strange food if I can eat mine, but I still wouldn’t wish that stuff on children.
I had the unfortunate experience, several months ago, of visiting a superstore while I was in a small city on Vancouver Island. I thought I’d renew my millet supply. To my shock, no one knew what millet was, and the store certainly didn’t stock it. Such is the fate of one of humankind’s earliest crops—breakfast, lunch, and dinner for millions. Finally, on my third try with the staff, an elderly store clerk’s eyes lit up. “Oh, you mean food for birds.”
“No,” I said. “I mean food for me.”
She gave me a suspicious look and politely got rid of me. It was apparent I had to find the sole organic-grain supplier in town.
BREAKFAST WAS ONCE A sip of water at a stream and some scratchy grasses from the south side of a hill. Since then, it’s evolved, like the rest of our inventions—faster than we have. Early hunter-gatherer societies picked at leftover grains and roots scooped from their leather storage bags or chugged down a few seeds when the day began. After we stopped dragging chunks of burnt meat from the fire and nibbling on barely washed roots, breakfast evolved into leftover mushes and gruels in the first subsistence farming communities, whose breakfasts were equally boring.
One can only wonder how many generations of farmers glared at their cold barley mush until someone said, “I need an egg.” Thus began the evolution from those first tasteless quick gulps before a day in the hardscrabble field to the Dutch seventeen-course breakfast that would probably give an Afghani farmer a heart attack. A statistical study shows that what’s now regarded as the traditional breakfast by a middle-class Swedish family involves so many trade and food miles that the earth must be circumnavigated every day in order for that family to sit down to eat.
That ancient, leftover gruel has changed hugely and often for the worse. The world’s poor have even less to eat, and in North America the Walmart generation eats a different cereal altogether: immense quantities of grain are now boiled, beaten, and dried, then pressed into nutrition-free ornamental shapes—the taste provided at the end of the manufacturing process by an artificial flavour factory in an industrial park. North Americans are also eating on the run, either at home or idling in the drive-by at the local fast-food franchise—pumping artificial flavour, sugar, fat, salt, and a spike of caffeine into their bloodstreams.
HISTORICALLY, LOCAL CROPS MADE for a great diversity of breakfasts that became even more diverse during the era of exploration and world trade that began in the Renaissance. But free trade and the globalization of the multinationals during the past fifty years is now shrinking breakfast fare. Still, breakfasts around the world demonstrate the magic of local produce supplemented by imported foods. Oh, what strange breakfasts we have grown and still eat. There’s falafel, the deep-fried fava bean or chickpea mashes of the Mideast, wrapped in khubz bread and slathered in yogourt. In Africa it’s cassava or corn gruel with coconuts and bananas. Cornmeal gruel, uji, is often mixed with ground peanuts. In Madagascar you might snack on kitoza —dried beef grilled over charcoal—along with your gruel. And in Cameroon you can eat an omelette confected with beans, sardines, and eggs.
West, across the Atlantic, you can drink tascalate, hot chocolate with ground pine nuts, sugar, and vanilla. The magnificent huevos rancheros are eggs with fried tomatoes; huevos motulenos are refried beans, scrambled eggs, ham, peas, and cheese wrapped up in a corn tortilla. Costa Ricans eat gallo pinto, or spotted rooster—fried rice and black beans served with sour cream and fried eggs. In Bolivia there’s the salteña, a pastry filled with chopped hard-boiled eggs, raisins, olives, peas, and meat. Farther south you can have a submarino —steamed milk rich with a melted
I had the unfortunate experience, several months ago, of visiting a superstore while I was in a small city on Vancouver Island. I thought I’d renew my millet supply. To my shock, no one knew what millet was, and the store certainly didn’t stock it. Such is the fate of one of humankind’s earliest crops—breakfast, lunch, and dinner for millions. Finally, on my third try with the staff, an elderly store clerk’s eyes lit up. “Oh, you mean food for birds.”
“No,” I said. “I mean food for me.”
She gave me a suspicious look and politely got rid of me. It was apparent I had to find the sole organic-grain supplier in town.
BREAKFAST WAS ONCE A sip of water at a stream and some scratchy grasses from the south side of a hill. Since then, it’s evolved, like the rest of our inventions—faster than we have. Early hunter-gatherer societies picked at leftover grains and roots scooped from their leather storage bags or chugged down a few seeds when the day began. After we stopped dragging chunks of burnt meat from the fire and nibbling on barely washed roots, breakfast evolved into leftover mushes and gruels in the first subsistence farming communities, whose breakfasts were equally boring.
One can only wonder how many generations of farmers glared at their cold barley mush until someone said, “I need an egg.” Thus began the evolution from those first tasteless quick gulps before a day in the hardscrabble field to the Dutch seventeen-course breakfast that would probably give an Afghani farmer a heart attack. A statistical study shows that what’s now regarded as the traditional breakfast by a middle-class Swedish family involves so many trade and food miles that the earth must be circumnavigated every day in order for that family to sit down to eat.
That ancient, leftover gruel has changed hugely and often for the worse. The world’s poor have even less to eat, and in North America the Walmart generation eats a different cereal altogether: immense quantities of grain are now boiled, beaten, and dried, then pressed into nutrition-free ornamental shapes—the taste provided at the end of the manufacturing process by an artificial flavour factory in an industrial park. North Americans are also eating on the run, either at home or idling in the drive-by at the local fast-food franchise—pumping artificial flavour, sugar, fat, salt, and a spike of caffeine into their bloodstreams.
HISTORICALLY, LOCAL CROPS MADE for a great diversity of breakfasts that became even more diverse during the era of exploration and world trade that began in the Renaissance. But free trade and the globalization of the multinationals during the past fifty years is now shrinking breakfast fare. Still, breakfasts around the world demonstrate the magic of local produce supplemented by imported foods. Oh, what strange breakfasts we have grown and still eat. There’s falafel, the deep-fried fava bean or chickpea mashes of the Mideast, wrapped in khubz bread and slathered in yogourt. In Africa it’s cassava or corn gruel with coconuts and bananas. Cornmeal gruel, uji, is often mixed with ground peanuts. In Madagascar you might snack on kitoza —dried beef grilled over charcoal—along with your gruel. And in Cameroon you can eat an omelette confected with beans, sardines, and eggs.
West, across the Atlantic, you can drink tascalate, hot chocolate with ground pine nuts, sugar, and vanilla. The magnificent huevos rancheros are eggs with fried tomatoes; huevos motulenos are refried beans, scrambled eggs, ham, peas, and cheese wrapped up in a corn tortilla. Costa Ricans eat gallo pinto, or spotted rooster—fried rice and black beans served with sour cream and fried eggs. In Bolivia there’s the salteña, a pastry filled with chopped hard-boiled eggs, raisins, olives, peas, and meat. Farther south you can have a submarino —steamed milk rich with a melted
Similar Books
