My mother usually made scrambled eggs for toast. When she was going for her teaching degree and had to leave the house early, it was waiting for me on a plate sitting on the frying pan.
My mom was a SAHM. She made sure there was stuff in the house we could fix if we wanted to, but she didn’t cook on weekdays. On weekends she might make pancakes. She also didn’t pack our lunches for us after I was about 9 or so.
My mom was a SAHM who drove us to school every morning until I was in high school and could take the city bus, but breakfast was always cold cereal with milk, because duh, that’s what cereal is for.
Put me down on the cold-cereal with a glass of milk in the 70s (grade school), and pop-tarts (untoasted) in jr high/high school during the early 80s. Sunday after church was a trip to get hot bagels with cream cheese. During college mostly an apple or bagel and apple or orange juice for breakfast.
In her last few years I was the one to make hot oatmeal or farina for mom, with occasional toasted bagels and cream cheese, so I guess things did just come around…
Even though my mom worked three jobs, we always had a full breakfast. Usually some kind of eggs and cereal and juice. We never had sugary cereal, but were allowed to add sugar. We often had oatmeal (not instant), with added raisins, cream, butter and brown sugar. Sometimes pancakes, waffles or French toast. Also bacon. My favorite style of eggs was egg-in-a-hole, which for some reason, we called “Rocky Mountain.”
Cold cereal with milk, and apple juice to drink. Sometimes I’d make myself waffles. (By “make”, I mean putting the frozen kind in the toaster.) I fixed my own breakfast starting in kindergarten or so.
I remember being mostly on my own- as a little kid, it was either cereal, yogurt, frozen waffles, or occasionally microwave scrambled eggs. As I got older, it was the things above, along with other stuff that wasn’t necessarily breakfast foods- frozen corn dogs were often something I’d grab if I could.
Eggs, bacon, etc… were more weekend morning things than anything else.
A couple of other data points…
Once in a blue moon we’d get those Morton’s little donuts for a Saturday breakfast, throw them in the oven. Remember those? Or Lender’s bagels in the toaster?
Living vicariously? Several of us slept over at a friend’s house one night in junior high. His mom treated us to fresh-made corn pancakes for breakfast in the morning. Um, corn in these pancakes? We thought that was the funniest damn thing we’d ever heard. They tasted ok and we ate them…but they were funny!
I was visiting another friend (also at that sleepover) one day years later and I noticed that at 8:00, the breakfast table was already set. His mom had poured bowls of cornflakes for the family, covered them with napkins, and figured that protected them from insects or whatever. They could pour the milk over them in the morning; she’d still be asleep.
And my bro used to stay at a friend’s often…he spoke lovingly about how they’d get those Pillsbury rolls that you spread with the orange creme topping. They’d also get the Chef Boy Ar Dee pizza in a box for dinner the night before, so what wasn’t to love about visiting his friend?
Someone should start a whole nuther thread about the weirdnesses of eating at other kids’ homes.
School days it was cereal and milk. I remember we always had Cheerios and Wheaties in the house. Mom wouldn’t buy sugar cereal so we didn’t even ask. Sometimes we’d have oatmeal with honey, but I honestly couldn’t tell you how often that was.
One grandmother lived about an hour away and would come to stay with us for a few days fairly frequently. When she was there we got pancakes for breakfast. I remember her waking us up early on school days, knocking on the door, “breakfast’s ready!” Sweet memories.
Do they still make those? I haven’t thought about them in ages!
My mother was always trying to force healthy shit on me. All I wanted in the morning was cereal and milk. She would give me oatmeal (“Eat your mush!”) or that god-awful cream of wheat. She would slice up oranges. She would try to make me eat stewed prunes (she had an obsession with bowel movements, and even when I was a teen would ask me if I’d had one lately). I still have nightmares about those bloated bodies floating in their own filth.
Cold cereal and orange juice from concentrate. We could have instant oatmeal or Creme of Wheat if we wanted. But that’s it.
We got pancakes and eggs and such on the weekends.
Oh, yeah. Pop Tarts. F*cking Pop Tarts. My Ma kept buying them and we absolutely hated them. Stale pizza crust with a teaspoon of bad jam inside. Blech. One time she bought the unfrosted ones figuring we couldn’t handle the excitement of the frosted ones.
Weekdays: We all got our own breakfasts, usually cereal or toast. (5-7 kids, my mother was always busy taking care of the next baby. )
Weekends: occasionally, rarely, my mom would make something: pancakes, waffles, corn fritters (wow, do I miss those!) corn “sticks” (baked in corn-ear-shaped mold, no idea what the recipe was), pan-fried corn meal mush (approximated today with fried polenta), cooked cereals such as oatmeal, Malt-o-Meal, Maypo, Coco-Wheats, Cream of Wheat (Farina).
I’m really beginning to appreciate how lucky I was to have a dad who actually cooked hot breakfasts for us kids. Thanks much, Dad!
Yes! When my daughter had slumber parties, I always made both the Pillsbury cinnamon rolls with vanilla icing and the ones with orange icing. Not long before the pandemic, she and her BFF came to spend the night, and I made both kinds. They were just as big a hit.
My mom made me breakfast. On weekdays, it usually consisted of apple juice, a soft-boiled egg, toast, and cold cereal (and vitamins). I can’t ever remember eating a non-breakfasty food (like cold pizza or some kind of leftovers) for breakfast. I’m not sure it would have occurred to me that was a thing that was even possible.
Either oats porridge, maize porridge, sorghum porridge or a cereal like corn flakes (Post, not Kelloggs - I grew up calling all cornflakes “Post Toasties”) or Weet-bix or ProNutro with hot milk. With orange or guava juice.
It varied through the years, especially since it was four kids with differing tastes to cater to. My mother used to make our breakfasts up until High School age (11) when we were expected to look after ourselves. I remember it mostly being cereal, which for us would’ve been cornflakes, weetbix, rice bubbles, or coco pops. Variants are available in your locality. I never liked cereal, though, so tended to have marmite on toast, then a weird, very specific, thing that only I liked.
Once I was old enough to look after myself, I started to have cheese-on-toast for breakfast.
From grades 5 on up I was the first person in the house to wake up because I had a two hour public transport commute to school. Breakfast was a plastic lunchbox full of 8? weet-bix and sugar and milk that I prepared myself.