In Which You Learn That Gayle Has Never Eaten Fried Eggs with Ham for Breakfast

[queerbychoice]

I have been studying my Advanced Spanish Grammar textbook that I received for my birthday, and I am now up to chapter 3 (of 26 chapters). Chapters 2 and 3 are about breakfast and dinner, and they make lots of statements about what the supposedly typical breakfast and dinner foods are in various Spanish-speaking and English-speaking countries. Unfortunately, I completely disagree with the author's claims about what the supposedly typical foods are in the United States. So I looked at where the author (Marcial Prado) is from, and it says he was born in Spain, but that he received his Ph.D. in Spanish from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and that he is now a professor at California State University at Fullerton - so he's apparently been living in the United States for a considerably long time. You wouldn't think that two such longtime residents of the very same state would have such completely contradictory views about what most people in the United States typically eat. The book includes a little "true or false" quiz section in each chapter, and these items appeared there:

True or false?
____ A typical breakfast in the United States is fried eggs with ham.
____ Chicken with rice is a very popular dish in the United States.

The textbook claims my answers to both of the above were incorrect. I disagree, so I've decided to check.

Non-Americans should skip to the last two questions on the poll. Americans should answer the first two questions and skip the last two. ("American" as defined by having lived in the U.S.)

[Poll #325527]

(For the record: the textbook claims that fried eggs with ham is indeed a very typical breakfast in the United States, but that chicken with rice is not a popular dish at all in the United States. I of course disagree.)

Comments

[interjections.livejournal.com]

I think scrambled eggs with sausages are more popular.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I can't really imagine ever eating any cooked food for breakfast on a regular basis. To me, breakfast foods are cereal and milk and orange juice and maybe anything else that doesn't need to be cooked, like bread and butter or fruit or something. The idea of being in any mood to bother cooking something when I just woke up is very alien to me.

[interjections.livejournal.com]

me too! I am the biggest cereal freak. . .I could eat it for three meals a day, seriously.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

I decided to be helpful and not point out that as I am a vegetarian, hello, I have never eaten ham or chicken. Ever. I have, however, eaten fried eggs and rice.

Anyway.

I'd go with it that typical breakfast foods are not cooked, except that, well, there are microwaves. And slow cookers. And frozen potato things that can just be stuck in the oven and left to cook while I have my bath.

Things I have eaten regularly for breakfast over the past year:

1. Bread and things to spread on it, or not, depending on the kind of bread.
2. Fruit.
3. Porridge. (One cup rolled oats, one cup milk, one cup water, pinch salt, cook for five minutes, serve with fruit and/or yoghurt and/or maple syrup.)
4. Soup from the slow cooker. (I often put a batch of soup together last thing at night, switch the slow cooker on, try a bowlful of it out in the morning for breakfast, then leave it to cool down inside the slow cooker and freeze it in portions for lunch/dinner later.)
5. Frozen food that can be put in the oven and the oven switched on and twenty minutes later you have breakfast - potato wedges or samosas or stuff like that. Good on cold days.
6. Leftovers from dinner the night before, reheated or not. This has been known to include a bowlful of rice reheated with milk and a sprinkling of sugar, eaten with fruit. Mmmm.

I only eat fried eggs for breakfast when I'm staying in a hotel and breakfast is included and there are fried eggs on the hot place. And then I take a couple and dip toast in the yolks, which should be liquid, and eat the yolk, but not the white. Or if I order a cooked breakfast in a cafe, which I don't very often, and if it's a British cafe odds are they won't ask me how I want the eggs, just serve them fried.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I think you are underestimating my laziness. The microwave is what I use to cook dinner every night. For breakfast I want to be even more lazy than that. :p

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

I think you are underestimating my laziness.

Just possibly...

[arimle.livejournal.com]

Maybe he's trying to contrast Anglo-American eating habits with Spanish eating habits. Ham and fried eggs sounds like a more stereotypical English breakfast than anything. I don't eat it myself; but if I were going to make a list of things Americans might eat for breakfast, "ham" and "fried eggs" would definitely go on it.

