Friday Five courtesy of Heather.

1. Do you eat breakfast? What did you have today?

I like breakfast foods, cereals (not your average US cereal unless it's Cheerios, the rest have the sugar content of, well, a mountain of sugar, I mean, Willy's Wonka's chocolate river's got less sugar in it than the bowl of milk after your average US cereals' been added), canned spaghetti on toast, canned baked beans on toast, crepes (pancakes, unless they're made by Jeff, tend to be too much resembling the dishwasher cloth), porridge (oatmeal), muesli (haven't seen a decent muesli since my brief wander through the Canadian supermarket the weekend of Cameron's wedding, the stuff that tries to pass in the US supermarket has crystalised fruit in it for a start, which is just completely bad and wrong, and then there's that whole sweeter than distillate poly-saccharides thing) , hash browns (The only reason I have for going into a McDonalds is their hash browns), bacon (I asked the Canadians about Canadian bacon and that's a US thing'n'all. I like bacon well done but not so that it skitters about the plate then shatters with more force than a windscreen with a well placed stone) , scrambled eggs on toast, sunnyside up eggs on toast (got to be the whites are firm and done, and the yolk is warm and viscous, all the better to dunk the ‘soldiers’ in), semi hard boiled eggs on toast (see previous comment about egg yolks and soldiers) omelettes, actually, anything with eggs in it will happily do me for brekkie, not to mention the various combos of fruits and yoghurts (yoghurt is meant to be tangy. It is meant to be tart. It is NOT supposed to taste like milky jam (US=jelly)); these are all foods I happily eat throughout the day without relegating them to the brekkie ghetto.

I don't always quite manage to get around to breakfast, I tend to stay up lateish, about 3 or 4 (or some nights 5 or 6, staying awake just long enough to kiss Jeff good mornign as he gets up to go to his contract job), so I usually end up doing a lunch-ish type deal. I do agree that it's the best meal of the day, and if I manage to stagger out around the time of day when it's appropriate to call it breakfast, I try to eat something. Less likely to get the food crankies later on midmorning and scoff an entire packet of chips.

This morning, not a late one, but springing out of bed, read the two local papers we subscribe to, tweaked a couple of websites, called and confirmed a couple of new client meetings for next Monday morning, and then spent the rest of the afternoon working (for the first time since, gulp, May...) on the Theatre group documentation, trying to get the paperwork together so we can get our grant money

I suck at grants, I truly do, although I'm probably more getting myself intimidated into that because our former grantwriter, our friend who drowed, was the Poet Laureate of Grants, and me being not good about being crap at something when I'm learning, am well versed in the art of not trying too hard at it at all because I hate that learning process that I tell all my clients is so vital to becoming good at something. Ahem. Do as I say, not as I do but don't tell you that I do.

The first food I managed to get myself today was two roast chicken drumsticks I devoured in the car on the way home from our local Pathmark, about 5:30 this afternoon. Should have eaten before we went shopping. I did reasonably well, only had to write the end of shop cheque for $75, and $30 of that was cash for the boy for petrol and the like. Still, we went there to buy cheddar cheese, and came out with $45 of groceries including milk, smoked salmon, an entire roast chicken as well as the two drumsticks for jackal like devouring in the car (I tell you, the smell of the roast chicken in the back of the car, I'd have been half way up Jeffreys right arm before we'd finished the 10 minute drive without some form of FOOOD.), 10 little yoghurts and 3 large packets of post Halloween candy-lollies.

2. What beverages do you usually have in a typical day?

Water, lots of water. I try to aim for the 2L of water a day. I go through phases of glasses of milk, 2% milk rather than full fat, and never ever non-fat milk, it tastes like a nightmare version of milk of magnesia. Pathmark Seltzer water is another fave, basically fizzy (carbonated) water, slightly more interesting than plain water-water. It comes in a variety of flavours, orange (yum) , lemon/lime (Mental note, try this with angostura bitters and some Paul Newman Lemonade, see if it comes close to a Lemon Lime and Bitters), Raspberry (eh, not so much) and Cherry (utterly vile, tastes like medicine, I'd rather drink non-fat milk.).

3. White bread or wheat bread?

Depends on the topping. Also depends on the bread. Big completely qualified Depends. For vegemite, it's got to be white bread, wheat bread just doesn't work. Same thing with “Fairy Bread” (that's bread with margarine and hundreds&thousands, which are sort of like Jimmies, and sort of not, they're little hard crunchy balls the size of the thing that makes the ballpoint work in your ballpoint), it's just not done with Healthy Chewy bread.

If it's going to be home-made (or bought in the shop but looks like the stuff you'd make at home if you had their ovens) bread, then I want wheat, I want multigrain, I want big, bulky, chewy, fibrous.

Updated 4 July, 2002