What kind of cheese?
My mother was often working, and my parents’ relative work schedules often made my father the one who was there when we were getting ready for school. But even with one or the other parent at home on schoolday mornings, we never got a cooked breakfast. It was always cold cereal and milk, and maybe some juice.
I don’t even recall toast being a regular part of a schoolday breakfast, although we could have done that if we wanted. I half recall that sometimes we might have a toaster pastry (Pop Tart) or toaster waffles (Egg-Os), but that wasn’t routine.
Basically, a weekday breakfast was just something to get through quickly, so we wouldn’t be leaving the house on an empty stomach. Even lunch was a relatively light meal. Dinner was our only large meal of the day and that was nearly always a fresh, home-cooked meal. Late-night snacks were also routine.
We grew up in the 1970s. We learned about nutrition from Saturday-morning public service announcements, like “Time for Timer.”
Time for Timer - Breakfast - YouTube — basically the lesson was “just eat something before school.”
American.
NOT the “cheese food”. Actual American cheese with is a real cheese. Yes, a “pasteurized processed cheese” but an actual cheese. Don’t be misled by the gummy fake cheese.
I’ll just note that the Laughing Cow cheese that a well intentioned friend got me to try to change to insisting it was a better cheese is also a “pasteurized processed cheese”
Anyhow - sometimes I’ll change it up as a bagel and cream cheese. Woo-hoo! Once in awhile if I run out of American (very rare) or I’m at someone’s house who doesn’t have American I’m happy to use mozzarella or a cheddar.
I just find something very comfortable about the routine and consistency of that breakfast habit.
Cold cereal with milk. Supplemented with coffee when I was in high school. On school days it was “regular” cereal, and on weekends we were allowed to eat “sweet” cereal, like Captain Crunch and Lucky Charms and Frosted Flakes. But we had a sugar shaker on the table, and were allowed to add as much sugar to the weekday cereal as we liked.
My mom was a stay at home mom, but one of the first things she taught us on the road to independence was how to make ourselves breakfast. She tells me that when I was about 2 or 3, she put the milk on the lowest shelf of the fridge, and the cereal on a low shelf of the pantry, so I could make my own breakfast on weekends and she could sleep in a little. (I was the oldest of 4, and my mom had several miscarriages, so she was pregnant through my of my early childhood. And being pregnant made her tired.)
Working mom. Breakfast varied:
- Cold cereal /w milk (usually something not too sugary, like frosted mini-wheats)
- Poached egg on toast
- Scrambled egg
- Omelet (rarely on weekdays, common on weekends)
- Cheese toast (cheddar /w paprika)
- Oatmeal
- Toaster strudels
- Fried egg + buttered toast/english muffin
- Waffles
Pretty good variety, though somehow none of it stuck. I like breakfast foods but I never eat breakfast.
Cold cereal was most common. Maybe Grape Nuts and yogurt. Toast, toaster pastries, Eggo waffles. Mom was already at work when I got up.
Usually cold cereal and milk. If I was running late and didn’t have time even for that, then a couple of pop-tarts on my way to the bus stop.
What kind of bread?
Mom, who was a ball of fire and got an incredible amount of work done each day, was not a morning person, so Dad fixed us breakfast: farina, oatmeal, french toast, soft boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, fried eggs. Sometimes eggs came with bacon or sausage, always with toast. I think we only talked Mom into buying Maypo once. Dad wasn’t a great cook–the French toast often had white streaks–but he did his best, and it always tasted good. Mom, I should add, was always up and cheerful. She left for work (teaching) right after we kids left for the bus.
Dad always said oatmeal would “stick to your ribs.” I’d sit in class imagining my ribs paved with oatmeal and wondering why that was important.
Two major blasts from the past. Wash them down with Tang?
Mom used to make fresh donuts on a special weekend. She also made pecan rolls and this kind of huge circular bear claw with her Hot Roll Mix. Later she discovered monkey bread.
This was a turn of phrase I ever heard only in old movies and stuff. Until now, I never really thought about what it meant, but I suppose it means that this will keep you from feeling hungry again soon?
Nah. Tang was the ‘special’ drink I had with my grandpa in the evenings. Our secret ingredient to make it special: a shot of lemon juice.
Back in the 80s we learned that if you mix Tang with frozen lemonade concentrate, you get an epic orangeade.
I’m guessing a shot of Southern Comfort would make it extra special.
Grandpa was the son of a raging alcoholic, and quite the teetotaller himself.
“Only sugar has more sugar!”
“Flesh eating bacteria in every box!”
Cold cereal was always available to us. Mom never cooked breakfast on a school day.
Very, very rarely she’d make the family pancakes or similar on a holiday.
My brothers and I also went through periods of wanting “baby cereal” (as we called it) - which was quite literally some kind of mixed hot cereal stuff intended for babies. I think it had oatmeal and rice and some other stuff. We would warm the milk ourselves (usually leaving a layer of scorched milk in the saucepan - this was pre microwave), mix the cereal up in a bowl, and dump a ton of sugar on it.
Mom DID make our school lunches, as at my school, there was no cafeteria. Typically a cheese sandwich (with mayonnaise… UGH), a piece of fruit, and some sweet item. That lasted until we went to high school, where there was a cafeteria.
My mother was a saint. I’m the youngest of four kids who grew up on a farm, plus both my parents were elementary school teachers. Mom fixed breakfast every morning for the six of us, either before getting ready to drive into town to teach, or before starting on the house or farm chores that needed doing. Sometimes it was cold cereal and toast, but most of the time it was eggs, or pancakes, or French toast, or hot cereal, and bacon or sausage if we had some on hand. We usually had orange juice or some other fruit as well. On Saturdays she would often bake cinnamon rolls which we had for Sunday breakfast before church.
Cold cereal and milk (I’d buy Quaker 100% natural with raisins and dates if it existed still) or maybe toast with peanut butter.
Ahhh, Danish-Go-Rounds and Tang…we had those fairly often, too.
As a kid, I was an extremely fussy eater, and my mother was pretty indulgent of me, and what she’d buy for me, in an effort to get me to eat something (I was thin as a rail until my early 20s).