why american breakfast?

Deborah : that's it indeed. I couldn't find the right word for it : I've considered <pâté de tête> but I couldn't help thinking it was wrong.

Anyway, more at : http://www.minefi.gouv.fr/daj/guide/gpem/b2-18-99/chap2-9.pdf (in French).

<<Personally, I had biscuits, bacon, and eggs with a glass of milk this morning.>>

Yum. I had a breakfast burrito filled with bacon, hashbrowns, beans, scrambled eggs, sauteed mushrooms, bell peppers, tomatoes, and salsa of course. I had a strawberry-banana smoothie to drink.

Kirk : what's <hashbrown> and <bell pepper> ?

I typically ate cold cereal and milk, and pancakes, French toast or waffles on Sunday, until I was 5 and my mother got remarried to what they referred to in the '50s as a "health nut." Overnight our diet changed, and my breakfast was a protein drink made in a blender: milk, a raw egg, soybean powder, brewer's yeast, a banana and some honey (added in an attempt to make it more palatable). The soybean powder was in such great quantity that the drink was kind of like sludge, and I'd chug down an entire quart of this stuff as quickly as possible and spend the next 15 minutes concentrating on keeping it down.

That was my weekday breakfast until I was about 12. But at least we still had pancakes, French toast or waffles on Sunday.

This thread is reminding me of all the things I was afraid to eat when I was young. My family is orignally from the South and my great-grandparents, grandmother, aunt, and uncle used to cook/eat some things I wouldn't go near: pig's feet, frog's legs, hog head cheese, chitlins, tongue (cow, i believe), and jumbo (I don't like a lot of seafood). I even remember seeing chicken feet a time or two.

<<what's <hashbrown> and <bell pepper>>>

Hashbrowns are a thin layer of fried, diced or sliced potatoes. Bell peppers are vegetables with a crunchy, somewhat watery exterior and a mostly hollow interior. They're great plain or sauteed and added to things like breakfast burritos or pasta.

an image found on google of hashbrowns. it's the stuff to the right of the plate (not the toast, eggs, or sausages also in the picture):

http://www.tolly-ho.com/images/Over%20Easy%20Eggs%20with%20Sausage%20and%20Hash%20Browns.JPG


google image search for bell peppers:
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=bell+pepper&btnG=Search

Bell pepper = poivron (rouge ou vert)

<<poivron (rouge ou vert)>>

t'as raison, Deborah. merci :)

...ou jaune ou orange. (Merci, Kirk.)

One of my favorite breakfasts is huevos rancheros. But I never order it now because I can't eat the way I did when I was a svelte dancer, and the size of the order is usually huge in Mexican restaurants.

Huevos rancheros is a great dish. And it has to have sides of fresh pico de gallo and fresh guacamole or just plain avocado slices.

"fromage de tête"

As they sometimes say, if the answer was a bear it would have bit me. Actually, I think it is called something different in Canadian French, but maybe my memory is just wrong.

Well, maybe you just say it with a Canadian accent and it just sounds completely different. ;)

Speaking of avocados, how popular are those in Europe? Where are they grown besides Mexico and Southern California? Avocados have been a favorite of mine since I was a little kid.

Kirk, your comment about the salsa on my NY chile relleno possibly being spaghetti sauce reminded me of something. In 1980 I stayed for a few days with some friends in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. We were on the go all day, so we always ate in restaurants. I was a vegetarian at the time, and since we mostly ate at a hamburger place that had a salad bar, I was getting pretty tired of salads. One night we went to an Italian restaurant, the only restaurant in town that wasn't a steak house, I think. But everything on the menu had meat, except for the pizza with no extra toppings (the extra toppings were all meat). So I ordered that, and it turned out to be a crust with a smear of unseasoned tomato paste, and some strips of pasteurized, processed American cheese slices. The other people at the table actually laughed out loud when they saw it.

Ah, oui, peut-être.

Ah, yes, maybe.

I'm not even sure if that is correct in french.