chicken sausage

i have been challenged on the question of breakfast here more than once. why does it matter that breakfast has pork on the table? why do i whine as much about it as i do? i was considering how my day in the US and here are different, and basically it came down to the levels of pork and of quality. that last word was almost ease, but my issues here are not about having things, its having things done well.

in the US i can go into a restaurant and ask for a burger without a bun, the same burger but wrapped in a piece of lettuce. that really might sound like a simple request but without even trying i am sure the level of effort to get this done is not worth the return. last week i ordered two hard boiled eggs, with a side of hollandaise. the eggs came in 5 minutes, two eggs in the shell sitting in a bowl with no sauce on the side. as i cracked the first egg it exploded in my hand, hot runny yoke spilling over my burnt fingers.

i sent the eggs back, asked again for hard boiled out of the shell and for the sauce on the side. 5 minutes later, a new bowl with apparently new eggs, running together is a mass of soft boiled ooze. i asked the server how i should correctly order hard boiled eggs, he smiled and walked away. a few minutes later i asked another server for hollandaise and ate the soft boiled eggs. i wondered if the lesson was to not try to do things the hard way.

a few months ago i was trying to order breakfast and was given the choice of chicken sausage, beef bacon or nothing. i choose to skip the meat, but only after asking those around me if they would like pork also. the people at the tables close by agreed that they also wanted the other white meat; majority-discrimination or not, it just tastes better. i added a sign to my table that read, "beri saya babi", which was politely ignored.

in the US, having breakfast is simple. it comes without a moral debate over the animals i am eating, or a secular debate over why others are choosing which they will allow in slab or sausage form. i have tried the local replacement meats, but find them sadly lacking. i am sure if i asked my grandmother why she didn't serve beef bacon or chicken sausage, she would have looked at me in a puzzled way and said, "because that's not the way god made them".

that same puzzled look is the one i get when the debate of breakfast meat breaks open. but here is the thing, i have tried it their way, i have eaten the weak alternatives, and i have gone without. have they tried it my way? do the people who think chicken sausage is a good choice know the the taste of the meat allegedly evil? i challenge anyone to tell me beef bacon tastes as good as pork; or is even a close alternative.

by the way, baked beans are not for breakfast either. copying your cuisine from the british is a recipe for failure in taste, but even local "english breakfast" is done with compromise. the best part of baked beans is the flavoring of salt pork. the local version is correctly halal, and again suffers in terms of flavor. post-enlightenment democracy is about allowing people to choose without the enforcement of mystical tradition pressuring the way. at the very least its about letting quality come to the front over tradition.

take a taste before you want to tell someone what is best. or listen to my grandmother, let others do breakfast, "the way god intended".