JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

This afternoon while my taxi inched from Manila to Makati I heard some AM radio commentators discussing the feeding programs in public schools. Immediately I was transported to my own elementary schooldays. From prep to the sixth grade (I dropped out of nursery school, skipped kindergarten and cut out seventh grade), I had the exact same food for breakfast every single day: a glass of warm milk and a soft-boiled egg. Every single day for seven school years. It was enough to make me swear off breakfast altogether; in fact I rarely have breakfast unless it’s 2 in the afternoon and I want tapsilog. Which would make it brunch.

What was the logic behind the milk-and-egg routine? Probably because they were children during World War II and remembered food scarcity, my parents had a profound reverence for eggs. Protein, they said, you need protein. As for milk, they said it was “the complete food”. Also, I always had trouble getting up every morning and had to rush to make it to school on time. They figured this was the fastest yet most nutritious meal I could have.

So every morning, after putting on my school uniform, I would trudge to the kitchen with the air of the condemned on the way to the gibbet, to face my breakfast. I liked milk and eggs well enough, it was having to eat at such an early hour that I was against. Not to mention the sameness. I would try to get out of breakfast by pretending that I would throw up, but my acting never convinced my mother.

Thanks to my protein-obsessed parents, I’ve probably ingested enough cholesterol for a few lifetimes. Assume five school days a week times four weeks in a month times ten months in a school year times seven years of egg breakfasts: that’s a total of 1400 eggs. Not counting hard-boiled egg snacks, egg salad sandwiches, and omelets.An egg a day throughout my childhood—I must have leche flan running in my veins.