Breakfast foods: savory or sweet?

[BeeZee]

I remember jonesing for a slice of pizza at 10:00 a.m. one time when I was between client meetings and being really bummed out that I couldn't get one.

That being said, most of the time I lean more towards sweet stuff (not too sweet, maybe more like yogurt with honey/fruit).

I also found that a couple of years ago when I was working out very heavily I would scarf down my turkey sandwich (which was for lunch) by 11:00 a.m., I really craved the protein.

[feedmec00kies]

It seems like a great idea to me. Were there any other ingredients besides bread, egg, salt, and pepper?

Nope, no other ingredients, unless Darienne has a different experience. I just add the salt and pepper to the eggs and milk (instead of sugar, nutmeg and vanilla) before soaking the bread.

[MomOfLittleFoodies]

I can go either way... sometimes I want sweet, sometimes I want savory.

[Lori in PA]

I don't think anybody has said what I prefer, so I'll chime in. (Hi, everybody -- long time no see!)

For my FIRST breakfast, I need protein or I'll have blood sugar probs all day off and on.

For my SECOND breakfast (in an idea world this happens, but my world is far from ideal), at 10 o'clock or so (right about now as a matter of fact), I will have a cup of coffee and something homemade, wonderful, and sweet -- a muffin, a slice of sweet bread, or even a couple of pancakes.

[Holly Moore]

Orange juice adds sweet to even the most savory breakfast.

In the best of all possible worlds I would live in a small town in South Carolina, an easy walk from a shack of a restaurant specializing in breakfast - anything from country ham to local sausage to livermush with a couple of eggs, grits, biscuits and, for a touch of sweet, peach preserves the owner put up last summer. Just past the cafe, the town druggist, well stocked with Lipitor.

A bit of sweet is always nice, but, if forced to choose, savory.

[Hest88]

Savory, totally. Since my parents are Cantonese we grew up eating savory breakfast foods. The only times I crave something sweet for breakfast is when I've waited so long to eat that it's near lunchtime and, I guess, my body wants the quick energy burst of sugar.

[DeliciouslyLekker]

I'll eat both, but I'm definitely leaning towards savoury. I love leftovers and I'd do anything for roti canai with fish curry or nasi lemak in the morning. Can't buy them here though so usually make do with brioche, sausage rolls, eggs or other pastries.

What Chris Amirault posted, I could eat for every meal for a week in a row....

[petite tête de chou]

Though I coax my unwilling eyes open with a single cup of sweet and creamy coffee I'd fly to Vietnam every morning and have pho and gorgeous fresh fruit for breakfast. So, savory definitely but that first cup of java better be sweet 'cause I'm *not* a morning gal.

[prasantrin]

I'll eat both, but I'm definitely leaning towards savoury. I love leftovers and I'd do anything for roti canai with fish curry or nasi lemak in the morning. Can't buy them here though so usually make do with brioche, sausage rolls, eggs or other pastries.

What Chris Amirault posted, I could eat for every meal for a week in a row....

Sausage rolls!! I love sausage rolls for breakfast--straight from the freezer to the oven to my mouth! Do you make your own or are they commonly purchased breakfast items in the Netherlands?

[Peter the eater]

This is an enlightening discussion, I'm going to try salting the french toast this weekend. My breakfasts are very much on the savory side mostly because I eat them before I go to bed. Not very healthy.

[Beebs]

Savoury, 9 out of 10 times. If I have a sweet for breakfast, I need to follow it up with a bit of something savoury. One of my favourite brekkies is oatmeal with brown sugar and boiled eggs sprinkled with Maggi sauce - a bite of sweet, a bite of savoury!

[mizducky]

Totally into savory foods for breakfast. I grew up equating the ideal leisurely Sunday breakfast with bagels, cream cheese, lox (and/or other assorted smoked or pickled fish), and sliced onions and tomatoes. Or one of those big breakfasts for which US Northeast diners are notorious--huge over-stuffed omelettes with a massive side of hashbrowns; or biscuits and gravy; or hash ... Mind you, I did not eat those kinds of breakfast every day--in fact, school mornings did start out with cold cereal and milk; but nobody in my family cared for any of the super-sweet cereals--the farthest we'd go was that Life cereal with just the tiniest bit of sweetness to it.

Cheese sandwiches (melted or not) have been my grab-and-go breakfast on the run choice for some time now. And I would have no qualms whatsoever of making breakfast out of the previous night's dinner, however savory, spicy, or non-standard breakfast food (cold pizza? cold Chinese food takeout? cold barbeque chicken? leftover half a burrito? bring it on!)