[ankie.livejournal.com]

What do you mean with rice and chicken? Ofcourse I've had rice and I've had chicken. But is it a specific dish you mean with rice and chicken?

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

The book doesn't really make that clear. It could be referring to chicken with rice placed on top of it or inside it, but I answered the question just for chicken being on the same plate as rice at the same meal, because I don't see how moving the rice over an extra inch really changes the meal significantly.

[chisparoja.livejournal.com]

personally i find fried eggs and ham rather atrocious, but i regularly eat rice with chicken, rice with fish, rice with corn, or just rice. but otoh my culinary traditions aren´t exactly entirely american either.

i have found pancakes, french toast and waffles and bacon are much more common american breakfast foods. but this could simply be bias on my part, i like pancakes, french toast and waffles.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I don't mind fried eggs, but I really hate ham. I can't even force myself to eat more than two bites of it even if I'm really hungry, because the taste is too overwhelmingly . . . ham-ish. Sickly-sweet and overpowering.

See, generalizations about Americans that don't apply to me tend to startle me more than they startle you because more often when generalizations are made about Americans (unless the generalizations are about their political or religious beliefs) they do apply to me.

[inkstained.livejournal.com]

Maybe they meant fried eggs and bacon, which is eaten for breakfast by thousands of people in Britain every day :p Do people over there never eat cooked foods at breakfast?

-ink

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I tend to suspect that only around half of Americans even eat breakfast at all on a regular basis. Personally, I prefer to sleep in as long as possible, so I get up with only enough time to rush immediately to work, and then on my 10:00 a.m. break at work I eat the muffins that my boss puts in the conference room. I don't know whether that exactly counts as "breakfast" or not because it's so late. Besides, it usually takes me until 3:00 p.m. to finish a muffin (they are large), so if it's breakfast then it's also lunch.

My maternal grandparents cook breakfast a few times per week, and they're American. But I can't think of anybody else I know (offline) who cooks breakfast more than a few times per year.

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

If Americans have a cooked breakfast, chances are it involves eggs and meat. I don't think of ham as that meat, though; more like bacon or sausage.

I don't eat meat myself, and I have rarely had cooked breakfasts in the past, but since moving into a new apartment recently I am making an effort to put more into every meal than just "apply yogurt to cereal", so I've been having scrambled eggs with cheese and tomatoes wrapped in a warm tortilla for most breakfasts this week.

I had the impression that, if one bothers to cook chicken rather than just buying it in a bucket, one would have a side of starch, like rice or mashed potatoes. My parents would probably have rice pilaf.

Now that it's come up, it's clear that I don't understand why anyone would be expected to know what a "typical" American breakfast or dinner is. Who goes over to a hundred other people's houses for dinner? If you don't go to that many, then all you know is what people you know like, and even if you do, all you know is what people in your region like. It seems like a bogus question to me.

[spreadsothin.livejournal.com]

Most of the textbooks I've encountered, in the beginnings of learning other cultures tend to have such gross generalizations.

An American breakfast is certainly ham with eggs. It's on the menu at enough diners, enough people find eggs with a pork product as a typical diet. Although eggs with bacon might be a better choice for a "typical" American breakfast- The people who read your journal tend not to be the great masses of America. The heartland America, which does indeed eat eggs and bacon for breakfast.

As for chicken with rice, I don't eat it because it's an American food.. but I've eaten chicken with rice in Indian, Thai, Chinese, and Mexican dining establishments.... and the combination of these makes it, fairly regular?

But what's regular with food? I eat different things every day.

I think there lies a problem in drawing American generalizations, especially with things such as food. Such a community of varying cultures eats so many different things and you'll eat different things in Farm town than you will in City.

