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In our universe, the most important meal of the day is brunch. Essentially it’s breakfast for people who wake up late. Usually when we come back from a different time zone we start waking up very early, but that hasn’t happened on this trip. So we’ve given up setting alarms and getting out of bed at a “decent” hour (since it’s hopeless trying to sleep early). We just say we’re on Paris time and neglect to mention that it was weeks ago. (It’s only pretentious if you adore Paris. If you enjoy kvetching about it, it’s acceptable.)

In Paris, breakfast is “le petit dejeuner”, and “petit” it is exactly. You get a croissant, half a baguette, butter and jam, an orange juice and a cafe creme. All the carbs are necessary for walking to and from the Metro. Where’s the protein? The butter IS the protein.

If you need meat for breakfast, you can have le Anglo-Saxon, the French notion of what the Brits (“les rosbif”, to which the other side replies, “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”) eat. Three eggs, bacon, sausages, potatoes, a tomato, coffee, orange juice, a bowl of yogurt, and (not in picture) a fried brioche.

At home we have two cups of coffee for breakfast, then go out to brunch.

We are partial to the Casero or Cosmopolitan blends of TonG Coffee, which is available at Legazpi Market on Sundays. The package says “DO NOT store in the refrigerator”, which goes against our childhood training. We asked some coffee nuts, who say you’re not supposed to refrigerate your beans if you’re going to consume them in a month. Refrigeration is for those 1 kg cans of coffee sold in the US.

Jackie’s cook the fabulous Andresa recommended The Northern Coffee Bean Store in QC, which sells beans from the Cordillera. She sent us a combination of 250g Kalinga, 250g Benguet, and 250g Sagada Dark. We could probably finish reading Proust on that.