Rebel Breakfast

Around these parts people know how to do breakfast. Breakfast here makes me want to have been born Southern, it makes me so proud. Waffle House is a particulary good iteration of the category restaurant:diner:breakfast. I don't know if its a southern-based chain, but for the most part they have a Southern [perfect] understanding of what should be on a breakfast menu, and how it should be cooked.


1. They give you a sturdy, laminated menu that doubles as a placemat. I am all about multi-functional, and it's nice that they don't presume to tell me when I'm done with the menu. AND, the menu has some pictures of the food, so there's a standard of accountability, and you know up front what you're getting.

2. Coffee. (They even fill up my favorite pint cup.)





3. Carbohydrates with various combinations of sugar, salt, butter and cheese.

4. Eggs any style, with various combinations of salt, butter and cheese.

5. High-fat meat products. Note they have both kinda ham, there. [Country and City.]





On our most recent visit to breakfast heaven, however, I encountered an abomination. A fly in the proverbial grits. Because of their wonderfulness, I am not going to hold it against Waffle House. I am convinced that some marketing reptile dreamed it up and foisted it on franchise managers. To wit:




That is described as a sausage biscuit. (Modeled by The Him). Let me make this clear: THAT IS NOT A SAUSAGE BISCUIT. It may involve something like sausage, and something like a biscuit, but its just NOT RIGHT, at all.

Hillshire smoked sausage links. WRONG
Sausage links of any kind: WRONG
"Grilled" biscuit. WRONG . I don't even know what this means. How can you grill a biscuit? I don't even want to know.
Mayonnaise. SO WRONG.

This is a for-real sausage biscuit.

Note absence of mayonnaise.

Note the correct sausage.

Note lack of "grill" marks.

If your mama loves you, she may get fancy and make you a biscuit with sausage gravy, like this one here. In a pinch you could get away with calling that a sausage biscuit. Note there is no other condiment.
It's a little too glisteny, but this was the best I could find. Sausage gravy is a little bit of heaven, but it's not what you'd call photogenic. Gooogle it. Go on.



Marketing reptiles, you leave my breakfast alone.

What Do You Take In Your Coffee?

In case anyone is still unconvinced, today I will relate an anecdote supporting the contention that coffee is a drug. Albeit useful, legal, and available at most beverage purveyors throughout most of the world.
Because of the sensitive nature of the topic of addiction, and to protect persons depicted, we will refer to the addict in question as M.E.

Said addict keeps (or kept) her coffee in a heavy glass mason jar, the kind with a hinged clamp-type lid thingie. That is, the already ground coffee -- like many addicts, she insists that the best coffee is freshly ground, and buys her black smack uncut: whole-bean French Roast is her preferred fix.

M.E. is clumsy, which she attributes to congenital dorkiness but this observer suspects may be a symptom of brain damage caused by her addiction. Yesterday she dropped the jar of coffee and the lid broke. Because of the clamp thingie the lid remained in place and she chose denial rather than dealing with the situation immediately (another likely symptom of brain damage). She put the jar on the shelf.

This morning she shuffled into the kitchen (six -o-freakin'-clock), dazed, hands almost imperceptibly a-tremble, and pulled out the stash and the joe-bong. When she opened the jar, the cracked lid finally fell apart. She stared in dismay at her stash, noticing the flakes and bits of broken glass that had mixed with the grounds by the action of the original impact and subsequent handling of the jar.

Here is where the ugly truth of addiction asserts itself.
This was good coffee, M.E. thought, the organic stuff from Mexico that Beth gave her for Christmas.
There was no other coffee in the house.
She hadn't scored any at the grocery store because it was the end of the month and she was broke and this jar was supposed to last her one more week until she could afford more.


Yes.

She did.

M.E. brewed it knowing that her joe-bong, a cheap $10 made-in-china model, had a tendency to back up and send the grounds flooding over the filter and into the pot.

She brought some back from

Honduras last summer.

Which it did.

Having one or two brain cells left, she chose not to drink this brew (and by "chose" I am indicating that she thought about it). She dumped it in the sink and carefully rinsed out the pot and the basket, and wiped out the basket tray and the water reservoir (for the uninitiated -these are components of the joe-bong, known as a "coffee pot" in the medical literature ). These actions indicate that she understood the potential danger of ingesting broken glass.

At this point I expected M.E. to dispose of the rest of the tainted coffee. I'm sure you would think the same. Those of you who are not twitching husks of your former selves.

No.

She did not.

M.E. carefully adjusted a new filter, fiddled with the basket mechanism, and checked the position of the pot several times to ensure adequate filter function. She brewed another pot. Successfully filtered (we hope).
And drank it.

Don't let this happen to you.

J.G.tR.

*ps - does anyone else savor the delicious irony that coke is smuggled in huge honking crates of coffee?