{"id":4778,"date":"2019-07-29T22:57:26","date_gmt":"2019-07-29T20:57:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4778"},"modified":"2022-11-01T06:30:25","modified_gmt":"2022-11-01T05:30:25","slug":"break-thy-fast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4778","title":{"rendered":"Break Thy Fast"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The morning after I arrived in the U.S., my sister arrived\nfor our yearly hang out day. This day involves massages, a heavy intake of beverages\nwith mind altering qualities, and Broadway singalongs. I love it, she loves it,\nthe bartenders love it, her husband tolerates it. We sing loudly in the drunken\navatars of Jesus and Judas Iscariot and Aaron (A-A Ron) Burr and Jean Valjean.\nIt. Is. Awesome. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The morning after, not so much. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year the combination of a 10 hour flight and twenty\nshots of J\u00e4germeister have rendered me a ball of lightly weeping flesh on the\nbed in her guestroom. And my sister looks in, sadly, holding her head and\nholding out two Advil. I groan. She groans. And there\u2019s nothing she can say\nthat\u2019ll budge me. Nothing. I am lying here until I can muster the strength to ooze\nonto her couch and pry open my right eye to watch a lighthearted comedy that\nmakes me forget the beating I have put my liver through. There\u2019s nothing she\ncan say.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWant to go to my diner for breakfast?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Except that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re in the car for about 4 minutes, which is about 3\nminutes longer than either of us can stand. And when we arrive, we are the only\npeople in the diner. It\u2019s 6 am and the waitress seats us with a chipper attitude\nthat might literally kill us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou guys are gonna have the first pot of coffee of the day.\u201d\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My sister: \u201cI\u2019ve never done that.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Me: \u201cCan you bring the pot?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My whole body seems to understand that in order to survive,\nwe need food. And to do that, we need to be able to read the menu. And to do\nthat, we need to work together. So, my body puts in the good ole college try\nand works as a unit to stop me from falling apart. My liver stops twitching. My\nhead decides to let the Advil do its work. My right eye opens. The cold sweats are\npaused. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I cheer when the waitress fills my white mug with tarlike\ncoffee. And after I order my breakfast \u2013 a western omelet (ham, onion, and red\npepper) with added American cheese, rye toast, home fries, and scrapple \u2013 I am\nfine. Soon, we are drinking coffee, getting jittery, and looking towards the kitchen.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of all the comfort food I miss living in Europe, a diner\nbreakfast is at the singular top of that list. More than Philly cheesesteaks\nand edible bagels and a hamburger that doesn\u2019t make me want to cry.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A diner breakfast can be anything, but its iconic components\nare pancakes, omelets, eggs, waffles, home fries, toast, some kind of meat, and\nbottomless coffee. Throw in a cheerful waitress who has a slight issue with\nboundaries, big plates, and a kitschy sign or two (If you think I\u2019m cute when I\u2019m\nmad, you\u2019re about to think I\u2019m gorgeous!) and you\u2019ve got a diner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone does breakfast differently and I think most people\nwho\u2019ve been around respect other cultures\u2019 breakfast customs, but that respect\nis at the arm\u2019s length of foreign habit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had a baked egg pancake with honey in Ethiopia that made\nme cry out of joy, but I wouldn\u2019t want to eat it every day. A full Irish\nbreakfast is so damned good, but in Ireland. Not in Langhorne. The Czech ham\nand cheese on rolls? Sure. Now and then. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But nothing helps you start the day as well as what you grew\nup with. Diners were for the weekends, fishing trips, and for pitstops on holidays\nwhen my dad needed to be out of the car before he committed murder.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Philadelphia area, we have scrapple. Scrapple is\ndelicious and what goes into it \u2013 before Wikipedia \u2013 was largely a mystery, and\none that I sort of wish had remained so. It\u2019s a mush that\u2019s made up of offal\n(organs) of pigs and bones, seasoning, and cornmeal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I tell this to Czech friends they groan in disgust and then order raw steak tartar or eat a hotdog or have almost the exact same components in a jaternice. I think when it comes to breakfast, we are all cultural chauvinists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No matter a breakfast’s roots or culture, it’s job is to get you ready for the day. So whether you are eating a hearty breakfast for a day of physical work, a cup of coffee to help pep you up, or an avocado quinoa smoothie, we rely on breakfast. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, I finish the 3,000 calorie breakfast, we pay and the waitress tops off our coffee and gives us a chipper goodbye. I waddle out to the car, headache gone, heartily prepared to burn calories by scrolling lazily on a remote while lounging on a couch. The breakfast has done it’s job.   <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The morning after I arrived in the U.S., my sister arrived for our yearly hang out day. This day involves massages, a heavy intake of beverages with mind altering qualities, and Broadway singalongs. I love it, she loves it, the bartenders love it, her husband tolerates it. We sing loudly in the drunken avatars of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4780,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/damiengaleone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/scrapple-1.jpg?fit=800%2C600&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-1f4","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4778"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5696,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4778\/revisions\/5696"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}