Oh yeah--the breakfast burrito is Southern California's gift to savory breakfast lovers everywhere. I loves me some machaca and eggs in a super-fresh flour tortilla.

P.S. Oh, and coffee. Lots and lots of coffee. Black, or with milk only. Forget the sweetener.

[Special K]

Savory, always. Can't even face orange juice, but tomato juice is fine. The only time I ever want sweets is for dessert on those rare occasions when we eat out - and then it's usually because the selection on the cart just looks so beautiful!

But a bowl of sweetened cereal, or a stack of pancakes, etc., in the morning just does not seem appealing to me at all. I guess the first thing I learned how to cook as a kid was bacon, so the rest of the kids could have their cereal or their Carnation Instant Breakfast or whatever, and Mom could stay in bed.

In pastry/bread baking school, I used to gross everyone out by eating bacon rinds for breakfast (but maybe that's because they were all vegetarians).

[Beebs]

And I would have no qualms whatsoever of making breakfast out of the previous night's dinner, however savory, spicy, or non-standard breakfast food (cold pizza? cold Chinese food takeout? cold barbeque chicken? leftover half a burrito? bring it on!)

Oh good, I'm not the only one! Leftover pasta fried up with an egg, cold pizza, soup, ramen....I'll eat anything for breakfast. The husband thinks it's totally vile that I do this. Latest grab and go brekky is a raisin English muffin with a slices of cheese and ham. Makes DH gag a little, but hey, you've got the best of both worlds in one bite!

[Chris Amirault]

Does anyone do "breakfast for dinner"? I have two girls -- 12 and 4 1/2 -- for whom this is the ideal dinner. They're split on savory or sweet, but lean sweet. Still, yesterday, breakfast burritos with homemade tortillas were a big hit.

[Lora]

It's gotta be sweet, but it can't be rich. Rice with yogurt and jam, or cold sweet potato custard, or pancakes with bananas ... but never pastries. Pastries are what I want for dessert. It is my eternal sadness that my local donut shops aren't open at 5 p.m.

[mizducky]

By an interesting coincidence, just yesterday the instructor of my Japanese 101 course engaged the class in a discussion of what we eat for breakfast (great way for Sensei to slip in some cross-cultural comparisons while getting us to work on our conversational skills). She pointed out that the traditional Japanese breakfast tended towards savory/salty foods (miso soup, pickles, fish, etc.--all accompanying rice of course; after all, she pointed out, it's called asagohan, morning rice). She also professed amusement at general American preferences for sweet breakfast foods. I'm with her; I could get into rice and miso soup for breakfast. Hmmmm ... maybe I'll start doing that ...

[nakji]

She also professed amusement at general American preferences for sweet breakfast foods. I'm with her; I could get into rice and miso soup for breakfast. Hmmmm ... maybe I'll start doing that ...

I don't know how much of a norm rice and miso soup is for breakfast anymore in Japan, at least with younger people in the cities. Most of the Tokyoites I worked with in Japan ate melonpan and other assorted sweet "bread" products sourced from the 7-11 on their morning run to work. One savoury thing that was universally popular, and I which I enjoyed frequently for breakfast, was onigiri. A nice tuna mayonnaise onigiri washed down with bottled green tea from Family Mart is a breakfast of champions.

[Lilija]

I'm a difficult breakfast person. After mulling it over and over, I pick savory, for special weekend breakfasts. Buckwheat pancakes, butter but no syrup, bacon, black coffee, tomato juice. Awesome. Maybe, sometimes a gob of strawberry jam or honey on the pancake. Once every few months I get a craving for sweet, and that's when I go for French toast, honey, and sausage. I'm not a fan of maple syrup, so honey is what I generally pick, or jam. I don't like eggs, so it way cuts down on my breakfast choices.

Weekdays are a real pain. First of all, I used to not eat breakfast. I'd have coffee or tea, and then lunch way later. The idea of food early in the morning is highly unappealing, so I would just skip it on weekdays (weekends are excused, because I get up later, and eat later). Since I've made a ton of nutritional changes in my life, I HAVE to eat breakfast every morning. I stick to bland. Multigrain toast with cream cheese or peanut butter. Turkey, some cheese, and a piece of fruit. Occasionally cereal, for a change of pace, but usually plain Cheerios or cornflakes. Sometimes I'll just stand in front of the fridge, coffee in hand, and eat turkey slices straight out of the meat drawer. Often, leftovers are too rich, strongly seasoned and intimidating. I'm lame, I know.

