Layers of flavor for breakfast

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How much can you cram into your breakfast sandwich?


This morning, I started with two toasted slices of 100 percent whole grain bread, spread hummus on one and added organic salad greens, a small egg-white omelet with Aleppo pepper, a slice of muenster cheese, smoked wild sockeye salmon and Dijon mustard.


If  I had pesto, it would be at home in this sandwich. I ate a Campari tomato with za'atar thyme mixture on the side, along with kimchi, but tomato slices with za'atar would work, too. I'll try that tomorrow. Everything in my sandwich -- except Aleppo pepper and za'atar -- can be found at Costco. Fattal's Syrian Bakery in Paterson stocks the pepper and thyme mixture.


My eating habits have come a long way since the 1980s, when I'd eat an Egg McMuffin (photo) for breakfast, drink coffee and finish with a cigarette.

A spectacular breakfast sandwich

I can still recall the taste of the Egg McMuffins I ate for breakfast occasionally when I was a general assignment reporter for The Record in the 1980s, when coffee and cigarettes got me going in the morning. A lot has changed since then: I quit smoking in 1986, The Record's general assignment reporters now work out of an office building in West Paterson, the paper is no longer printed in Hackensack and I stopped eating Egg McMuffins 20 years ago.

For many years now, my breakfasts have usually included fish -- smoked, canned or fresh -- kimchi and tomatoes.

Today, I toasted two slices of 100% whole grain bread from Costco, slathered on Lebanese hummus I had prepared from a can I bought at Fattal's, and topped that with Earthbound Farms organic salad greens, also from Costco. Next came a slice of smoked wild salmon and a fillet of fresh wild salmon (both from Costco) I had baked with parsley, oregano and red pepper. On top of that was a slice of ripe tomato with the spice mixture called za'atar and shavings of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese (Costco).

The sandwich was at least an inch and a half thick, but revealed its layers of wonderful flavor every time I took a bite. I had some kimchi on the side and washed it all down with iced tea. I guess you could call this the Costco breakfast sandwich.