Latkes: It’s What’s for Breakfast.

While weighing my breakfast options this morning, I found myself fighting the urge to dry-heave. On the counter in front of me lay the hard butt of moldy wheat toast, with a soft, fluorescent halo, and the scaly, disintegrating pieces of a rice cake, scattered in the shape of some lost ancient symbol. Or I could skip the grains and just do a shot of tapatio, I thought. I even considered peeling an old piece of cilantro off of a dirty dish to use as garnish. A Bloody Mary on a Tuesday! How decadent!

No, I whispered. I flung the freezer door wide, daring to hope. Maybe in here I would find something worthy of my lower intestine.

I almost closed the door without looking, flinching in the burst of frosty air, when a blue Trader Joe’s box caught my eye, awakening a distant memory of a mid-December purchase. All things considered, the lumpy, frozen spud, huddled alone in the corner of the box, was a gourmet miracle.

After baking my latke in my toaster oven (newly gifted by my Bobie!), I munched on the crispy outside and solid, starchy innards. While relishing this unexpected morning treat, it dawned on me.

Why don’t we eat latkes for breakfast all the time?

Latkes, the artisan hashbrown. Latkes, the unique spawn of home fry and peeled potato. Latkes, a delicate balance of flavor, texture, color, and culinary prep! Latkes…. a delicacy reserved to commemorate the Maccabee’s victory over the Greeks (Romans?), are a perfectly reasonable, nay superior, breakfast potato.

And yet we overlook them. We relegate them to a fleeting, annual phenomenon. And it’s not because they’re too oily or fatty. Have you ever eaten, let alone PREPARED, eggs benedict? Latkes are a weight watchers dream in comparison to that oozing plate of Goy.

So today, my breakfast loving Jews in arms, I call upon you. It’s time for a potato revolution. Free the latke from its cultural confinement and I promise your breakfasts will be brighter, your stomachs satiated, and our national breakfast potato nightmare will be no more.  All hail the mighty latke, breakfast potato manna – To Life!

Written with assistance from the Great and Powerful @elissits