A better breakfast

I always burn the first rice cake. It’s a trait I inherited from my mother. We both buy the breakfast cakes in multiples, knowing that one package is not enough for the week because at least half the servings will end up wasted, overdone and uneaten. In fact, the package label advises against toasting—the rice cake is to be eaten as is; its structure is much too delicate for applied heat. Still, we toast.

Here’s the thing about rice cakes: there is something sterile about them. They’re not sweet, or particularly salty. Unless flavored, they are a singular umami. Unlike other breakfast carbohydrates, the rice cake has an unforgiving harshness, a jagged crunch that I find satisfying in the mornings.

The rice cake has no emotion. It lacks the softness and comfort of toast, and it has no guts, no doughy interior like the bagel. The nooks and crannies of the rice cake were not so sweetly named as those of the English Muffin. I’m not sure they even have a title, the gaps are just airy, empty pockets between the bonded grains.

Butter is useless on a rice cake; it simply melts and pools off the sides. A rice cake requires a spread of more substance—jam, or peanut butter. I like to habitually over-toast my morning cake and layer it with cream cheese.

The rice cake is not a patient food. You cannot put in the oven and expect it to wait for you and thus it is an unforgiving breakfast predilection for individuals who continue to toast it against better judgment. My mother sets the timer on the toaster, the knob dialed all the way to the left, pointing at light, but still the cake burns. She’ll stand before the open toaster oven, singed cake still steaming, and flap her arms momentarily in a small gesture of exasperation, looking like a disrupted bird—mildly ruffled but not distressed enough to take flight. The rice cake will be tossed into the sink to cool before being piled on top of the compost heap, awaiting transport from kitchen counter to outside garden (my most dreaded chore as a child—schlepping counter compost deposits outdoors) where it will eventually melt back into the earth. A second rice cake is then placed into the toaster oven and watched, diligently, for the first signs of telltale browning around the edges. We never burn the second cake—a single sacrifice is sufficient for the morning ritual.

Dinner was the meal my family ate together most often when I still lived at home. I realize now, however, that our distinct breakfast rituals have had an equal, lasting impact on me. If dinner was an orchestrated meal, breakfast was a free for all, revealing individual preferences, and inherent personalities. My father usually arrives at the table first to claim most of the morning news. He layers his breakfast cereals—shredded wheat, granola, flakes—as if planning an architectural undertaking, layering grains and milk in a decided pattern, building a foundation for the day.

My mother rarely commits herself fully to the breakfast table, alternating between sips of coffee and gathering last minute supplies before heading off to work. Often the coffee is reserved in a stainless steel thermos to be consumed on the go, and is then forgotten on the kitchen counter for the remainder of the day.

I too find it hard to sit still so early in the morning. I leave my apartment still chewing the remnants of a scant breakfast like some hasty ruminant, or toting bread, or rice cakes with me for toasting on the job. At the small bed and breakfast where I worked during the summers on Cape Cod, I continually unnerved my boss when my forgotten morning rice cake launched, flaming, from the pop-up toaster on several occasions. I topped it with strawberry jam and ate it anyway before heading off to scrub toilets and make beds for the majority of the afternoon.

I started a new project recently, a campaign really, for better breakfast—to take a little extra time each morning to converse with my stomach; to ask it what it would like to eat instead of stuffing it with carbs on the go, and to enjoy tea, and toast, and a few minutes of reading before picking up the true pace of my day.

I was fortunate enough to be awarded the Julia Child Foundation’s Teaching Assistanceship at Boston University for this semester. I get to return the BU kitchen now, 4 days a week, where I prep ingredients for visiting chefs’ demos, and work with new students, and offer, gentle, I hope, guidance for how to better hold a knife. I spend the day inventorying and rearranging, and learning even more about food. And that often leaves, as usual, little time to enjoy it in a leisurely, unencumbered, manner. It’s back to stand-eating several meals a day, I’m afraid, in the name of gastronomic education. The least I can do is reclaim the calm of breakfast for myself.

Today’s breakfast: homemade whole wheat toast with a smear of butter, a fried egg on arugula (yolk still deliciously molten), and a cut up pear, bosc if you’re wondering. A better start than yesterday’s omelet debacle; this signals, I think, good things for the day.