Brunch (noun): A late morning meal eaten instead of breakfast and lunch

The above definition isn’t completely accurate…

Brunch is more than just food. Look at it this way: when we eat a normal breakfast, it takes us maybe 5 minutes to eat then we head to work or get on with our days. But brunch is different. The food is there in front of us, and we are able to eat it so much slower. We don’t have to rush to finish it in 5 minutes because we’ve got other places to be. In my experience, it goes a little something like this:

• People eat for 20 minutes and conversations start flowing.
• After 20 minutes, people are done eating, but not conversing.
• 15 minutes later, people start nibbling again.
• An hour passes, conversations are still going, and now more than half the food is gone!

What I’m trying to say is that brunch is not just about the food. Brunch is a meal that brings people together to catch up and socialize. You can easily spend 3 hours with friends when you have brunch food, conversations and laughter. During university, brunch was amazing! Most of the time, it meant that I had a really good Friday night out (REALLY FUN) and that I was waking up around 10AM the next day. The group chats would start making my phone buzz - somebody would ask “Brunch time?” That’s all we needed to get the replies flowing in… “Same place, ready in 5?” or “Give me 30 to get up and where?”. To any future university students reading this, this is why Friday is the best night to go out and have fun - because Saturday is late brunch, chill and more chill. Then Sunday you have time to catch up on other stuff. Don’t worry, I’ll talk more about that in another blog post.

Now back to brunch! Obviously it’s great to be able to go out and have people cook brunch for you, but homemade is just as enjoyable. Either way, for brunch all you need is good food and good company then everything else follows with it. But with homemade food, you can be creative as you want for your type of brunch. It can range from a variety of fruits to a variety of meats. For the brunch above, I had a mix of both planned and how people would eat it… It was like I was conducting my own little symphony in my head. How would people flow through the foods?

Here, my goal was for people to be drawn towards the eggs, and then they see the bagel, avocadoes and tomatoes. Being millenials, they would instantly want to put together a modified avocado toast to start their brunch conversations. While eating that, they see the prosciutto, but rather than immediately making another toast with it, they would instead consider taking a break and having some waffles. After having a few waffles with some maple syrup, more of the platter is revealed and they start seeing the potato wedges and sausages. Wanting to switch from sweet back to savoury, they take a sausage and get ready to make another avocado toast but this time with some prosciutto. And remember, this all sounds really quick on paper, but in between we were taking breaks and talking plenty. By this time, we were so full but hadn’t even tried everything on the plate yet!

Like I said above, after a little break the eating naturally resumes in the form of nibbling. So here come the baked beans and potato wedges. We can have conversations and snack on these while talking. At this point we don’t really want to leave the table (some would call it a food coma). Now we want something light and heathy. Oh boy! Greek yogurt and fruits… When you get here, you know you’ve lost track of time and the conversations are amazing. So if they’re not ending, then neither will the eating! The tanginess of the oranges and the sweetness of the fruits are like a dessert - but healthier! Voila, you’re finally done the platter. Now for the first time in what seems like a long time, you look up at the clock and think “How did the time pass by, oh shoot!” Three hours have gone by, but it feels like 20 minutes. That’s the power of a brunch. It’s not a breakfast, it’s brunch!