Breakfast of Champions

Somebody I know - can't remember who - used to hold up a bowl of Fruit Loops and say "Breakfast of Champions!", and ever since I've associated the phrase not with hardworking people who set out to accomplish great things and start the day as they mean to go on, but with self-indulgent people who know what they like and just have it.

I'd much rather be the latter than the former, wouldn't you? But only if it means breakfasting on something like this instead:


Hard for me to trick myself into thinking I'm all noble and virtuous about what I'm eating if I'm looking down at sugar-encrusted artificially-flavoured and -coloured hunks. (note: this is not a problem when I'm looking down at chocolate, or slatherings of butter and honey apparently.)

Related thought, again with The Morville Hours. I know, I know, I'm taking forever to read this book and should probably stop quoting bits from it...

but honestly, how many garden books tell you that serotonin and noradrenalin don't just control mood, but also our sense of salt and bitterness?

Apparently if you're stressed or depressed, you may find you can't grasp either of those flavours (and oversalt your food etc.) or you may be one of the lucky ones whose sense of sweet is tied to those chemicals, leading you to eat too many Froot Loops.

But not chocolate, of course. You can't eat too much of that.