breakfast with you

I have a desire to write about breakfast all of a sudden. This morning, since classes have been canceled for the day, I got my delicious and slow-prep oatmeal breakfast into this stomach. It may seem odd that I would choose to fuel myself in these Thailand mornings with something as American as instant oatmeal, but the other options I've found include fish and cooked pumpkin (that's right, squash) or any other meats and (perhaps) vegetables. My first week of breakfasts here had me trying to pick the meat of the fish bones without looking at the head on my plate. I think I've gotten better at this since coming, but I'm still taking tips from my friend May, who is as clean and as delicate as a cat with her fish.

I think morning breakfasts are often something intimate. More intimate than brunch, more intimate in pajamas. On my plane from Dulles to Tokyo, all of my meals were vegetarian Indian. I was eating some strange rice with vegetables and a grainy pudding/custard honey thing out of a plastic bag for all of my meals. Breakfast seemed little different from dinner, which seemed little different from lunch. And I always got those little plastic bags, which were irritatingly hard to open (I gave up on two out of three). That was on a plane, though. I'm recording my breakfast right here in Thailand as:

instant oatmeal (from Big C, right here in Bangkok)
flax seed (sent from the U.S., thanks Jenni)
peanut butter (sent from the U.S., thanks Mom)
a touch of brown sugar (natural at that, from the Big C)
a little milk (skim, not soy... I need a bottle opener for the soy milk)
MIX IT ALL UP WITH BOILING WATER

plus my usual instant coffee 3-in-1 packet (Nescafe)

and a special juice box with REAL tangerine orange juice


Yes, I'm living well with breakfast. But if you read all the details and parentheses, you'd know how spoiled I am. I've got family members sending me things every now and then. Don't worry, I'm not counting on any more 16 oz. jars of natural peanut butter. And now that I've got a new water heater (my old one kind of melted when I left it on for too long), I feel quite rich.

But the best part of breakfast is being able to spend it with someone you love and who loves you! Not, as some would have us believe, Folgier's in your cup. That's right, even on mornings alone, I am not alone. My God is with me, dining here and breaking bread (or oatmeal and tangerine juice) with me. And, if Nora were here, it'd be all three of us.

Okay, I can see I've gone a little cheesy here. Guess it's time to get on with the day.



P.S. Watch out. The U.S. has misplaced 190,000 firearms. It has nothing to do with breakfast, but still...