When you work in the food industry, you are most likely to have hours that are off from the general working population. It stinks sometimes (like if your friends are going out, while you are heading off to work on a Saturday night.) But, there are advantages to it, like catching breakfast somewhere without the weekend crowds.
Brian, my hubby, was given a recommendation for a breakfast spot: Chester's on Walnut Street in North Berkeley. I am always up to try something new. Brian and I are a little different in that sense. He is more the type to go to a specific restaurant for a specific dish. As for me, I like to try new things, which explains why it takes me so long to figure out my order. But I think since we've been married, we have switched a little bit. Brian is now a little more adventureous, and I sometimes have found myself getting the same order at certain restaurants.
I love breakfast foods, though. And, I am a serious cereal junkie. As a kid, I used to eat it out of the box like a bag of chips. If I could, I'd eat breakfast all day, even though it may not be the best in terms of a balanced diet. I ordered the Salmon Platter at Chester's: smoked salmon and cream cheese on a toasted bagel. Red onions and capers are essential to a good lox bagel. It has to be red onion.
Brian doesn't care for smoked salmon, but I grew up on it. In fact, I remember my dad had caught a salmon once. He borrowed a smoker from a friend and decided to smoke his own salmon. I watched him set up this white box with racks in it; it reminded me of a bee hive. Fourteen hours later, we had these fillets of salmon, which he wrapped in foil and then froze. So we had a constant supply of smoked salmon for a while. We would take out a defrosted hunk of smoked salmon and mix it with cream cheese and spread on crackers or sourdough bread. But, my younger sister, would just take the whole thing and eat it. I would find her sitting at the dining table, eyes fixated on the television, digging into a piece of salmon. I think if anyone loved smoked salmon the most in our family, it was my sister. One day, however, she got a stomachache and we figured that it may have been from all that fish that she ate. She couldn't eat it for a while, even though it hasn't changed her palate for lox on bagel. I think that it is one of the few things that we have in common: having a piece of smoked salmon on a bagel with cream cheese, red onions, and capers. It has to be red onions.
