These Breakfast Foods

Good morning, do you want to look at some food? Here’s some food for you to look at. It’s breakfast food from around the world. Around the globe, so to speak.

There are lots of egg dishes! Lots of eggs. I had to spend some time pondering the value of chickens in today’s society. It took a while. Yesterday Rachel told us about corned beef hash, slightly related. I’ve only ever had corned beef hash at Irish pubs (“Irish” “pubs”) with beer and whiskey, so. Not breakfast.

Anyway, here’s Denmark!

via flickr.com/adactio

Look, here’s Canada!

via flickr.com/calgaryreviews

Hey it’s Portugal!

via flickr.com/retinafunk

India!

via flickr.com/arvindgrover

America’s breakfast is blueberry pancakes, which means that they didn’t go to Tennessee because actually it’s biscuits and gravy.

via flickr.com/jencooks

Are you from these places? Do you eat these things? Do you have a lot of feelings about this link and these pictures and these foods, possibly other foods not mentioned here? You should just get it all out. In the comments. Speak your piece. I used to think it was ‘speak your peace,’ which, honestly, I like better.

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76 Comments

  1. I have feelings about this link because I love all breakfast foods, all of them. My favorite non-European/North American breakfast food wasn’t included here, though: kiribat (rice cooked with coconut milk) and lunumeris (a delicious mixture of chili flakes, red onions, salt, and lime juice), traditional Sri Lankan breakfast food. Picture: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Kiribath.jpg (you’d take one of those rice diamonds and mix it together with the lunumeris with your fingers and it’s sooo delicious.)

  2. I have feelings about breakfast. Mostly good because I like breakfast. I don’t like the large amounts of pork consumed at breakfast, though. I don’t understand the appeal of bacon.

    Internationally, croissants kick ass.

    • I think people on the internet love bacon more than the same people in real life. Like the pictures of people wearing bacon… that only works online. I would be very disturbed if I got a girl home and found that her bra was made of bacon, you know?

      • I know, but I hate going to a deli/restaurant/my kitchen, trying to get/make eggs or pancakes or cereal or something, and all I can smell is bacon. Yuck!

        P.S. My roommate eats turkey bacon, and it smells the same.

    • European-style breakfast is the bomb. I love eating bread, cheese, and a hardboiled egg for breakfast. And then maybe some more bread with nutella.

  4. I’m from France and I looooove breakfast time!! I can eat pretty much everything and I really like the danish breakfast. But here in France, people eat mostly bread with buttter and marmelade, which is very goog, but boring.

    • My French ex’s niece and nephew asked why I was making lunch at 8am because I was fixing an omelet while they ate bread and nutella. It was adorable.

  5. The Canada breakfast is not truly Canadian because I don’t see any peameal bacon on that plate! Just sayin…lol and yes I am Canadian! :)

  6. Unfortunately this morning I sat knee-deep in a bowl of cold apple-cinnamon cheerios (sad trombone). My favorite breakfast food, though, has to be the dim sum breakfast.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dimsum_breakfast_in_Hong_Kong.jpg

    The foods in the photo (clockwise starting at the right lower corner’s white fluffy buns): cha-seew bow (roasted pork bun), gnow churng (beef-filled white rice noodle rolls with sweet soy sauce), jook (a savory rice porridge with green onions and some kind of meat, usually), what looks like hah gao (dumplings with chropped shrimp inside), more jook, and some other kind of dumpling (I’m imagining it to be a dumpling filled with green onions and chives).

    Lots of drools. I’ve always been one for a savory breakfast.

    • Dim sum~ I try to make sure my friends and I go at least once a month. Since we all go to college in Flushing, NY it’s pretty easy lol

    • Oooh, nice link. When my friends and I go out for weekend brunch, we usually decide to go out for Dim Sum. So good.

      Nice post and nice picture. NOM to the infinite power.

      I’m a big fan of savory breakfast too. From urad dal to birría to mafongo to cheese and baguette to congee to persian breakfast with cheese and herbs and salty yogurt. Mmmmm. Yeah, I really like breakfast.

      ***

      That linked article was kind of weird though. I’m being too polite. What I mean to say is it was mostly inaccurate. Totally going off here…

      I’ve eaten and cooked dishes from many of those cuisines, often in their countries of origin. And the author offered a lot of completely off-the-wall, atypical suggestions. To be fair, most of the commenters made the same complaint and the author admitted she chose the ones that seemed weirdest to her, or the ones that would make for “more interesting photos”.

