U.S. Breakfast Choices Trivia Quiz

Answer: Omelet

While tastes differ, most people would be unlikely to put butter and maple syrup on an omelet. To be sure, I might spread it with jam, roll it up and sprinkle it with powdered sugar. Alternatively, I could cook it with cheese or with onion and red pepper... or just plain, of course.

Answer: Shredded Wheat

Shredded wheat has less sugar than many others on the list. Unless you add it of course! With a high sugar content, the other cereals are designed to appeal to children. I must admit, though, I'm still rather partial to Froot Loops.

Answer: Corn flakes

Corn flakes is a cold cereal, meaning you pour it in the bowl, add milk (and possibly berries and/or nuts) and go. The other three are hearty hot cereals, much more suitable for winter mornings.

Answer: Coca-Cola

Southerners, Americans living below the Mason Dickson Line, are far more likely than their northern cousins to start the day with a frosty cold Coke. Doubtless, the hot weather in Dixie has a lot to do with this choice. As a Yankee myself, I find the thought unsettling; but, to each his or her own.

Answer: None of them

Neither observant Jews nor observant Muslims can eat any form of pig meat. So, ham, Canadian bacon and pork sausage, as well as bacon, would be off the menu for anyone keeping kosher or halal.

Answer: Yes

Although clamato, a blend of clam and tomato is commonplace, it is not generally drunk at breakfast. Nor is Clam juice regarded as a breakfast beverage. Tomato is popular to start the day, as are various tomato-based vegetable juice blends, prime among them V-8. Fruit juices, including blends or fruit juice cocktails, also often serve as day starters.

Answer: Irish coffee

Black coffee is straight up, with no sugar or milk. The very thought gives me the shudders, but some people swear by it and can't drink their coffee any other way. Cafe au lait, literally 'coffee with milk' in French, is coffee with hot milk added, as opposed to what is often called white coffee, which has cold milk, creamer, etc. added. Latte is espresso and hot, steamed milk. Fancy stuff! I like vanilla latte from Starbucks. Irish coffee, by contrast, is classified as a cocktail.

It is made with hot coffee, Irish whiskey, and sugar (often brown sugar), stirred, and topped with cream. Think I'll stick to my vanilla latte!

Answer: Rubbery

There are various ways of cooking fried eggs. For sunny side up, the egg is fried with the yolk up and is not flipped, so the yoke remains runny. For over easy, the egg is flipped and cooked for just a few seconds longer, enough to fully set the whites but leave the yolk completely runny. In cooking over medium, the egg is flipped and the yolk is only slightly runny. And over well means to flip the egg and cook till the yolk is hard. With any of these techniques it is possible to have 'lace around the edge', the outermost circumference of the white golden brown or light brown. In my mind, though, the phrase is synonymous with over well, the way my mother always made fried eggs and the only way I can eat them. Cooked this way, the egg is nice and firm with a lovely, slightly crunchy light brown rim.

Rubbery eggs is not an effect any cook strives for as far as I know. And it would be unusual for anyone to request them.

Answer: Any of them

The Egg Board's web site offers a recipe for Texas-Style Egg and Potato Skillet, while Texas Cowboy Hash can be found at the Land O Lakes site. As the name indicates, a breakfast taco is a taco made with breakfast type ingredients.

Answer: Either of these

While in theory you could put anything on a bagel, traditionally the correct (Jewish) way to eat one is considered to be with lox. The population as a whole, though, generally applies generous amounts of either butter or cream cheese. For my money, few breakfasts can beat a perfectly browned onion bagel, just a little crispy around the edges, hot from the broiler, dripping with butter and a hot cup of coffee with just the right amount of milk and sugar to start the day off right.