BOB DAVIS ART
A. Background
Breakfast was invented by the Scottish Highlanders in 1342, when they discovered that the evening's haggis leftovers were even better the next morning cold. Soon, they began accompanying this mini-feast with robin's eggs they would find out on the heath. By 1481 they were cooking the eggs, and in 1652 they decided to skip the haggis altogether, creating the first "modern" breakfast of ham and eggs, with golden whole wheat toast and fresh creamery butter.
Meanwhile, in 1488, the French were creating their own morning repast of french cheese and french bread and french meats. Being thus determined to be agressively francophilic diners, they soon began eating french hen eggs and pots of french buttercream too!
Breakfast was soon the second favorite meal of the day throughout the civilized world. In England, it was surpassed only by afternoon tea. In India, it was recalled fondly throughout the rest of the day leading up to the afternoon tea. In China, where tea was being priced, the Chinese ate an early "dinner" around the time of afternoon tea, thus proving once again that the British are buggers.
Today breakfast is feasted upon everywhere, without reservation, topping bacon with sausage, and eggs with butter, and bread with waffles with biscuits and honey and more eggs too. In all of the wealthier countries, this is on top of the new early-morning snack known as "first breakfast" (or as the kids today call it: "fricksfast") consisting of coffee, toast and partridge eggs, to be followed within the hour by breakfast proper, now adding ham on top of the sausage, and pancakes on top of the waffles, just to be sure, and don't forget the whipped cream. Breakfast buffets have sprung up in all the better States, offering a delectable mix of all these delicacies, plus hominy grits, cereal (especially Captain Crunch... mmmmm...... can't get enough of those crunchberries,) mashed potatoes, and 72 types of fruit and fruit-like objets-d'artes.
In the poorer countries, they have finally decided to concentrate all their energies into perfecting breakfast, and have eliminated the other meals. We heartily support this effort, and look forward to the fruits of their research.
History of Breakfast
The real history, the hidden history, the secret and unknown and never-before-told History of Breakfast lies in the boardroom of IBM in1952, when the white-shirted, red-tied board members got hungry during an early morning meeting where they were discussing the future strategies of the business-machine business, surrounded by secretaries with notepads and assistants with notepads and fresh-faced interns with notepads. So one can imagine how well recorded this particular incident in the company's history has been recorded, and yet you would be wrong. Until today.
Let me take you back to those days, the crystal clear, halcyon days, the fifties, the days when a recent college graduate named Bob Davis could get a job with a big company like IBM for no reason more significant than that his father was Manager of West Coast operations.
It was back then that I was a junior manager in the Management Department at IBM. I was there, in those days, present at all the big meetings, surrounded by all the sycophantic underlings begging me for my golden key to the executive washroom. I saw what really went on in the boardrooms and behind the desks and in the private offices and in the broom closets and under the desks and in the cafeterias and on top of the desks and outside where there was a little bit of air to breathe on those hot summer days in Connecticut.
So it was a morning like every other morning when I woke up hungry, so very hungry, after a long night in the city partying and playing the playboy all night long and drinking too, did I mention the drinking? and so I got to the office and had a bloody mary to quench my thirst and then another to help with the hangover, and then a third to calm the storm building inside me, when one of these brilliant secretaries, these women who ran the company secretly but could never get promoted since they were secretaries, one named Nanci Pecker, handed me a bagel with cream cheese. And the rest is history.
Breakfast Styles
Europe recently passed Executive Order #04-01-333601a.i.b2 recording for all posterity the 16 officially designated forms of breakfast. It is a complex piece of legislation that keeps track of the mixing and matching allowed at licensed restaurants of the following ingredients approved for breakfast consumption in Europe: eggs, pancakes, french toast, waffles, toast, bread, buttered toast, creamery butter, jam, egg-substitutes, sausage, egg sandwiches, bacon, ham, steak, pork chops, lettuce, potatoes, haggis, shimmering eggs sunnyside up, leotards, ostrich, english muffins, french bread, bread pudding, cold pizza, hot and spicy eggs florentine, blood sausage, fried sushi, shallots, strawberry jam, mystery eggs, melon, sugar, egg-creams, styrofoam, eggplant, tallow, sizzle, sharpsters and finicky pointillists.
The most common and popular approved form allows for 3 ingredients with one approved substitution, but some people off the coast of Greece prefer form #13: 16 ingredients sliced thin, though none so thin as to hurt.
Breakfast Features
Eggs are the primary feature of all breakfasts consumed in 72% of the countries surveyed by the Gallop Industries Food Service Poll of Breakfast Habits in 72% of the Countries Surveyed.
Rice is equally consumed for all meals of the day in India and China, except for breakfast, where it is outlawed by edict and by laws too.
The round nature of the plates that breakfast is commonly served on has impacted the features of breakfast in 17% of the countries surveyed.
Most people like a good ostrich egg with their coffee. Occasionally, rice bread is added when staying in the Roundabout Hotel in Urganomics, Switzerland.
Size
The average breakfast is larger than you would think it is possible for a person to consume on an empty stomach so early in the morning, filling the plate deeply and fully and fillingly, over the brim, running along the table and sometimes dropping off the edge and landing on the floor, to be saved for the last bits, consumed along with the grounds left in the bottom of your cup of coffee, as you prepare for the rest of your day about to begin, and place the plate back in the cupboard to be used again tomorrow for another breakfast of unimaginable proportions, or roughly .0043 hectares.
This knowledge entry was written by BD, IHOP, D, and McD.
If you are using this for a school paper, please remember to credit the "Bob Davis Knowledge Base"
All pictures come from the homes of these fine breakfast in america sites.
llast updated February 19, 2007
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