Breakfasts

It seems as though I go through different phases (where breakfasts are concerned, at least). I’ve always had breakfast in the morning. After all, it’s the most important meal of the day and, when one is riding a bike, it is also important as this will keep you sustained.

When I’m doing the ‘five-two’, my favourite breakfast is poached eggs. I’m quite a dab hand at doing them properly (i.e. without an ‘egg-shaper’), in the shallow frying pan filled with water.

Currently, my breakfast practice is to get a bowl and fill it with the following: first Lidl Granola, then Lidl Milled Linseed. This is followed by some cashew nuts, some pecan nuts, some berries and cherries, some standard fruit mix, some cut dried figs, dates and crystallised ginger. Then the semi-skimmed milk goes in and a good scoop of 10% fat Turkish Yoghurt (Lidl again) goes on top. The final topping is a large drizzle of honey, made by my own bees. Yum yum.

There was a time when, as a family, we used to troop down to Butlins at Minehead for Easter – bikes atop Little Miss Sunshine.

This is Spring Harvest. Some of you might know it. It’s a celebratory event where up to three-thousand Christians descend on Minehead for a week (well the event actually repeats for three weeks, but we only go down for a week). For me, one of the great pleasures of this holiday was the buffet breakfast. Good old fashioned English grill type food – and yes, they had black pudding!!. Now, an English grill has its attractions, but I like to be different: I have a special recipe that harks back to the days when I worked at Rover, on the assembly line.

·      Take two pieces of thick, white bread (it has to be thick bread, and it has to be white).

·      Lay them down, side-by-side

·      Take a portion of tinned plum tomatoes and lay them on the one slice.

·      Squeeze a sufficient amount of brown sauce (HP is the preferred choice) on top of the tomatoes.

·      Get two slices of black pudding and place them on top of the brown-sauce-enhanced-tomatoes.

·      Spread – to taste ­– an amount of English mustard on top of the Black pudding.

·      Get two fried eggs (they have to have runny yoke) and place these on top of the pile.

·      Squeeze a suitable amount of red sauce (Heinz is the preferred choice) onto the eggs and top it all off with the second slice of white bread.

I’m not sure why this is a special treat. Perhaps it’s the ritual of the process; perhaps it’s the ‘sinfulness’ of all those bad things I’m about to eat (especially at a Christian celebratory event); or perhaps it’s the recollection of some of the fun times we had at Rover, that the breakfast evokes; but whatever it is, this breakfast is a real treat. It’s important that when you take the first bite, you get the runny yoke dripping down the side of your mouth other wise you don’t get the full effect.

Nom, Nom, Nom...