And What Do You Call That?

Well, personally I call it breakfast, I have one every morning slathered in real butter and honey.

So, a while back the hubby and I were on vacation in San Francisco – yippee!  

Currently I have a thing for Holiday Inn Expresses, most of them are less than six years old, (i.e. modern and clean) they have a great reward points system (i.e. free nights) and they all have pools (no extra comment needed for a pool!!) Really, what more could you ask for?  

Oh, you could ask for more and there is more…. they also offer free breakfasts!!  Yeah free and sometimes there’s hot stuff like eggs and sausage, yummy.

Now, if you were ever to vacation with us you would know just how important breakfast - right away - is, one of us gets a bit grumpy without food (it could be me).  By the time we are both fully awake, there is no time to nicely negotiate “Where should we have breakfast?”, if you are asking that question, it’s already too late.  The better question is “Where should we sit?” because we are already there, ready to eat.

Anyway – this particular Holiday Inn Express was on the Fisherman’s Wharf, right in the heart of tourist town, and boy did it cater to tourists.  Bus Loads.  Many, many, bus loads.  Therefore every morning it was a jam packed affair to get to the breakfast area and despite their best attempts, the pickins were usually slim – take what’s out now, because you will have to get back in line to see what will be out again in 15 minutes – that would be when you got back to the front of the line. 

This particular weekend there seemed to be a lot of Europeans traveling in those bus loads, so we shared the breakfast lounge with a lot of lovely accents, always very pleasant.  As I’m toasting up my ritualistic English muffin, it pops out of the toaster and the lady behind me leans in and asks me - in her English accent - “What do you call that?”

I stop and stumble, feeling a bit silly I answer “Ah, we call it an English Muffin??”  Great another thing we Americans got wrong – faced with a true Englishman, my favorite breakfast is a made up thing.  

Wait, that’s great - long live Thomas’!!   Thanks for my imaginary breakfast – now I can eat them without any worry of calories or carbohydrates, since they really don’t exist after all.  Jolly good fellow that Thomas man, woohoo!!