Edited October 22, 2009 by Lilija (log)

[Chufi]

Overall I prefer savory foods to sweet, but not for breakfast.. although my favorite breakfast is not really sweet either. Yoghurt with some tart rhubarb compote and a bit of granola, or yoghurt with a cut up orange or some other acidic fruit. I like to eat things that taste clean and fresh and that wake me up.. I can't eat anything too greasy or sugary first thing in the morning, so no pastries, muffins, or pancakes for me.

The exception is my favorite lazy sunday morning breakfast: a soft boiled egg, a piece of buttered toast, a couple of slices of aged Gouda. But even that has to be balanced with a large glass of orange juice (preferably mixed with fresh lemon juice!)

I guess I'm the 3rd category: I like my breakfasts sour

[Kent D]

I prefer savory, whether it's eggs and bacon, biscuits and gravy (with some gravy slop-over on some hash browns), a bacon quesadilla, leftover roast beef and mashed potatoes on toast...I've always been a weird eater for breakfast.

Yes, I'll eat pancakes or waffles or muffins, but I prefer grease and salt and meat.

[theisenm85]

I was the one who got looks from the family when I ate Bisquik pancakes with no syrup/butter. Frankly, they were sweet enough for me as is... I have no idea if the ingredients on that include sugar, but I swear I tasted it. Then again, it's been at least a decade since I've had the stuff.

Every once in a while I'd get the hankering for syrup.... but not often.

I'm definitely on the savory side - I do get the craving for non-savory, usually if it's around and delicious looking, but not too often.

[SusieQ]

I'll eat both, but I'm definitely leaning towards savoury. I love leftovers and I'd do anything for roti canai with fish curry or nasi lemak in the morning. Can't buy them here though so usually make do with brioche, sausage rolls, eggs or other pastries.

What Chris Amirault posted, I could eat for every meal for a week in a row....

Sausage rolls!! I love sausage rolls for breakfast--straight from the freezer to the oven to my mouth! Do you make your own or are they commonly purchased breakfast items in the Netherlands?

This whole conversation is fascinating to me. I grew up in an era (at least in my family circle) where your breakfast didn't change much from day to day. Every morning (pretty much) we had mush, and so did everybody else we knew. That was it as far as I can remember. "Mush" for us meant hot oatmeal cereal, big pots of it, nothing "instant" (I don't think instant even existed then). It might have been sweetened, I don't really remember. But I do remember it was good -- it filled our stomachs as soon as we got out of bed! I kinda remember my grandpa putting salt on his mush. (He was considered a little bit an "eccentric" eater in the family back then. He was known for eating ketchup and onion sandwiches and for polishing off the rest of the coleslaw -- if there was any left after dinner -- as dessert, that sort of thing. But I digress.)

As an older adult, I've been mostly a savory breakfast eater. And I, too, love leftovers anytime, but especially for breakfast! Give me your pizza, your pita and baba ganoush, your hot and sour soup, your rice and ma-po tofu, your French dip, your split pea soup, your sauerkraut and pork, your chile relleno and rice and beans -- Yum!

My go-to breakfast now is something with bread and something with protein, like rye or whole grain toast, thin slices of cheddar or whatever cheese I happen to have, a handful of walnuts -- that's one breakfast I really like. With usually a glass of milk. Or I can really get into a "fry-up" but try not to do it too often. <lol> Then there's another favorite: Toast (no butter), with crisp bacon and then a poached egg on top, and then a sprinkling of grated parm. cheese and a bit of salt and pepper. But most often it's without the bacon.

For a few short weeks a time or two in my life I ate what I pictured as a typical Japanese breakfast -- miso soup with tofu and green onions, some crisped nori sheets, some rice wrapped in the nori with maybe a bit of omebushi plum or a bit of poached salmon or both, green tea. Oh yeah, and pickles. I really did like that breakfast (I even included natto once), but it was very time-consuming (for me) because I always made my own miso soup from scratch and cooked the rice fresh. My body felt really good eating it, though.

I lived in Montreal for a couple of short stretches, and the people I lived with had -- when they had money -- fresh rolls from the bakery and several kinds of cheese and meats and turkish coffee with hot milk. Now that was a breakfast!

One thing I can't do for breakfast is eat a big meal of sweet things. It makes me feel ill. But, I do put sugar or honey in my coffee or tea -- go figure.

Long-winded today, aren't I?

SusieQ