[yourapple.livejournal.com]

I'm Canadian, I think it really depends on where you live in Canada. In places like the Maritimes and small towns in general, they are more characteristically 'Canadian', but in Toronto and other big cities, it's so multicultural that every family has a different set of food. I eat Chinese food at home, my friend that lives a few minutes away has Russian food. But anyhow, I can't think of anyone that eats ham and eggs.

[legolastn.livejournal.com]

Not even Canadian ham and eggs? What a bummer!

Mmmmmm breakfast

[joannasatana.livejournal.com]

Im actually off today with Jsin, and was thinking about making breakfast (a meal I dont often participate in) for us. On the menu this morn would be bacon, scrambled eggs, MAYBE wrapped in tortillas or with biscuits (the canned kind, as I am not crafty enough or awake enough to attempt making them from scratch this am) and thats our usual cooked breakfast, when and if we ever actually cook OR EAT breakfast LOL!

I have indeed enjoyed fried eggs and ham for breakfast but I dont think theyve been served together, though I dont find the concept weird, just something I havent eaten. My favorite breakfasty ham dish would be fried ham in brown sugar with red eye gravy which is the left over juice and sugary carmelized goodness left in the pan after youve fried your ham, mixed with STRONG coffee to make a gravy of sorts. Havent mastered it myself, but my mom and grandmother have both made this for breakfast on occassion.
OH and if I eat fried eggs, theyve GOT to be hard fried....without the runny yoke. I WILL NOT eat a runny egg. I also have enjoyed fried egg sandwiches. On toast. mmmmmmmmm good.

As far as the chicken with rice dish. I have a recipe I make that also comes from my mom (god DAMN she's a master cooking diva of fattening but exquisitly delicious comfort food) that includes, rice, chicken, a bit of bacon in the bottom of the dish, with cream of celery soup on top, all cooked together. Its one of my all time favorite dishes she makes and a childhood fave as well. I even made up a vegetarian version (using fake bacon, fake chicken) when I was a veggie for 10 years. I HAD to make a substitute. Without it in my diet at LEAST once every couple of months (more often in my culinary dreams) I would die. I also made a veggie version of "Chicken" and dumplin's that were pretty delicious too. Chicken was actually my downfall when i fell off the vegetarian wagon. I couldnt live without it any longer. Bacon too. Though I like veggie versions of both as well.

god im starving now. can you tell? I actually DO have some ham, AND some eggs, so perhaps I will make said typical american breakfast of fried eggs and ham, but Im leaning towards bacon......

[sankta.livejournal.com]

My answers are not typical because I won't eat two types of food if they have been allowed to touch. THAT'S DISGUSTING.

[beraht.livejournal.com]

Ham and eggs is a fairly common southern dish. Not sure about the rest of the country but I know I've had it at least once since moving to the Pacific Northwest so it's not unheard of here either.

And you have Dr Seuss as well, obviously.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

That explains it! It definitely must be a regional thing. The author of the textbook went to college in Washington D.C. so he's more familiar with southern foods than I am. This would also explain why my maternal grandmother (who was born in Colorado, but whose parents were from the South) cooks breakfasts like that fairly often whereas nobody else I know offline does. Plus it explains why joannasatana above, who is from Texas, is the person here who's expressing the most enthusiasm about ham and eggs for breakfast.

[cheeser1.livejournal.com]

i agree with what alot of people are saying, it's very regional, as well as varying based on what kind of household you examine. i eat bacon and scrambled eggs somewhat often. but that's just because i screw up frying eggs all the time.

it's a very terrible generalization, but it is quite true that in the south, including texas where i grew up, people consider a cooked breakfast to be eggs and meat, possibly with toast or grits or something (ugh...grits...)

[deadinmotion.livejournal.com]

I ONLY EAT VEGAN GREEN EGGS AND HAM

[brienf.livejournal.com]

My parents grew up in the midwest, but my dad would make scambled eggs with ham nearly every weekend for my brother and me in AZ.

Bacon and sausages would also make an appearance, but the ham was always in the scrambled eggs.