Rays of Gold

What can I say? Breakfast anyone?

Shakira

So what's with the Title? Hey, you try giving a relevant and attractive name to every singel meal you make and soon, you'll be calling them Beyonce too.

And anyway, Shakira would have liked the taste of this, I bet. And it would have been good for her too. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out she eats like this already.

It's a fried egg with paprika and pepper (I guess I could have called it PnP). The reds are strawberries (why do I even bother to name everything) and nectarines. The yellows are mango slices. I think from now on I'll stick to naming things that aren't so bloody obvious.

Nuts!

Ah, the absence of lettuce...
This was supposed to be an omelet, but it worked out differently. There's two eggs less one yolk, half a courgette and a tomato with a seasoning of paprika, chilli, chives and strips of nori yaki. A very chuncky salad of celery stalks and nuts (pecans, hazelnuts, walnuts, paranuts and almonds) in the centre there and since I'm starting to get the hang of this mammoth plate, I made sure dessert was already included: strawberries, cherries and grapes.
This would have made an exelent breakfast, by the way.

Goodmorning!

Breakfast:
Olives, cherries, grapes and a pear. What else do you need?

Rise and Shine

My breakfast: two apples, half a melon and a fried egg. Everything I fry or stir fry is done in olive oil.

Pink Sunshine

My breakfast this morning was a nice reddish pink grapefruit , an apple, a tomato, half a cucumber and a salted herring. In my opinion the salted herring is the only redeeming food in the pathetic dutch cuisine. Actually, we don't have a cuisine, we only have food.

There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this rather unique absence of tried and true dishes that represent a cultures gustatory fancies. The Netherlands was very late to industrialize. It made a rather sudden turn to factory life and certain household magazines, in an attempt to aid the poor worker who's gastronomical routine was now thrown out of whack, dictated what a decent and healthy diet should be.

This amounted to bread with cheese for breakfast and lunch and a hot meal after working hours. This meal was always to consist of three parts: potatoes, vegetables and meat (or fish, once a week, on fridays). Pitty about the potatoes, cheese and bread, or we would have had an artificial paleolithic diet imposed on us and been spared the diseases of affluence.

Anyway, while the workers toiled all day long, the new "cuisine" wasn't what boiled all day long. Factory workers wives could not afford to read the magazines and the only part of society that was told to cook differently, was the upper class, who usually are the natural guardians of "haute cuisine". And so the once very rich dutch culinary tradition was entirely wiped out. Old dutch cookery books read like completely alien fantasies.

And so we're stuck with boring dishes. The vegetables are always only a single vegetable, and like the meat, they are seasoned without any imagination at all. And the potatoes... well, all I can say is good ridence - I will never eat them again. I'll let someone else have my heart attack.

Ah, but the salted herring. A divine gift to a gastronomically challenged people. It's like nothing you've ever eaten. The soft texture, the sea-like salinity, and the hands on approach - you take it by the tail, lift it over your head and bite from below. Seriously yummy! Beware though - it's a bit of an aquired taste. But if you ever visit the Low Lands, dont forget to try our entire cuisine. Buy a salted herring, preferably at the market, and eat it on the spot. They won't be the same anywhere else.

Nutty Chicken

For my breakfast this morning I had a handful of mixed nuts with the leftovers of yesterdays chicken. Also the leftover halves of yesterday's melon and cucumber and a few carrots.

Red & Herring

Breakfast:
A salted herring on a bed of melon, strawberries, cherries, and blackberries.