Food: A Love Story (37 page)

Keeping it healthy!

If I’m waking up and I’m going to be eating, I want eggs. Eggs are like the flagship item of breakfast. There are things that taste better than eggs (pancakes and waffles) for breakfast, and there are things that taste worse than eggs (oatmeal, fruit) for breakfast, but eggs are the breakfast standard. Eggs are what separate a continental breakfast from an enjoyable breakfast. There are so many ways to prepare eggs. Here are some of my favorites:

Breakfast Burrito:
If you like eggs, cheese, potatoes, and sausage in each bite and also napping after a meal, then the breakfast burrito is for you.

Quiche:
The egg and cheese pie. If you can’t decide between breakfast and dessert, then quiche is for you. WARNING: Supposedly, eating quiche isn’t manly, and occasionally
when I eat quiche, my gynecologist will make fun of me.

Best quiche ever: Tartine in San Francisco.

Eggs Benedict:
For a traitor, Benedict sure knew how to eat breakfast. In all fairness, poached eggs over ham on a buttery, toasted English muffin covered in Hollandaise sauce would make anyone betray their country.

Other Countries

As a touring comedian I have the privilege of visiting other countries. Now, I enjoy other cultures as much as anyone, but what they are serving for breakfast I find baffling.

Europeans are all proud of their muesli, which I’m pretty sure is what we here in the USA feed our cattle. In some European countries a tray of deli meat is sitting on the table at a breakfast buffet. Initially I thought the deli meat was there because
a refrigerator broke or someone accidentally left it out from yesterday’s lunch. There’s no bread or condiments. Just a big tray of different varieties of sliced ham and salami. Eating slices of cured meat for breakfast sounds to me like something that would occur in a frat house while standing in front of an open refrigerator. Not an appealing image first thing in the morning.

English Breakfast

I was equally shocked and relieved when I discovered that Americans don’t have the unhealthiest breakfast. The English win the “Oddest and Unhealthiest Breakfast” award for the traditional English breakfast, which, for some reason, includes baked beans. That’s right, baked beans, with all their undesirable side effects, are consumed first thing in the morning in England. The other items in a traditional English breakfast include a fried egg, a fried piece of toast, a stewed tomato, a sausage link,
and
a strip of bacon,
and
a piece of fatty ham. Yes, the “traditional” English breakfast, for some reason, includes
all
the breakfast meats. This makes the Denny’s Grand Slam breakfast look like a bowl of cut fruit in comparison. I’ve heard that waking up and smoking a pack of cigarettes is better for you than a traditional English breakfast.

Traditional English breakfast.

Irish Breakfast

The traditional Irish breakfast includes many of the traditional English breakfast items plus something called “black pudding,” which is most definitely not pudding. It never even was pudding or anything close to pudding, and that is extremely obvious upon first sight. Black pudding appears to be a sliced, oversize, sausage-shaped thing with something that looks like seeds in it. Apparently the “black” in black pudding is a reference to blood, which I always understood should be colored red, not black, unless it is the blood from a zombie or an otherwise undead creature. There is also a “white pudding,” which is also not a pudding or white or made from blood. Scientists worldwide are still trying to decipher the molecular composition of white pudding. Personally, I think it’s made from ghosts. The Irish might be unfairly associated with drinking too much, but whoever decided to call black pudding “black pudding” or white pudding “white pudding” was definitely drunk. “Let’s call that stuff pudding! Ha, ha. No, I’m not drunk. Okay, I had one drink … every two minutes for an hour. Ha, ha. Oh, it’s black. Call it ‘black pudding’! Ha, ha. The other one? Call it ‘white pudding.’ Can I pass out now?”

Traditional Irish breakfast.

Breakfast in Bed

Breakfast in bed is a glorious fantasy for me, and not just because I’m a fan of lying down and eating bacon (which I believe is how people kill time in heaven). Breakfast in bed is such an amazing concept because it gives you the option of going right back to sleep when you are finished eating. “Well, it would be rude to eat and run, right? Wake me up when lunch is ready.” I’m always amazed there aren’t restaurants with beds instead of tables. “We’d like a bed for two … with a view of the TV if you have it.” I think the ultimate experience is lying in bed and watching TV while people bring me food on a tray. It’s too bad hospitals have that whole sickness-requirement thing. If it weren’t for that minor detail, I would check into the hospital mañana!

