When we went to Europe, the immediate highlight was breakfast. It's a pretty clichéd reaction, which is not surprising, considering a real French breakfast. I don't even like croissants. What I did like was immediately pounding the double shot of orange juice that had clearly been in an orange five minutes previously. I don't want bottled orange juice, since it always tastes like the bottle, but juice from an orange is a different picture. Then there was the giant bowl of coffee, the loaf of bread, the actual butter, and the yogurt.

I keep saying I can't do sugar at breakfast, but that's not entirely true. It's more that I can't do processed gack at breakfast, and processed gack with lots of sugar is both prevalent and worse. In contrast, here I had no problem downing lots of bread and butter, followed by a pint of yogurt. The yogurt was plain: shocking and wonderful (in the old sense of actual wonder inducement) after years of totally disgusting fruit on the bottom. Ok, actually after years of not eating yogurt in any way except as an ingredient in something else, since fruit on the bottom and all its relatives are so repulsive. This stuff tasted clean and fresh, to begin with. Then I started putting spoonfuls of honey and jam into it, and wondering if I could find some chopped almonds.

Clearly, gigantic dairy conglomerates are trying to make exactly this product. They fail, however. You have to have actual plain unadulterated yogurt (dairy or soy), actual fruit, and natural sugar content if you're going to come up with an edible end. The jam worked well in December; real fruit works well in August.

With that in mind, here's what I had for breakfast the other day:

plain yogurt, with
chopped nectarine and
honey.

At some point we're going to have a giant yogurt-making experiment. I expect the results to be stunning and fruitful.