Breakfast of champions

What to eat when you wake up in the morning feeling slightly queasy? Mushrooms of course. Mushrooms and noodles. But not exactly the kind of mushrooms that you'd find at the store. It's more like fungus. I'm eating fungus and noodles for breakfast. There's one that looks like a piece of crumpled up black paper and it's delicious.

A largeish chunk of tofu will make it into my bowl too. Not exactly the breakfast of champions, but I think I can live without the fat.

A cup of coffee, tall, dark, handsome. Fair trade, no less. Hold the sugar because that's gross. I'll have four cups of green tea too, while I'm at it, not because I want four cups but because that's how big the pot is.

And with that, my breakfast is gone, hopefully to never be seen by me again. I should have taken a picture.

It's come to my attention recently that there are no good places to eat out here in the suburbs. While this is not a new thing, I only noticed it recently because it seems that everyone and their dog has redone their decor, menus and jacked up their prices to appeal specifically to the up-and-coming middle class. Has the food really changed? No.

What we do have out here are crappy burger, steak and pasta places that masquerade themselves as upscale with contemporary decor that looks like Starbucks and extensive drink menus to woo people into paying $18 for a plate of only half decent pasta and $5 for a strawberry margarita that has sugar instead of salt along the rim.

Vegetarian? Vegan? Special dietary restrictions? Ocean wise? Fair trade? Slow food? Screw you, you're not getting any of that out here.

Okay, I'm being bitchy, and admittedly, it is getting better out here. But you can't tell me that that steak you're eating is actually worth $24. And it irritates the hell out of me when I go for lunch with friends and they exclaim constantly about the food when you could go downtown and get something nicer for half the price. It's stupid, but people don't know any better.

I toyed with the idea a long time ago of starting a little restaurant with $6 or $7 plates of pasta that just does lunch. It would have a really limited menu, maybe five different sauces for your pasta, three that are always the same, two that you could switch up depending on what's in season and what you feel like cooking. The place would have salads too, and soup when it's cold out. Good coffee, of course.

The problem with this idea, of course is that I have no intention of ever wanting to own and manage a restaurant, and most importantly, I promised myself that I would never ever get into marketting. What the hell else do you do with a communications degree? I'll let you know when I get one.

It's almost time for lunch already.