My mother packed a lunch for me depending on the school cafeteria situation. She would sometimes put notes in them, a favorite one being, “Help, I’m being held prisoner in a school lunch factory!”
I honestly don’t remember eating anything other than some type of cereal for breakfast on school days. It was either cold cereal like Life or Chex or warm cereal like the flavored oatmeals (Cinnamon & Brown Sugar was one of my favorites) or Cream of Wheat. All those little instant packets. I would make it for myself. My routine was to wake up around 6 a.m., watch the early morning cartoons, eat breakfast around 7 a.m. while watching the Bozo Show, and then leaving for school at around 7:30 or 7:40-ish. (I can’t exactly remember, but I think we started the day at 8 a.m. and ended at 2 p.m. in elementary school.)
Typically, my dad would already be off to work (he left at around 4 a.m. or 5 a.m.) and mom would be sleeping (she came home from her shift at around 2 a.m. or 3 a.m.) So I would get myself to school. (It was about 2/5 of a mile walk in my elementary school days, and during high school, it was a 7-mile city bus ride.) Looking back, I guess we were pretty independent kids, but we weren’t latchkey kids, as the staggered work schedules of my parents meant that somebody was home when I left and returned.
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Cereal.
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My mom was a SAHM, like the OP. But she had no interest in doing unnecessary work. Besides, we loved cereal!
Now, if the thread was about breakfast made by roommates, it would get weirder. There are a handful of people in this world who would nod knowingly if I said "Smelt for breakfast, in the Zanzibar Room."
Exactly right. I never figured it out, either. I looked it up before I posted but could only find that the expression dates back to 1603, which doesn’t tell us much.
Ha! I LOVE that! We made our own lunches when we hit third grade, usually a sandwich (in a waxed paper bag because Baggies were just coming out but were pricier) and an apple. The apple rolled around in the lunchbox and got bruised, so I seldom ate it. I had a horrible nun when I was in third grade and was anxious and had a stomach ache that whole year, but Mom would stick funny or encouraging little notes in my lunchbox, and they helped.
My son liked cafeteria food, but my daughter hated it and would pack a lunch. I kept up the “Mom notes” tradition.
I bet our moms would have liked each other.
Pop Tarts sounded like some mythical ambrosia to me as a kid, but my mother would never buy them. I bought some as an adult and I was disappointed that they were no better tasting (often worse and definitely much more expensive) than plain old toast with peanut butter and jam.
Same here, but I did sometimes get Toaster Strudels instead. Pop Tarts still had that kind of mythical status. When I eventually tried them I was immensely disappointed. When I found out that part of their popularity was because they can be eaten cold, I was even more disappointed. Cardboard with colored wallpaper paste on top.
For me, in elementary school (1960s), it was either cold cereal (Honeycomb or Frosted Flakes were my favourites), or instant oatmeal. I usually ate breakfast with my Dad, who helped with the boiling water for the instant oatmeal. I had apple juice; he had juice and coffee.
Later, in junior high and into high school, it might be cold cereal, but it might also be toast spread with peanut butter, and juice. In my later years of high school, the juice was replaced by coffee. I don’t think I ever ate the “complete breakfast” that’s been depicted in TV ads for cereal–not the fault of my parents, just that I never felt like eating all that in the morning.
I don’t remember my mother ever making breakfast for anyone, regardless of how hot or cold the weather was. If I wanted a bite to eat before leaving for school (which was literally all I ever had) I had to fend for myself. This was kind of odd, since I was a pretty big kid (“husky,” as they used to say) and didn’t thin down until I literally starved myself in 10th grade. A friend of mine said this was because of my metabolism: “Your body stores food, mine doesn’t. If we lived in caveman days, you’d be alive and I’d be dead.”
If I cooked anything, it was likely a hot dog (roasted over an open flame and wrapped in a slice of white bread), buttered toast sprinkled with KD powdered cheese, or (if I had lots of time) Spam and scrambled eggs. Otherwise I’d just cut (bite) off a chunk of whatever cold meat there was in the icebox (yes, we called it that) after a holiday (turkey or ham).
