Good morning. Hungry?

Well, if you’re not, you will be after you read this post, the inspiration for which came from Facebook and Imgur: Breakfasts of the World!

The problem with the concept of this post is that the breakfasts depicted here take time to prepare, and time is something you usually don’t have on weekday mornings.

For most of my life, breakfast at least occasionally has been an obscure product, CoCo Wheats, which according to its manufacturer dates back to 1930. CoCo Wheats, according to Wikipedia (and you know Wikipedia is always right) is “chocolate flavored breakfast hot grits.”

My mind was temporarily blown by the idea that I’d been eating chocolate-flavored grits all these years, but that is not correct. Grits are made of ground corn. A product named CoCo Wheats obviously is not made of corn. CoCo Wheats should not be confused with Cream of Wheat, which is also made of wheat farina, but by a different company.

(How did I know I’d met the right woman to marry? Because she and I share the same tastes in breakfast and toothpaste (Colgate). In fact, Mrs. Presteblog is the only unrelated-by-blood person I know who likes CoCo Wheats.)

Wikipedia goes on to say that CoCo Wheats competes with chocolate-flavored Malt-O-Meal. That is interesting, because MOM Brands purchased CoCo Wheats in 2012. The difference, according to their nutrition labels, is that CoCo Wheats contains “wheat farina, cocoa [and] natural and artificial flavor,” while chocolate Malt-O-Meal also contains sugar, malted barley and assorted other ingredients. So if you have an urge for malted barley in your chocolate breakfast cereal, I guess Malt-O-Meal is your choice. (And to confuse matters further, yes, Cream of Wheat now has a chocolate flavor. Don’t you love free enterprise?)

The biggest issues with CoCo Wheats, Malt-O-Meal or Cream of Wheat are (1) cooking it and (2) cleaning it up. It’s very easy to boil it over in the microwave, creating a mess you have to clean up. And whether you cook by stovetop or microwave, cleaning up the container in which CoCo Wheats was cooked is like trying to move concrete after it’s set.

If you don’t have the time to make CoCo Wheats, there are numerous choices in breakfast cereal. Our cousin stayed with us a couple of times when I was growing up in Madison, and she was always amazed at the numbers of different boxes of cereal Mom purchased for us. Apparently her house had fewer than seven choices.

Growing up, my cereal tastes were somewhat less sugary than Calvin and Hobbes’ (well, Calvin’s) favorite Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs. The three sugariest were probably Count Chocula (which came and went), Sugar Pops (which became Sugar Corn Pops and then just Corn Pops), and Sugar Smacks (which now are Honey Smacks). More often, I would eat Corn Flakes, Frosted Mini Wheats, Special K, Product 19 or Wheaties. (Often accompanied by Pop-Tarts.)

Some of those cereals are from Kellogg’s, the best known breakfast cereal maker in the U.S. I am part of a finite group of Americans because, on a vacation to Michigan, our family toured the Kellogg’s plant in Battle Creek, Mich. I am part of a finite group because Kellogg’s discontinued cereal factory tours in 1986. (The plant tours have been replaced by something called Cereal City USA.)

The rest of this really has to do with weekend breakfasts, or brunches, when you have time to prepare and/or eat more than a bowl of cereal or toast bread or bagels. My regard for breakfast is such that when I go to a weekend brunch, I usually make breakfast, not lunch, selections. Except for prime rib and carved ham, and chicken if that looks good, and shrimp cocktail since shrimp is my favorite food, and of course dessert.

The first brunch I recall was at, of all places, a hotel (possibly a Sheraton) somewhere in Los Angeles during our California vacation in late 1978. (It was somewhere between Rancho Palos Verdes, where my aunt and uncle lived, and Diamond Bar, where my great-aunt lived.) It was the first time I ate chocolate mousse. Three, to be precise.

If you live remotely close to Appleton, you should end up at the Radisson Paper Valley Hotel’s Sunday brunch. Tables and tables and tables of food.

I have fond memories of the University Marriott in Salt Lake City, Utah. We went there intending to spend four days for the Ripon College basketball game against the University of Utah. Except that our three days became one week because the airport we flew out of and into, O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, was hit by 18 inches of snow during the basketball game, pushing our Sunday flight to Wednesday. Happily, the Marriott not only gave us the same room rate we had paid for the first four days, but that room rate included a daily breakfast buffet. The first big decision of the day was whether I should have a(nother) Belgian waffle.

