Marmalade on Toast Versus Jam on a Croissant a Comparative Study

This time last year I read and article about people not eating as much marmalade as they used to. If people don't like marmalade, that's fine. But I think people do. I've tried to do my bit, my mother made me a nice pot of it and I went through it like a divil, but I couldn't tip the trend.

Marmalade, like butter, and other breakfast-y, things suffers from a bad reputation. A bit like that girl with the dyed-streak in her hair and the nose ring, that your mother told you wasn't to enter her house. As with that buxom lass, it's bitter and sweet at the same time, it livens up your stale bread like she livened up your adolescence. Pause before reading the next paragraph and think about how she might have grown into her looks.

Marmalade on toast was last week. Today, I had a croissant with blackcurrant jam and one of them fancy cappuchinos (La-de-fuckin-da). Neither breakfast contains eggs¹, and are all the poorer for it. (Although the pastry of the croissant may contain one egg, but it's just not the same.) Croissants aren't all that bad but they're certainly not healthy, they are France's answer to American fast food it turns out. It's a shame because what the french cook slowly they cook very well.

1. Yes, I know that a croissant contains egg but if you can't see the egg on the plate then it's not really breakfast.

Banana, Croissant and a Cup of Coffee

A french classic (minus the cigarette), with a south-east Asian twist? No, I just grabbed a banana from the fruit bowl on my way out the door then topped it with pastry before a meeting with my colleagues at eleven.

It's all wrong really, bananas for breakfast. There's a pop-artiness about a single banana, very Velvet Underground meets Andy Warhol; something fashionable and therefore not to be trusted.

As for croissants; well they're French aren't they. Which means they're complicated and flaky. Done properly they are very tasty though. However outside the Fifth Republic these little butter bombs are always liable to disappoint. Which is quite like pastis and their women really (both brooding temptresses but better watered down).

The coffee was rank and the meeting was dreadful.