The English breakfast

In my opinion, the most pleasant thing to do in this life is to have a relaxed breakfast with your family early in the morning. When I was a child, I used to read adventure novels written by Enid Blyton, in particular a collection called “the famous five” (“los cinco” in Spanish). Was in those lectures where I discovered the authentic English breakfast with eggs, beacon, ham, jam of rhubarb or ginger, bread, biscuits, pastry; and all in a white table mounted with brilliant cutlery, and especially without any hurry. English people have been always intelligent. They have invented almost everything really useful; football, tennis, gin tonic, Jane Austen novels, the phone, the computer, internet, the tube and, above all, the English breakfast.

During my childhood, I never had a breakfast in my house. My mother always prepared me a sandwich (but a Spanish sandwich that is very different than an English or American sandwich, with an absolutely different kind of bread) with an orange to eat at the middle of the class. I can remember the special flavour of my class during breakfast, a tremendous melt of orange and “human fragrances”. We used to have our breakfast playing football at the same time in a tiny schoolyard.

Breakfast is the first food of the day, and it deserves all our attention. To start the day with a good breakfast is to start the day well. I’m absolutely convinced that everybody must learn all good things of other countries. In particular, I know we cannot just copy English breakfast, but we can improve it. In Spain we have serious competitors to beacon or jam of ginger. We can prepare a succulent breakfast with jabugo’s jam, omelette with potatoes, all kind of Spanish sausages and, in our case a Catalan invent, the tomato spread breath. And like English people, without any hurry and with all our family. With these ingredients we can become invincible.