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Thursday, August 27, 2009

Chocolate cake for breakfast

Heidi's birthday was a couple days ago and in celebration, Anna and I made her a cake. We were going to buy one from the Hy-Vee bakery, but they are never very good and really, box cakes are impossible to screw up. The added benefit of having cake around is that the following house rule goes into effect:

If there's cake in the house, it's okay to eat it for breakfast.

Really, it's not just okay, it's kind of the law. If you think about it, there's not that big of a jump from eating a donut to eating birthday cake, so I don't see what the big deal is. My biggest trouble with eating chocolate cake for breakfast is that I always think of that scene in The Outsiders when Two-Bit is having chocolate cake and beer for breakfast. Yeah, don't think I could do that.

Bill Cosby has a classic routine about how he, after being awoken by his wife and told to go downstairs and cook breakfast for the children, ends up feeding his kids chocolate cake for breakfast. His rationale is that there are eggs, milk and wheat in chocolate cake. That's nutrition! He also serves it up with grapefruit juice which I think is only slightly better than eating cake with beer.



(I love the sound of him cutting the cake - it's as if the cake is being cut by a guillotine!)


The "chocolate cake for breakfast" routine is found on Bill Cosby, Himself which we watched a zillion times on HBO when we were growing up. It's funny how Bill Cosby can be so funny without resorting to being dirty or vulgar. The hard part about watching it now is that there are so many jokes about his wife and daughters wanting to kill his son. What played as good-natured humor regarding gender roles and growing up is not as funny since Cosby's son was murdered in 1997.

Anyway, the birthday cake in our house is almost gone, so it won't be long before we're back to eating regular breakfast food. But for now, we'll enjoy it, kind of like Anna enjoyed licking the mixer bowl.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like your rule; it should be a law, or an edict or something important.

I also adore, adore, adore Bill Cosby: Himself. But you're right, it's bittersweet now that his son is gone.

Now I want chocolate cake. Thanks, Dan. ;)

John said...

It wasn't so much law in our house as kids, but rather survival of the fastest. We had cake so rarely that you wanted to just eat it all up as soon as possible. Our preferred method was to take a piece (or two), put it in a bowl, pour milk over it, mash it down a bit, and chow. Ah, youth!