      But I’m way over that culturally-ignorant, orientalist exoticism, like the way she had to include anything with organ meats for the shock factor. To be fair, she fucked up the western “typical” breakfasts too. Like the English one (hashbrowns). And the Canadian one with perogies.

      Or the Hawaiian one which blatantly ignored the reality of food economics and dangerous legacy of imperialist industrial agriculture on the diets of Hawaiians of Polynesian ancestry. A bagel and 5-6 fruits that cost $8.99/lb. because they have to be flown in from the mainland? First off, that’s the tourist buffet. 2 scoops plus eggs and meat is far more representative of a typical local breakfast.

      Second, the tone: “A healthy Hawaiian breakfast – I couldn’t imagine Hawaiians eating anything but fruit to be honest. Of course, there’s the bagel but I’m sure they’d burn the energy from that off in a few minutes on their surf board anyway.” Ugh. Girl, please. That air-headed condescension and ignorance is just nauseating.

      Yes, I’m politicizing food. But, food is political. Food is culture, and that old-school “Look at how WEIRD/ they are!” shit is tired. There is no excuse for that kind of ignorance in this day and age. Obviously, I am way serious about food as nutrition, as pleasure, as culture, as history, and as a reflection of different aspects of a society. And many other people are just as passionate about it.

      ***

      Rant over lol. The awesome thing about the article is that I discovered all kinds of great new dishes from AS peeps and others who responded and offered their own favorites.

      • @ the article: Try Portuguese sausage and scrambled eggs. Or a malasada. Or poi. Or rice. Or loco moco.

        @Jhonez Thank you for pointing this out. I think it’s pretty impossible not to politicize food, sometimes.

  7. I used to think it was “speak your peace”, too. I think mostly because my dad loves puns and used to say “speak your peas” at the dinner table. Which just made that saying all sorts of confusing for me.

  9. jalapeno-heavy pico de gallo has recently replaced sriracha as my favorite spicy breakfast condiment, and boy, is life good.

      • You know, I don’t think I’d ever even heard of the name Tammy before that show? What’s it short for, Tamsin? Tamara? Maybe it’s just not a very brit name…

  11. So this one time I was staying at my grandmother’s house and I woke up and zombied my way into the kitchen to make breakfast and coffee. She asked me what I was doing and I told her “breakfast” and she was so pleased that she hugged me because breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

    My favorite breakfast is what I like to call a Cuban huevos rancheros. Scrambled eggs with black beans, a fresh tomato chopped with some fresh cilantro, and 1/2 an avocado sliced served with some pan de agua.

    • huevos rancheros is my hangover food. usually it’s just eggs, beans, onions, and tomatoes with hot sauce, because I tend to have those ingredients on hand. but next time I will totally add avocado!

  13. I love breakfast. I’ll eat breakfast at any time of the day. I get a free meal during my break at my work at like, 10pm, and I always go to Ihop and get breakfast. I love bacon almost as much as chocolate, and I’m freaking addicted to chocolate. Agreed on the American breakfast. Where are my grits? And eggs? And toast smothered in jam? Ooh, and buttermilk biscuits. Now I want breakfast…

  15. This is extremely relevant to my interests.

    Especially the Denmark breakfast. That’s the most relevant of all at the moment.

  16. the canada picture is from a breakfast chain in calgary and i recognized it RIGHT AWAY.
    i go out for breakfast too much i think.

  17. I miss AMERICAN breakfast so much. so much.

    I’m studying in France and the French breakfast was one point of culture shock- it’s just yogurt,café, some bread with jam, croissants, more bread and more bread and sometimes les cereals.
    Not hating but it’s definitely something I miss. I missed it so much that I paid almost 20€ in Paris for some American breakfast.

    • I thought a French breakfast was a ridiculously strong shot-glass-sized-cup of coffee and a cigarette.

      • Is that before or after you put on your striped tee & garlic necklace and hop on your bike to go to the tabac?

  19. OK I’m Portuguese and I’ve never eaten those things for breakfast, though the coffee is very accurate. The people who eat that probably are not late for school/work like the rest of Portugal. Late is our lifestyle :)

    • “late is our lifestyle”
      I can very much relate to that in fact I am late now….
      and I’m german.If there is one thing we have to do (besides adoring David Hasselhof) it is being in time.

      regarding the breakfast post:
      Bread.It’s all about really good whole grain bread and also bread rolls.

      • When I was in Germany I thought my friends had some kind of looking at their watch fetishes but it turns out I was mortifying them by not being 100% ready to leave at the appointed time to reach the destination at the exact requested time. Guests arriving at dinner parties put synchronized swimmers to shame. Kind of stressful even as I think about it.

