Eggs and Bacon

There’s a reason for everything—if not most things. Breakfast is no exception. There’s a reason why bacon and eggs rule the morning roost, and it goes back to Victorian England. During a time when the industrial revolution was roaring and England was at it’s richest. People needed new ways of “Keeping Up With The Joneses,” and there-in the traditional english breakfast was born! Breakfast became an opportunity for people to flaunt there riches by showing a range of their available abundances: eggs, meats, grains, potatoes, fresh fruit. This type of luxurious morning meal became habit, breakfast became “the most important meal of the day,” and tradition of having a well-balanced breakfast spread globally.

To much surprise, bacon and eggs were not a part of the tradition that was immediately embraced by the American culture. Americans adapted a lighter version of the english breakfast that mainly consisted of grains, toast, fruit and coffee. It wasn’t until a man by the name of Bernay, Sigmund Fraud’s nephew and pretty much the king of what we know as “PR,”was hired by the Beech-Nut Packing Company to help move one of their lowest sellers—bacon. Bernay convinced thousands of doctors to state that a heavier breakfast was beneficial to the American diet. Sold on the idea, bacon and eggs became as ordinary in the American Breakfast as the English. Bacon, even more so, became a staple for all meals of the day! BLT’s, bacon bits, bacon burgers, bacon this, bacon that, bacon, Bacon, BACON!

Lucky for us, eggs have also joined the category of the constantly redefined. We all know the question well: “How to you like your eggs?” Do you like them scrambled—that is  with the whites and yolk whipped together and then cooked—or do you you like to keep the two parts separated by cooking them sunnyside up, with only the the exposed egg whites being cooked against a hot pan, while the majority of the yolk on top remain runny?  Or you could flip it, cook it on both sides, and you have a fried egg.

 Perhaps you don’t want the fuss of frying at all and you want a simple boiled egg.  Options there are a hard boiled egg, with the egg boiled whole (shell included) and then pealed once the egg has cooked through entirely, or maybe you want a poached egg, where the egg is cracked into a pot of boiling water, while the outside of the yolk cooks and capsulates the runny yolk inside. Maybe you want a entirely egg breakfast? There’s always the ever-classic eggs benedict, a poached egg topped with ham or bacon, hollandaise sauce, and closed between two english muffin halves—or the crowd pleasing omelette. Made a million ways to sunday, it can be any scramble of eggs mixed with cheeses, onions, peppers, bacon, ham, you name it!

With so many killer choices out there—what ‘s your favorite breakfast combo?