My granola

For as long as I have lived,  I have never been a morning person (maybe I'm not alone here?). It is only natural  that I have never been fond of breakfast either. We all carry the memories of the food we ate in childhood throughout our lives, and one of the most dreadful food memories that will continue to haunt me till my very last day is being forced to eat oatmeal for breakfast at 6am when I was in primary school. It was cooked in water rather than milk and with an egg mixed in. Maybe it doesn't sound that bad to you, but to me it was horror. I was constantly told that one needs to eat a full breakfast because you need energy, and that it's the most important meal of the day and so on. But the thing is, it's just so difficult to have an appetite when your body hasn't truly woken up yet! Why force-feed yourself like a goose destined for foie gras when you are still half asleep?

Another breakfast item that I absolutely hated was congee. Ugh! Who wants to eat a boiling soup of plain rice first thing in the morning to burn your tongue? What I do like, though, is soya milk with fried doughnut (油炸鬼) - kind of like churros. That aside, one of my first love affairs with food was going to a tofu shop in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong before my piano lesson on Sunday mornings when I was in primary school. I would go there on my own and order pan-fried stuffed tofu (煎釀豆腐), tofu pudding (豆腐花) and fresh soya milk. I must have been ecstatic when I was eating since the staff offered to show me their kitchen and the soya milk-making process! As a Chinese, I liked dim sum too, but it's more brunch than breakfast I suppose. In any case it's not something you can eat on a daily basis...