashbrowns,  pancakes & sausage, bacon (of course), cinnamon rolls, crescent rolls with jelly (or sausage or both), blueberry muffins, jelly/cheese toast, and cheese eggs.  I've even gotten to be a little brave.  There's something about cooking breakfast that isn't at all like cooking dinner.  Could it be because I enjoy it?  (I think so.)  At any rate, I'm willing to experiment and it pays off sometimes.  My favorite new breakfast item is chocolate chip, walnut waffles.  I wish I had one right now.

I guess this is also why I make a concerted effort to serve my kids a good, hearty breakfast every single morning of the week.  And I watch them while they eat it (because I would hate to find jelly toast behind my couch).  Do we have poptart mornings?  Of course.  Do we eat cereal from time to time?  Yes, especially because if given the choice, Abby would subsist on cereal alone.  But breakfast is a meal that I have grown to absolutely love.  Crave even.  It's the most important meal of the day, right?  I don't know about the health and metabolism aspects of that.  But for me, it's important because of the memories.  And I hope I'm creating those for my kids...not just on Saturday.