My Breakfast Obsession

I think I have an obsession with breakfast.   Not your standard eggs-cereal-toast type, but the strange, the different, the unusual.  Every time I go to a place that is not in America, I immediately check out the breakfast offerings.  It was in Switzerland that I fell in love with muesli and sliced mortadella to start the day.  Spain introduced me to toast drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with salt.  Japan had tiny dried fish and rice with seaweed.  Hong Kong had dumplings.  Congee?  Hawker stalls in Singapore.   How could I come back home to a cold bowl of Cheerios?   

So I started “importing” some of these elements into my breakfast routine after each trip.  Singapore was the worst, as I had breakfast in a different Hawker Center every day, each in a different neighborhood and featuring a different cuisine.   

My Aussie husband gamely ate his way through my attempts to recreate all those marvelous dishes on the weekends.  I got pretty good at congee, and courtesy of a local market that carries cans of Singapore Curry Sauce I can make a passable paratha with peas and potatoes.  I have yet to try a full-on Japanese breakfast, as the range of ingredients is rather daunting, and the presentation too much for me that early in the day…  maybe I could serve breakfast for dinner?  In the meantime, I will just appreciate the breakfasts we had in Kyoto and Honolulu.

A full breakfast at our Ryokan in Kyoto...

And our breakfast in the Japanese restaurant in our hotel in Honolulu