Breakfast Daydreams

The first thing that comes to mind? That one’s easy: how much I miss good American breakfast food. I’ve had that item on my mind a lot recently, since in a few days it’ll be seven months since I arrived in Brazil for a study abroad program, and therefore seven days since I’ve been anywhere near a restaurant that serves halfway decent American style breakfast. I haven’t left the country once since arriving, which also means seven months of me constantly wanting bacon instead of the sad granola I eat every day when I wake up. I’ve learned since being here that I can do without most things; I talk to my family and friends all the time, Skype my boyfriend regularly, and have adapted pretty well to the new culture and language. But the one thing that gets me is always the food I miss, especially breakfast food.

I stayed in a hostel recently where the “complimentary breakfast” consisted of a pot of coffee and some plain bread with butter. While hostels aren’t exactly reputable for having the best breakfast, especially if they happen to be free, this one was particularly sad. I sat drinking my standard two cups of black coffee and munching on a piece of bread thinking about what I wouldn’t give to have some of my mom’s waffles, bacon, and eggs around the dining table with my family at that moment.

For a lot of people, there is something about food that transports us through time and connects us to good memories from our past: times making cookies at Grandma’s house, Dad out grilling steak and veggies while you and your sister shuck corn on the cob, that one restaurant where you and you boyfriend went for pancakes at 3am that one time. Sunday mornings when you would get up before everyone else and make waffle batter before burning yourself on hot bacon grease. The meals your host mom would hire a cook to prepare every Sunday and the heat up later in the week. The meals your host sister would make with vegetables with hard to pronounce names and fruits you’ve never seen before. (She’s also a vegetarian, so the meat substitutes are somewhere new territory for you.) All these memories, tied to different moments, smells, and flavors.

The first thing I’m going to do after I get back to the United States is find the nearest IHOP and get myself a giant stack of pancakes and just douse it in maple syrup. It’ll have sides of four pieces of extra crispy bacon, scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese and ketchup on them (but NOT hot sauce), a few pieces of whole wheat toast with jam, and I’ll steal some French fries from whatever lunch dish my sister gets instead of breakfast. That’s the plan, and I’m sticking to it for now.

I think I’m just thinking about all this stuff because my dinner was the equivalent of a tortilla with cheese and oregano on it and a salad, so I’m pretty hungry right now. I promise there is good food in Brazil, but I also have to admit that I have lost weight since being here. Instead of blaming the weight loss on healthy eating, of the fact that I usually walk two miles a day here, work out a few days a week, regularly surf and hike, I’m going to blame it on a serious lack of bacon in my life.