When I stayed at my dad’s place, it was pretty much the same, but I had more time to make a decent meal (I was partial to grilled kosher salami and Swiss cheese sandwiches). When he and I were on the road (which was often, especially in the summer) it was breakfast at someplace like HoJo’s or IHOP, or the motel where we were staying.
Sometimes I’d go for the whole eggs/bacon/sausage/hash browns/toast breakfast, and sometimes for just a bowl of oatmeal.
Wheat. Preferably actual whole wheat although that can be surprisingly hard to find.
Lately, homebaked wheat. Which is real whole wheat.
You didn’t ask what tea?
(For many years, Earl Grey. Now I rotate between that, English Breakfast, and Irish Breakfast.)
I went to school in the 70s and 80s. My SAHM would set the kitchen table every day, with cereal bowls (cornflakes usually, occasionally porridge), plus we’d have white sliced toast with margarine (I did say it was the 70s), and marmalade.
She would also take breakfast on a tray up to my father, who had breakfast in bed everyday. This used to incense my teenage feminist self, but she told me once that it was a way of keeping him out of her hair so she could have some me-time.
When I got together with my now-wife, I was shocked to hear that her parents never made them breakfast. They were more of the ‘2 cups of tea and 3 cigarettes before they could speak’ style of parents.
Mainly just cold cereal, rarely cheese-on-toast or eggs and soldiers, but not on a school day. Cereal was serve yourself, though the choices were what’s there or nothing most of the time, cooked items were made for me when I was deemed too young to use the gas burner stove. After that, I did the occasional toast, but we didn’t have a toaster, so it was a bit too much messing around. Mum was SAH until I was 8, more or less.
Mum did do a packed lunch until I was at secondary school, which she was normally making while I had breakfast. They were awful, soggy sandwiches, made with jam or this revolting meat paste stuff on brown bread- rarely cheese, which were the only ones I liked. There’d also be a piece of fruit -usually an apple- and one ‘treat’; a chocolate biscuit or bag of crisps was the usual. There was also a flask of nasty cheap ‘squash’ (fruit flavoured liquid, diluted with water). Blech.
School insisted we ate/drank all of what we brought, but weren’t very attentive, so I did manage to fill out these inadequate lunches with stuff friends didn’t want from theirs most days. My first school had a canteen, and did what looked like pretty decent cooked food, which I always looked at with longing, while eating my soggy sandwich. The kicker is, I recently found out, from Mum, that we were actually entitled to free school meals the whole time. So my mother insisted on making these crap packed lunches for years- and constantly complained about having to make them, and how much it cost if we made any criticisms (we weren’t allowed to make out own, as we’d probably pick the more expensive options)- in the full knowledge that we could have had a free cooked meal daily. I still can’t quite wrap my head around that…
Mom was a sahm till late grade school, then I was on my own.
I was usually late getting ready for school, so Mom would hand me a pop-tart (which a hated), or buttered toast, on my way out the door. I actually loved the taste of freezing buttered toast on a cold wintry morning, trudging through the snow.
When I stayed home sick, I got the soft boiled egg on a porcelain egg-stand with my 4 buttered soldiers (General Toast, Colonel Crumb, Lieutenant Crust, and Private Bread), and a cup of hearty English tea (mom was a WWII British war-bride; tea was part of her DNA). If I was very sick (or acted like I was very sick), I’d get a cold, stiff glass of milk, with a shot of Cocoa Marsh at lunchtime.
On non-school weekday mornings, I could get anything: eggs & scrapple, scrapple & ketchup sandwiches, porridge, Farina, or a box of variety-pack cereal (big bro and sis fought for the good varieties, like Sugar Pops, leaving me the crappy ones good for constipation, like All-Bran).
On Sundays, our family of atheists and agnostics would sometimes make an appearance at church, so not much time for breakfast.
Saturday morning was breakfast extravaganza day. “Hey, ma, wake up! We want pancakes and sausage!!!”
“Give me a bit, Tibby, I’ve got to gather my wits.” That line always mystified me, but I never asked what it meant…it sounded kinda dirty.
It took forever waiting for those pancakes and sausages to be prepared. Poor me, literally starving to death, watching lame Hanna-Barbera cartoons in the rec room, with the aroma of frying breakfast sausages tempting my nostrils. Life was tough, back in the day.
