Breakfast, Part I

Bacon and eggs were not something my parents made for breakfast. Instead, despite my mother being a nutritionist, breakfast in our house included a rotating cast of microwaveable churros, grocery store pumpkin pie and apple strudels, and Toaster Strudels. With the icing packets. Yet no artificially colored cereals! (Which is why I now buy Lucky Charms from time to time.) Or snacks! So no Fruit Roll-Ups or Gushers in my Little Mermaid lunchkit. You might think someone in elementary school would be all over the Toaster Strudel, but for whatever reason I never had an appetite for breakfast (this continued through college) and would convince my dad to let me take it to go (like, on the school bus) and then proceeded to throw my breakfast away at the first trash can I saw. Of course now I feel incredibly guilty.

On weekends, still no bacon and eggs, or pancakes and waffles, obviously, but my mom might make her vinegar and soy sauce eggs or my dad would make a pot of glutinous rice balls filled with sesame paste or his flavorless boiled sweet potato. Yes, my dad cooks. In fact, in my memory, he cooked most weekday nights, whereas my mom cooked more often for special occasions. When we had guests, she was more in the kitchen than at the dining table and eventually reappeared with the shrimp—always the last dish, always hot—and would finally stay a while. Shortly thereafter I would excuse myself and whip out one of my more advanced Chinese phrases, which translated to something like "I'm leaving, but you should stay as long as you want and eat slowly." My parents' friends were always impressed by this.