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What a great site! Calm.

A two-minute relaxation.

Breakfast, wherever you are...

My mother used to love breakfast. It was her favourite meal, if only because it meant she could eat her favourite food - grapefruit.

I never liked grapefruit much - too sour for me, unless sugared - and could never understand her love of grapefruit. She used to say that when she was young and poor, she only got half an orange with her breakfast - her sister got the other half. She thought I was lucky to get a whole orange. I thought she was lucky to have a sister, and any sister I had would be welcome to my orange.

My mother used to love the passage in Winnie-the-Pooh:

"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?"
"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"
"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully.
"It's the same thing," he said.

Sometimes my father made pancakes, which was fun.

I think I was a teenager before I started to like breakfast, and adult before I realized that while the rest of the world was eating their cereal, their toast, and their scrambled eggs, I could eat anything I want. My favourite breakfast? Oatmeal. Or Caesar salad. Or leftovers from the night before. Or crepes, which can have just about any filling, but my favourite is cinnamon with butter and sugar. Yeah, decadent. And I like the crumpets that they sell at Metro, especially when they are really fresh.

I've been enjoying going out for breakfast, when possible, with maaseru and sometimes Pim. Club Zed at Zeller's is currently a favourite; good cheap basic breakfast of bacon and eggs (sunny side up) and toast, with coffee. The kind that Nate's used to have, on Rideau Street. I like that.

A recent discovery (by maaseru) is that they serve a darn good breakfast at Kristy's on Wellington near Woodroffe. We went on the weekend; Pim had liver with onions and eggs, while I had a double-bacon version of Eggs Benedict. Nice.

Different places have different breakfast choices. I like the oatmeal at Denny's, but not much else. The oatmeal at Tim Horton's is delicious. Baker Street on Wellington used t obe great, but was disappointing the last few times I went. I need to find a good place for breakfast crepes.

When I was in Turkey, I was swooning over the magnificent breakfasts we had. Buffets with huge, fresh selections. Every day: maybe a dozen different kinds of cheeses and bread, fruit including fresh figs, and lots and lots of watermelon. I came to love Turkish yoghurt.

My first trip to France, as a student, I loved their continental breakfasts: fresh baguettes with unsalted butter and delicious coffee.

In Italy a few years later, I came to love palmiers with cappuccino.

In New Orleans, I had beignets for breakfast.

Today I came across 50 of the World’s Best Breakfasts. I'm always fascinated by foreign breakfasts - always such distinctive national food. I instantly read the Canadian one, and thought: what? I've never had perogies for breakfast in my life, or seen it offered on a restaurant menu. Maybe in Calgary.

I want to try Halim. I assume the Vietnamese dish is actually congee? No, it says semolina. Okay. I do love congee - essentially the same thing, but made with rice rather than wheat. I have that for breakfast sometimes. I suspect I would like a Mongolian breakfast, as I love lamb.

And #50 - the Turkish breakfast. I sigh in nostalgic longing. But, really, their picture doesn't do it justice.