“What are your symptoms?”

“I’m hungry AND I could go for a nap, STAT!”

You can’t turn down breakfast in bed. If you see someone walking into your bedroom with a tray of food in the morning, it is impossible to say, “Sorry, I just ate.” Although that is usually true for me.

THE BAGEL: MY EVERYTHING

I have loved living in New York City for the past twenty years. Everything happened here. I started stand-up comedy, met my wife, Jeannie, and became a father of a basketball team in New York City. The energy, the people, Broadway, Central Park, and even the subway still captivate me, but probably my favorite part of New York City is the bagel. I realize saying New York City has the best bagels is a bit of a cliché, but there is just something truly special about a New York City bagel. Maybe it’s the water, maybe it’s purely a psychological phenomenon, but bagels taste different in New York City.

I wasn’t always a bagel snob. Back in Indiana I could go through a sleeve of frozen Lender’s Bagels before they were thawed. As a college student in Washington, DC, I worked in a café and discovered the masterpiece that is a cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese and bacon. But it was in New York City that I received my bagel education. I gained a respect for the power and art of a New York City bagel. Bagels in New York City are more dense, more flavorful, and, when toasted, develop this crunchy outer crust that becomes its own entity.
When you bite through that crunchy outer layer and experience the warm, chewy insides of a
New York City bagel, you will become a believer too, and you will forsake all other bagels. Bagels outside of New York now just taste like stale round rolls with holes in them. They feel like the bootleg DVD of bagels.

As a struggling new comedian in New York City, late at night I would often shuffle, defeated, into H&H Bagels on Second Avenue after a less than stellar show a block away at the Comic Strip comedy club. The scent of bagel perfection was like a comforting welcome from an old friend. I’d meekly ask, “What’s hot?” and then I would be handed happiness in the form of the freshest, hottest bagel in New York City. Eating the delicious bagel was like a reassuring hug telling me that even if the audience didn’t get me, the bagel did. The bagel knew how to make me happy. Bombing so often at the Comic Strip allowed me to drown my frustrations in freshly baked versions of every traditional variety of bagel. Sometimes I’d get butter or cream cheese on the almost-too-hot-to-hold bagel, but often I would just consume it au naturel. During those early years, H&H Bagels was a shield from the awkwardness of figuring out stand-up comedy. A safe haven where I could escape from the harsh rejection I felt at the club. A bagel even sort of looks like a shield. A delicious shield you can hold up in front of you with your finger in the hole, and nothing bad can happen. Holding my bagel shield, I was like the little Dutch boy saving the village of my ego from the flood of audience disinterest.

I’ve never been the same. Now my daughters go to school on the Upper East Side, and going to Tal Bagels has become my reward for getting up early and transporting them to the other side of Manhattan while barely conscious. Now whenever I make it to the Upper East Side, which at that hour feels like I’ve traveled to another planet, I feel like I’ve earned a bagel. I heard someone talking on the phone describing a “delicious gluten-free New York City bagel,” and it made me angry. How dare you call
that
a New York City bagel? I know New York City bagels. Well, I’ve eaten a whole bunch of them, and there is no such thing as a delicious gluten-free bagel. I just shook my head, sneered at my wife, and walked away to get something to eat.

Bagels are pretty much universally loved. Everyone has
their
bagel. Their bagel of choice. Mine is the “everything” bagel. The everything bagel is a toasted mixture of poppy seeds, sesame seeds, onion, garlic, and salt. I like all bagels, but an everything bagel is something more than special to me. I love my children, but I can’t articulate the depth of feelings I have for a toasted everything bagel with cream cheese. They say you can’t be everything to someone, but I think the everything bagel is my everything. If reincarnation is real, I’d like to come back as an everything bagel. Then I could guarantee that I’d be loved. I’ve recently decided that the next time I have to cry in an acting scene, I’m just going to imagine a world without New York City everything bagels. What a horrible world that would be.