I grew up with a single working mom in the nineties, so she never had time to make breakfast for me. A lot of cold cereal, eggos, honey buns and toaster strudels, to be sure. I too was disappointed as an adult when I tried a poptart and it was extremely pasty and bland while still somehow being incredibly bad for you.
I lived right across the street from my elementary, middle and high school (was a giant triplex), so I walked to school even in elementary school. This gave me enough time to get there early, and I remember they used to have some sort of 'before school breakfast time" hangouts that would often serve those french toast sticks that were ambrosia to young kids. I occasionally think about buying a frozen bag of them as an adult, but I don’t want to ruin the mystique.
Growing up in the 80s it was me-the youngest and the only boy-- and my three older sisters.
The only thing I remember eating regularly for breakfast as a child was cold cereal; neither of my parents were morning people and were really grumpy in the morning.
My favorites were Cookie Crisp and Cocoa Krispies/Pebbles. I never liked milk with my cereal and always ate it dry(even to this day).
One of my sisters loves Cocoa Puffs til this day. Another Fruit Loops.
We also occasionally ate toast with butter and cinnamon sugar.
I do remember my parents making pancakes but that was usually for dinner. They occasionally cooked bacon but I don’t remember having it for breakfast. Also I remember them making the cheap Banquet sausages in the microwave.
I had scrambled eggs and corned beef hash for the first time as a teenager and did not try a fried egg or an Egg McMuffin til I was in my 20s. . I was in my mid 30s the first time I tried an omelette (and a bagel for that matter.)
My parents bought English muffins to make pizzas for us to eat but strangely I really don’t remember eating them for breakfast.
Everyone who maligned Pop Tarts is totally missing the point. 
First of all, eat one UN-toasted (i.e., raw)? No-effing-way! They must not only be toasted, but toasted to a rich, deep brown. Not burnt, mind, but very dark.
And forget the ones with any kind of icing-- bleccch! Way too sweet. Today the only ones without icing are strawberry…sigh…so be it. Back in my day, there were more un-iced options.
The roommate of a long-ago boyfriend really understood Pop Tarts. He ate them well-toasted in a bowl topped with vanilla ice cream, Pop Tarts a la Mode. Yum! Not for breakfast, but as a bedtime snack.
Once at Big Lots, I found some Pop Tarts that had clearly not been a best seller, but I liked them: guava-flavored.
Was she afraid people would think y’all were the poor kids?
I can occasionally find brown sugar-cinnamon ones un-iced.
I agree the ones with icing are way too sweet, but the average American has been conditioned to live on sugar these days.
ETA: That’s weird - I tried to quote just a part of ThelmaLou’s post and got a whole bunch of stuff.
In another thread not too long ago, someone said generic Pop-Tarts were better than the real thing.
Brown sugar and cinnamon are my favorites!
In descending order of likeliness on any given day:
- Nothing; live until lunch
- Cold cereal & milk
- Hot oatmeal, microwaved from the little packets
This was in the 70s/80s. Parents divorced so my sister and I largely took care of ourselves in the morning and it was enough to make the bus on time without settling in for a hearty breakfast. Once I was in high school, I tended to get there early (friend drove who had an early class) so maybe I’d roll into the cafeteria and eat something if my pockets allowed.
That “complete breakfast” was invented by breakfast cereal companies for a marketing campaign. There was never such a concept in American culture or in scientific nutrition. Before breakfast cereal marketing, people had all kinds of breakfasts, but it was commonly pretty simple, such as a coffee and a doughnut or toast or a bagel.
The idea of a complete breakfast was based on the “full English breakfast” of eggs, bacon, sausage, etc. Of course Americans did eat eggs and bacon for breakfast … or lunch … or dinner … but the idea of there being a set of things that constituted a “complete breakfast”–eggs, bacon, orange juice, cereal–was a complete invention by cereal companies. I believe once refrigerated shipping became available, the orange juice companies also pushed this concept.
And note the way they phrased it “It can be part of a complete breakfast.” It’s not “you should have cereal for breakfast.”