The breakfast club
(Editor’s note: Martina Pansze was the Telegraph’s summer intern. She recently left to return to Whitman College, in Walla Walla, Wash. She will be sorely missed – may she wear her Telegraph T-shirt proudly.)
Objectively, breakfast is the best meal of the day. This is one of the absolute truths of the universe, as inflexible as the certainty of death or the inferiority of those who eat crunchy peanut butter.
Dinner takes the silver medal, and I don’t even know if lunch deserves a participation ribbon. Either way, breakfast lapped them both.
When I was 8 and it was a good day, I would get to eat breakfast at school. My brother and I would race through the doors of Needham Elementary and rush into the cafeteria, piling our plastic trays high with strawberry milk and Lucky Charms.
I was told at a young age that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and the wisdom held fast; any day that began with marshmallows shaped like rainbows was already ideal.
But once I was about 15, something happened that turned my young life upside down. Believe it or not, I did not try a pancake until that fateful year.
It was one of those situations where I vaguely remembered trying one and disliking it, so I always just ate something else.
When my friends finally convinced (re: aggressively peer pressured) me into taking a bite, I was so mad. It was so delicious.
Looking back, my pancake blunder was – at the risk of sounding dramatic – a tragedy on par with the Titanic. When I think about all the pancakes I could have been eating between 1996 and 2011, I tear up. So many lost. Take a lesson from my idiocy and please try things.
That figuratively bittersweet bite was a defining moment in the life of Martina Pansze, Buttermilk Pancake Enthusiast. Without any real intention or planning, group breakfasts became a regular thing.
Ten of us, give or take, would pack into one of our parent’s kitchens. We would turn on some acoustic music and cook a giant breakfast: egg scrambles, English muffins with jam, cinnamon rolls. Luckily, my friends are actually very good cooks, which one probably couldn’t guess from looking at them.
We would catch berries in our mouths, create pancake animals and dance as the smell of hot coffee and sizzling bacon warmed up the room. Then we would gather around a table, family-style, with the food piled high in the middle. And we would feast.
The tradition went on for years, until we all graduated and scattered across the country for school or whatever else.
One morning last September, I was still adjusting to college. I sat around a table of a few new friends who were perfectly sweet but didn’t quite have that “spent all our lives in the same small school system” element of comfort that my crew from Durango was, um, blessed with.
As the table chatted about the dramatic events of the previous night, I chewed my dining hall sausage links and thought about one ambitious Thursday in high school, when we peeled ourselves from our warm beds at an ungodly hour and hiked Animas Mountain with headlamps.
We sat atop a cliff in the 6 a.m. quiet, snuggled together with puffy jackets and cold cheeks, and watched the orange day break open and slowly spill across Durango.
We hiked down, made pancakes, and went yawning to school.
I wanted so badly to have one more breakfast with my friends, to exchange one minute to be back on that lookout.
My aching homesickness even romanticized the dishwashing aftermath of the morning in question. I could remember myself and all my BFFs crowded around the sink, laughing and singing as friendly cartoon forest creatures hopped through the open window and helped us with our chore.
Nostalgia definitely was clouding my memory, but my conclusion was sound. I decided I needed to channel the spirit of our breakfasts.
I thought about the celebration of friendship, food and life that our breakfasts stood for, and headed to Safeway with my friend.
We picked up two cartons of strawberries, a can of whipped cream, and a bottle of sparkling cider. On the floor of my dorm room, my new little group of friends, all scared, all homesick, played cards and had our own celebration, one full of hope in the future and new traditions.
When I think about all the breakfasts I’ve had – granola bars on the way to class, lukewarm oatmeal deep in the backcountry, Cinnamon Toast Crunch over notecards in the dining hall, my dad’s Sunday crepes loaded with nutella and raspberries – I think of eyes still sleepy, a small calm and contemplative way to greet a fresh day.
Breakfast may not be the greatest idea of humankind, but it’s probably in the top 10. We did well with that, at least.
This summer has granted me a few group breakfasts, which were all fun and tasty, but now I am back at school in Walla Walla.
I’ve been asked too many times recently if I’m excited to return to school, and every time I face my mixed feelings I usually respond with an eloquent “well, kinda.”
It’s always hard to leave Durango and the amazing people who I love so much. But if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that there’s joy in my friends’ pancakes, and there’s also joy wherever you look hard enough.
And I know, despite my sadness in leaving, that the coming months hold thousands of tiny moments of group breakfast-esque jamboree.
– Martina Pansze