new job - not good for breakfasts

Strange, but starting a new job is not conducive to maintaining old, second-nature routines, let alone barely-established routines like my breakfast-eating regime.

I've managed to eat something each day for breakfast these past two months, but I'm not finding any of it satisfying at all, not the way I used to enjoy these morning meals. Maybe the novelty's worn off, but somehow I doubt it. It's just not the same here at the stupidest workplace ever, in any respect and especially respecting breakfast.

I am exaggerating here, but fuck, this place really sucks. I've become accustomed to a whole other world, a non-unionized world, in which breakfast on the job was a sneaky luxury and an unexpected privilege afforded to me only because I was a barracuda working for a barracuda. Here, breakfast is an empty coping mechanism. I can either eat breakfast while working on the two things I have to do all day and then have NOTHING to do all day after breakfast, or eat breakfast and do nothing but eat breakfast, then do the two things I need to do and then have nothing to do. Not much of a difference there, is there? No stolen bites in between urgent phone calls. No sly nibbles during dictation. No mouth stuffed full during filing duties. I miss my old life at the law firm, I have to say. This is a sorry excuse for a career.

In an attempt to rekindle my interest in the novelty that is breakfast-dining, I've tried a new recipe for baked beans. Post Punk Kitchen directed me to it. The recipe calls for nutritional yeast and liquid smoke. I was quite excited about it, but having made it and allowed half a pot to mold in the fridge this past week, it's not what I'd call earth-shatteringly delicious, not irresistible the way my other beans are. There's all sorts of exciting ingredients in these "punk beans", totally going beyond my usual simple but thrilling trinity of caramelized onions, green pepper and tomatoes posed against the beans bathed molasses, vinegar and chili powder. I have to say, simplicity kicks nooch, smoke and dry mustard's asses when it comes to baked beans.

Although, at about the same time as the punk beans disappointment, I allowed a gorgeous pumpkin scone to go stale on the kitchen table, not because it wasn't delicious, simply because I've lost my breakfast mojo. This is how disinterested in breakfast I've become. I've found that any kind of dough can usually serve as a sure attractant for the morning meal; I can't generally resist toast of any kind, bannock is a serious temptation, and since I first made it I thought this pumpkin scone could become a new problem for me, a real vice. Not so. The stale evidence is languishing in the freezer. I didn't have the heart to throw it away just yet.

I've been subsisting on an admittedly delicious morning diet of fruits: bananas, grapefruits and Ateulf mangoes. While I find it tedious to chop and peel and chew these fibre-rich, vitamin-laden natural "fast foods", I have to say they've saved my ass and my blood sugar for the past week or two.

To end this more positively, one thing I do love about the morning now is the barley coffee I've discovered. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I've pretty much dropped the caffeine habit. I'm no longer dependent on a daily cup of coffee. Now I drink a roasted grains beverage with Silk creamer, the taste of which is not unlike instant coffee, though it's caffeine-free and not riddled with obscure chemicals. I first discovered barley coffee in the form of an expired jar of the Oskri brand, lurking behind some more popular products at Organic Planet. I bought it in curiosity and did not experiment with it until very recently, when I realized I was almost desperate enough with this new employment to fall into the old familiar pits of manageable addiction: coffee, weed and cigarettes. I knew morning coffee would be my gateway to post-work hoots and all-day cigarettes and so I dug my fingernails in, recommitted to my new clean and clear lifestyle and mixed myself a cup of Caf-Lib and Silk. Lo!! I've gone through three jars in two months and I'm eagerly gulping my way through a fourth jar, no stopping me now! There is a definite psychological need in me, a very real craving for the comfort that comes with the clutching of a beaker of hot, dark, creamy beverage. While often fooling me chemically, mateine-containing Yerba Mate does not meet the requirements of my morning psyche. Barley Coffee, all the way.

I have a new batch of beans soaking and waiting for preparation tonight. I'm going to try to make these motherfuckers so good my toes will curl when I eat them. I'm also going to have to look into diversifying: I've got a lot of breakfast food recipes I've never tried. I suppose this is the time to do some experimenting. Also need to just wake up earlier and enjoy breakfast at home. As painful as it will probably turn out to be to be: sit down and relax into the meal in my beautiful kitchen, the radio tuned to my satisfaction, the spring light sinking into me as I dine, only to have to tear myself away from such perfection in order to attend at this shithole version of a job. Hopefully by the time I've started enjoying breakfast again, I'll be starting a better job at a fantastic location.