Northern California natural-ingredient foodie? Check.
Middle-aged guy who needs to keep a grip on his cholesterol level? Check.
Middle-aged guy who needs to make at least a token gesture towards keeping his weight down? Check.
Environmentally conscious citizen who embraces the idea of eating less meat than his predecessors? Check.
Globally-aware and gustatorily adventuresome type who is willing to try new stuff? Check.
Most of the time I behave myself, really I do. Every weekday morning I settle down to a breakfast of plain, unflavored organic oatmeal with a few tablespoons of ultra-natural high-quality granola added for crunch and drama. On the weekends I’m likely to produce a variant of that same breakfast—perhaps long-cook Irish steel-cut oats or some ridiculously healthy mixed whole grain affair, possibly tarted up with yoghurt and/or some nice fresh fruit. When it comes to breakfast, I wear white robes and sport a halo while I pluck my golden harp amidst fleecy clouds.
But all of us have a mouthy little red devil on our shoulder, and repentance for one’s Southern culinary upbringing only goes so far. And there are times when the only breakfast that will make the grade is that magnificent full-on assault on arterial well-being known as the Full English. The ingredients are enough to make a cardiac rehab nurse go into cardiac arrest: thick slices of bacon, sausages, eggs fried in bacon grease or butter, home fries cooked in the bacon fat, mushrooms cooked in ditto, thick toast smeared with butter & jam, a half-tomato sprinkled with sugar on the cut side and allowed to carmelize gorgeously in the pan. The English typically like to add baked beans. Southerners, on the other hand, include a fat blob of grits, and instead of the toast, biscuits with pan gravy.
You can always throw in a stack of pancakes. If you’re from the Southwest, you might include flour tortillas and green chili.
A classic Full English, although I’m not so sure about those packaged hash-browns
Food nannies throw up their hands in despair at the mere thought of the Full English. There it sits, staring maliciously up at them: everything they hate. That doyenne of food nannies, the "Center for Science in the Public Interest", displayed a refreshingly rare wit by dubbing it "Heart Attack on a Plate." Alas, that one quip exhausted the CSPI’s store of one-liners; tight-assed twittiness has been their trademark ever since.
That’s reason enough to indulge in a Full English on occasion, without guilt, without remorse, and without restraint. Let there be no prissy substitutions: no egg whites, no vegan sausages, no tofu bacon, no steamed broccoli. Either you’re going to have a Full English or you aren’t, and there is simply no point in massaging all the life out of a hedonistic meal. You want responsible, have my weekday plain oatmeal. You want a Full English, gird your loins for a trip to hog heaven.
A Full English is the culinary equivalent of a blissfully uninhibited weekend in Las Vegas. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, remember—you can have your fling and then show up on Monday morning as fresh as a spring lamb. Ditto a big greasy fry-up; go for broke, let ‘er rip, and then it’s back to the oats and fresh fruit.