        • The time thing is pretty accurate but we seriously don’t eat as much sausage as the rest of the world seems to think.German breakfast is a lot more like the Denmark one.

  21. I wake up so late that breakfast is sometimes last night’s dinner, and lunch is sometimes cereal. Whatever I’m feeling like. It’s really hard for me to eat grains in the morning though. Milk and sausage and TEA. Maybe hashbrowns, because I love potatoes.

  23. IMPORTANT BREAKING NEWS! I have had many a Swedish breakfast, in Sweden, and I am here to tell you that the SWEDISH PANCAKE IS A LIE. No pancakes for breakfast!

    Pancakes on Thursdays, after pea soup.

    Bread, cheese, yoggi, fruit, cereal and a lot of coffee, for breakfast. Hej då (goodbye).

  24. Bagels with cream cheese or veggie omelets or waffles or leftover chinese take out are my favorite things to eat for breakfast.

  26. We talked about breakfast foods in my Spanish class today. Autostraddle and real life are merging! Yes!!

  27. I love breakfast, but I hate having food allergies, which make breakfast that much more difficult.

    Currently my go to is a gluten free English muffin, slathered in (soy free) earth balance and organic local jam, which I then wrap in a paper towel and eat on my way to school while dropping delicious bits of blueberry jam all over myself. Relatedly, was dropping a cute girl off somewhere and had to warn her about the pile of jam coated paper towels in my car…I judged myself.

    alternatively, I like bacon, and anything with eggs, especially if it involves avocado. I really want to make pancakes now tho. Mmm. pancakes.

  28. This post has me thinking 2 things:
    1. I would love to make someone one of these breakfasts to wake up to.
    2. I would love to wake up to someone having made me one of these breakfasts.

  30. I love breakfast food, but usually in the morning I have cereal because I’m lazy and won’t take the time to cook unless it’s the weekend. I can’t take really sugary food in the morning, it’ll make me sick, so I tend to stick to hashbrowns, eggs, and bacon.

    And tea, I don’t care how hot or cold it is outside, I will have a hot cup of english breakfast tea every morning.

  34. Omg the Canada picture is totally nellies in Calgary which used to have like 6 locations but then they found mouse poop or something an it was a big deal and they had to shut a few of them down but I don’t care I still totally eat there and I’m excited because I recognized the menus and the breakfast and i love that place and also run on sentences.

  35. Yum, I love vegemite! I suffered from lack of it while I was in Europe. I’m too impatient for toast in the morning/i am running too late after my cat falls asleep on me and i fall into an incredibly deep slumber and wake up 40 minutes later than expected.

  36. I love breakfast but I hardly get any. On weekdays I only have a cup of milk and coffee and on weekends I wake up for lunch.
    I like toasts with avocado. Toast with scrambled eggs. Muffins. Oatmeal cookies.
    Pancakes when I’m hungover.
    I like cereals
    But it’s more of a midmorning or afternoon snack.

    I’m not good at getting up early to make breakfast but I good at leaving things ready the night before.

  37. My breakfast varies, but it would be more like the Denmark one because I’m from Norway myself. I usually eat thin, crisp bread. Like these: http://www.tine.no/imageresize/315553_533_800_bm.jpg
    They are super good! On them I have ham, cheese and cucumber ^^,

    I love breakfast! That’s one thing I missed when I was in America. Because at Norway we often gather for breakfast with loads of different things to have on our bread.

  39. The Hawaii one was a little off…fruit and a bagel? Google “loco moco” for improved accuracy…

  40. Haggis, tattie scone and ketchup on a roll? Be still my beating heart…quite literally , you tattie scone rebel :P

    But seriously… when are we doing breakfast?

    • +1 on that haggis/potato scone deliciousness. What an idea!

      I’m a big fan of black pudding – i’ve been known to build (yes, build – a lot of ingredients requires a lot of planning) breakfast rolls with blackpudding, fried potato, fried onions, bacon and scrambled eggs. Not something to eat every day (I like the idea of living til old age), but man it is TASTY. Throw a bit of brown sauce on there too, for extra tastiness, and serve with a nice strong cup of tea. Ahhhhhhh, lovely..

  41. in Texas it’s tacos.. lots and lots of tacos. . . tortillas, eggs, cheese, chorizo or bacon or beans . .

    I love French Toast too!

    Pho at 10 am is also a great way to start the day..

  42. The Ghanaian breakfast she talks about is not at ALL like that – when I lived in Kumasi it was toast, eggs and Milo.

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