Imgur posted photos of what it claims is the prototypical breakfast in a variety of countries, beginning (I decide) in the United States:

My favorite non-buffet restaurant breakfast is pancakes, preferably with real maple syrup (which my in-laws make every spring from real maple trees), and bacon. In our previous home, where the schools opened one hour late on Wednesdays, that became Pancake Day, first made by me, and then by our sons. Our daughter likes chocolate chip pancakes. Between pancake or baking mixes and paternal ingenuity, I came up with a chocolate chip oatmeal pancake recipe.

The best bacon on the planet, as far as I’m concerned, comes from Weber Meats in Cuba City. According to its website, Weber’s sells sliced bacon, pepper bacon, maple bacon, cottage bacon, bacon ends and Canadian bacon (which is more like extremely salted ham than bacon).

The other homemade breakfast I like is eggs — not just eggs purchased from a supermarket, but brown eggs purchased from a farmers’ market or similar place. If you’ve never had them before, there is simply no comparison. The yolks are bigger and practically orange.

One egg option is sunny-side up over a bed of some potato product. (Say, potatoes fried in the aforementioned bacon grease.) The egg yolks leak nicely into the potatoes. Another option is scrambled with cream cheese (an idea of Mrs. Presteblog), which makes the eggs pleasantly creamy.

Sometimes pork products aren’t available for breakfast. So I have been known to substitute the previous night’s main course — fish, pork chops, and so on — to go with the eggs and potatoes. Not usually steak or roast beef, though, because I prefer those in salads.

(For those wondering: I now weigh less than I weigh when we got married 20 years ago, though I still regard the word “diet” as spelled D-I-E with a T added. The trick of weight loss is for activity to exceed caloric intake. We won’t mention how much I weighed before I discovered this.)

Elsewhere …

Great Britain is not known for the quality of its food. However, it’s probably hard to mess up “Sausages, bacon, eggs, grilled tomato, mushrooms, bread, black pudding and baked beans. Knocked back with a cup of tea.” Although I’m not sure about black pudding (defined as “a blend of onions, pork fat, oatmeal, flavourings — and blood (usually from a pig).”

My Polish relatives apparently would eat “Jajecznica,” defined as “scrambled eggs covered with slices of kielbasa and joined by two potato pancakes.” Straightforward, although I’m not sure of the purpose of all of the greenery. (I enjoy salad, but not for breakfast.)

Related to the previous two is Canada …

… and pierogies, “boiled, baked or fried dumplings made from unleavened dough and traditionally stuffed with potato filling, sauerkraut, ground meat, cheese, or fruit. Then you’ve got some sausages and toast to mop it all up.”

My great-aunt (maiden name Merchlewicz, who was not Canadian, sister of the aforementioned Diamond Bar, Calif., relative) made pierogies. The last time I saw her, I ate, I believe, six of them.

Elsewhere in the gastronomic family tree is Germany …

… with, of course, “Wursts, local cheeses and freshly baked bread, all washed back with a strong coffee.”

This is, apparently, beef tips, chilequiles and other assorted goodies,” with “nachos, cheese and beans,” found in Mexico.

The rest of Imgur’s list is less than appealing. I understand different cultures are, well, different. It’s not that I wouldn’t eat some of these; they just don’t seem particularly appealing or filling as breakfast; for instance …

… Cuban bread dunked in coffee …

… stuffed croissants in Portugal (though it depends on what’s inside the croissant) …

… Venezuelan empenadas, filled with some combination of cheese, meat, vegetables and beans …

… Bolivian saltenas, described as “a bit like empanadas crossed with Cornish pasties … usually filled with meat and vegetables, and slightly sweetened with sugar” …

… Thai pork porridge, with “Chinese doughnuts, beansprouts, pork intestine stuffed with peppery pork mince, sliced pork heart, stomach slivers and blood pudding,” described as “a bit more interesting than toast and jam anyway” …

… toast and Vegemite or Marmite (both yeast extract paste) in Australia …

… croissants in France or Italy …

… Chinese breakfast, which apparently is pretty much like Chinese lunch or dinner …

… and Ghana’s favorite, waakye, “basically rice cooked in beans.”

The last — actually first in chronological order — requirement for breakfast is coffee. This is because (1) I work in journalism, which is powered by caffeine, and (2) I am clinically dead before the alarm goes off. I’ve been drinking coffee since I was 4 years old, even though my mother warned me it would stunt my growth. I am 6-foot-4 and I weigh 190 pounds. I guess she was right.