Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Second breakfast rocks

My favorite meal is not one I have every day, because if I had second breakfast every single day, I would have to buy an ever-larger wardrobe.

I typically start my day with a bowl of cold cereal and a hit of cold, bubbly caffeine. It doesn't always tide me over until lunchtime, but pouring cereal out of a box is about all I've got the wherewithal to do first thing in the morning.

I love nothing better than making plans to go out to eat between 10:30 and noon. It's a bit early for lunch, but perfect for second breakfast. Mind you, having plans to go out to breakfast at 10:30 doesn't mean I skip that bowl of cereal—I'd get hangry without first breakfast.

The very best second breakfast is the blackberry bliss cakes at a Chicago place called m. henry: Two fat pancakes. The bottom one soaking in a pool of warm blackberries and their juice. The top one adorned with a sweet and crunchy mix of oats and brown sugar. Sandwiched in the middle, a slab of vanilla mascarpone cream that melts while you're eating the bliss cakes. One forkful containing fluffy pancake, crunchy oats, sweet and tangy berries, and sweet rich cream? Holy crap. It's all I can do to sit upright...but if I let myself slide onto the floor in a state of rapture, I wouldn't be able to reach my plate.

Second breakfast can also take place at IHOP, with an order of corn cakes (Butter? Check. Hot syrup? Check.) and a side of scrambled eggs. But you really can't beat those bliss cakes.

The new sidebar poll asks what your favorite meal is. If you love a mealtime that's not simply breakfast, lunch, or dinner, tell us about it.

(Post inspired by Mona's breakfast musings.)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Second breakfast is best.

Have you had the Chocolate Tower French Toast at The Bongo Room (Wicker Park and South Loop)?

If I had to choose a last meal before I die, that would be it.

Jay said...

Second breakfast at Norma's in New York City. It's the restaurant in the lobby of Le (not the, they're picky) Parker Meridien on 56th. Mmmm.

But most days - or once a month, maybe - I settle for two perfectly scrambled eggs and a crunchy toasted bagel at the one real deli in town.

Klynn said...

I voted breakfast because you did not have an "all of the above" category. :p

Best breakfast ever: The O'hana character breakfast at the Polynesian resort at Disney World. Everything you could ever want, plus unlimited refills. (Pineapple bread, fresh fruit, perfectly scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, mickey waffles, home fries, and the special juice blend is amazing!!)

Best Lunch: Pad Thai at this little place across the street from my office. Man I'm going to miss that when I move.

Best Dinner: Pierogies sauteed in butter and onions with sour cream at this little "saloon" in the town I'm moving to. It's actually supposed to be an appetizer, but I order them with a side salad, and voila! Dinner. In the past we've only been able to stop by there a few times a year. Once we move we can go whenever we want!

Narya said...

I'm the outlier who picked dinner, because, much as I love breakfast (like the enormous fruit pancakes Friend and I had this week that I'll have to describe for y'all), dinner provides so many more opportunities for food things--including some things served at breakfast.

E. said...

Ugh. So hard to choose between dinner and second breakfast! (Though, technically where I come from, dinner is lunch and supper is dinnner. It's an agricultural thing, I think. Folks had to eat their biggest meal at noontime to be able to all that manual labor into the dusk hours...)

As a nursing mother, I eat two lunches a day, but sometimes on the weekend it's more like breakfast, brunch, late-ish lunch, dinner.

Really, I love it all. Yum.

Mona Buonanotte said...

Breafast, Second Breakfast, Brunch...how can I choose?! Love 'em all. And Breakfast for Dinner is just awesome.