Rather than talk about the latest royal birth--something that I really, truly cannot understand the fascination about shown in this country--I am going to talk about something that I truly love: what I had for breakfast this morning.
With my allergies absolutely killing me--I am currently typing this with probably 1.5 eye capacity, but both my eyes are truly bad this morning--my morning was made slightly better by having a bagel with a glass of milk to start off my day.
I normally have cereal, but this past weekend, prior to standing in the line for Record Store Day, I decided to buy a dozen bagels at my local bagel store. I ate two of them while standing on the line, and it made the wait that much shorter.
So for the past several days, I have been eating all different types of bagels in the morning for breakfast, everything from poppy to sesame seed to egg to everything.
This morning I had a poppy seed bagel with butter. I prefer bagels with cream cheese, but we ran out yesterday, when I had an egg-onion bagel.
Tomorrow, it will be a bagel with white fish salad.
My family likes bagels, too, and my soon particularly enjoys them, and he has had one or two,
My wife stays away from them because they are fattening as all heck.
But I like bagels every once in a while, and I guess that that "once in a while" is right now.
Jewish immigrants to this country brought the bagel with them from Poland during the late 1800s and early 1900s, and pretty much through the early to mid 1960s, bagels were purely New York-based delicacies, rarely venturing out of the area where so many of these immigrants came to this new land.
Shops were generally owned by Jews, and you usually could find at least one bagel shop in every Jewish community in New York City, and in the surrounding neighborhoods of the city.
Then, in the early to mid 1970s, the fame of bagels started to spread like wildfire to other areas, as bagged, mass produced bagels, as well as frozen, mass-produced bagels, began to enter many supermarkets.
Although not nearly as good as a newly made bagel from s local bagel store--mass produced and frozen bagels are steamed, rather then boiled, so they are spongier and have less taste--these frozen bagels were, for many people, their first introduction to this long-time Jewish delicacy.
Bagel shops began popping up in just about every community--Jewish and non-Jewish--and if you wanted a bagel, you could get one in just about any neighborhood, from coast to coast.
Today, bagels are as American as pizza is, an ethnic food that is as commonplace as apple pie is.
But New York bagels continue to taste better than those made elsewhere. Like pizza, it probably has to do with the water in New York City, which mixes with the other bagel ingredients to give New York bagels a fuller taste then their counterparts elsewhere.
Whatever the case, today, everyone knows what a bagel is across the country, and whether you have it with a "shmear" of lox or with cream cheese or even plain, bagels delight the taste buds like few other foods do.
And with their popularity came a rise in price. I remember when you could get a bagel with cream cheese for maybe around a dollar or less. A dozen bagels might cost $3 or $4.
On Saturday, I bought a dozen bagels for $14, which surprised the heck out of me!
But once I started to eat the bagel--perfectly created, with a soft top and crunchy bottom--the pain of the price kind of went away, and I am going to get several breakfasts out of this batch, so the price is kind of in the rear view mirror now.
I remember a time when few people out of the New York City area knew what a bagel was, and now it is as commonplace for breakfast as cereal is.
But honestly, there is nothing like a well-made, fresh bagel.
If you haven't had one in a while--or ever--it's time to get to your local bagel store.
Skip the mass produced and frozen ones--get the real thing.
You won't be sorry!
When I was away at college, when our parents came to visit, we’d ask them to bring us “Guyland bagels” (from “Lawn Guyland”). The bagels upstate just didn’t compare.
ReplyDeleteBut why, oh why, did you start this piece with a sneering reference you’re not going to talk about? If you don’t care about a topic, instead of a nasty put down, why even mention it at all? Someone who does care about it is going to stop reading, and will never get to read about you running out of cream cheese or eating whitefish salad.
If I lose them, I lose them. Since so many people are frothing at the mouth about this non-story, I figured I would mention it in my own way at top. That is my style, and if anybody wants me to change it, pay me to write this blog, and you will get the style you want. I write this blog generally for myself, and I have always made that plain. People read it, that is fine with me. I am not looking for thousands of people to read this. It is just my own personal thing, and if you want to come along for the ride, fine, if not, that is fine too. You may have other objectives in the things that you write, but to me, I do this to keep up my overall writing skills, it is fun, I don't make a dime from it, but yes, I probably could be bought and write brown-nose material that will make me rich, but right now, that isn't happening. Go with my flow, or go, period.
ReplyDelete