My usual breakfast is a slice of homemade bread toasted with butter and jam, dunked into American coffee with milk. I look forward to that in the morning. Occasionally I’ll have oatmeal porridge with dark brown sugar on it. In the hot summer I like Alpen muesli with extra raisins and cold milk.

On sundays I make pancakes with homemade blueberry syrup. If there are guests for brunch, I make eggs and bacon with them, and a fruit salad with oranges, grapefruits and pineapple and a light sugar syrup poured on it hot so it will make some juice in the fridge.

In a restaurant I want something more special than that.

If I were in the states, my main breakfast would be a thomas English Muffin. aaaah, my favorite thing, and so sadly unavailable here.

Casually,my breakfast is eggs benedict accompanied by asparagus and boiled new potatoes with dill. I also like to serve it with a fruit salad with berries, bananas, kiwi, grapes, apples, and pears with a dressing made of sugar, cinammon, and grand marnier.

Weekends: about twice a year, I eat a traditional Scottish fried breakfast – not for the faint-hearted, but foreign visitors always seem keen! It contains all or some of the following, depending on personal taste – local bacon and Larne sausage, fried, scrambled or poached eggs, mushrooms, haggis, black pudding, white pudding, tattie scones, oatcakes, grilled tomatoes. Some people also offer Fried bread or tinned baked beans – I’m too much of a purist for that kind of fol derol!

Recently I saw a recipe for eggs that I’ve tried and really liked. Basically you bring about half a cup or so of salsa verde to a slow simmer in a small pan. Then you poach a couple of eggs in it, sprinkle grated cheese over the top and cover until the cheese starts to melt. I like it. It looks terrible, this strange, green gooey mess, but it sure tastes good.

In Germany I was surprised at the number of beers we saw on top of the breakfast table, and the number of dogs we saw under.

In Italy it is very common to stop at a “pizza a taglio” place (that’s the kind of large rectangular pan pizza that is sold by the piece here, wrapped in paper to eat on the road, or on a tray for a quick supper) or at a bread bakery and pick up a piece of usually white pizza (with just oil and salt on it) for the kids to eat on their way to school or as a midmorning snack. Sometimes it’s split and prosciutto or salame is put inside or most traditionally, mortadella.

Pretty healthy breakfast, actually!

Has sites about cooking and coffee: