Get In My Belly!

I was afraid, as I approached the Tim Hortons, that the enormous group of ESL students would be going in ahead of me to complete their tour. I overheard their leader say, “This is a famous Canadian coffee shop. You can go in and get a coffee, or a doughnut, if you want.” But no one did. Dudes, I only had ONE HOUR before the breakfast sandwich service ended and it would have taken at least that long to get each of those people a coffee and a doughnut.

I ordered one Breakfast Sandwich, Bacon (also available: sausage) and one Breakfast Sandwich, Egg and Cheese. Because I am crazy and hungry and reckless with my change purse.

When I was a child I went to McDonald’s for breakfast once, I think we were travelling somewhere and the motel didn’t have a restaurant. And somehow I ended up with an egg dish. A terrifying, slimy, completely un-egg-like egg dish that put me off fast-food eggs for a lot of years. I do think, actually, that an egg is the kind of food that is best treated with some sensitivity, in one’s own kitchen. So much can go wrong with an egg. Shell bits can fall in the omelette, the egg can be contaminated, the person cracking the egg might have forgotten to wash her hands, the egg might be cooked incorrectly (too runny, too hard, surrounding uncooked mushrooms, [no, I will NOT let it go] etc.) Is it really worth it?

Hell, until a few years ago, I didn’t even trust myself with an egg. When we were kids, I would go to my friend J’s house and we would bake cookies and though I enjoyed the cookies and the baking of them, J. ALWAYS had to crack the eggs because I was frightened of the responsibility. And the slime. So slimy. And for a long time I was really confused about how some eggs were chickens and some eggs were just eggs. To add to my confusion, my uncle, who hates eggs of all kinds, in fact, he’s phobic, I think, refers to them as “abortions,” which is just. Well, typical, really. But, another day for that one.

(When I moved out on my own I got over a lot of food fears. Out of necessity, I had to learn to crack eggs. Which is good, because if I had to keep calling J. to come over every time I wanted cookies, well, let’s just say she’d be living here and probably really hating me a lot.)

When Sarah and I lived in a little brown house called Serendip in East Vancouver, we would often find ourselves in possession of just a little too much red wine and thus would be compelled to drink the excess, often all in one evening, to avoid having to explain our excessive wine possession to the wine police. The mornings following these evenings would find one of us (cash money permitting) staggering the two blocks up to Main Street, retrieving McMuffins from McDonald’s and a Very Large container of Sunny D from the Very Awesome CK Mart so that we might be well and greasily nourished while we watched TV and our slightly crazy roommate, Dave.

I don’t remember if Sarah takes egg on her McMuffin but I never did. Always Sausage McMuffin, no egg. The foul, slimy memory of the McDonald’s egg stayed with me for 20 years. It still makes me shiver.

Last year, my co-worker, Co-worker A, introduced me to the Bacon ‘N’ Egger from A&W. Now, at A&W there is no egg-less option. One cannot have a Bacon ‘N’. It must include the egg. Since it wasn’t McDonald’s and since I do tend to get mind-blotteringly, co-worker-bitingly hungry from time to time and since, in our work building, A&W is really the best option for food (oh yes, this is pathetic) I ate the Egger with hardly a second thought. I ate Fast Food Egg! Go me!

I have already rhapsodized at length about this breakfast sandwich.

The Tim Hortons breakfast sandwich, in short, is very damn good.

The egg was egg-like, not a creepy blob moulded by a machine. The cheese was processed, which is as it should be. There were no confusing condiments. The bacon sandwich contained three small strips of bacon, which, to answer your question, Pat, NO, was not enough but that is why I keep bacon in my pockets at all times because There is Never Enough Bacon. But what set this sandwich apart was its breadstuff.

The contents of a McMuffin, of course, are found within an English Muffin.

The Bacon ‘N’ Egger, a hamburger bun.

The Tim Hortons Breakfast Sandwich is contained in a biscuit. A sweet-ish, toasted tea biscuit. At first, I thought this was very delicious. It is certainly consistent – both sandwiches featured the same perfectly toasted biscuit. No variation could be found, which is not something I could say for any of the Bacon ‘N’ Eggers I’ve had. (Those buns, just like any bun, get soggy. I can’t see this happening with the TH biscuits.) However, the texture of these biscuits was just a bit cloying. Just a bit – stick-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth-y. Let us say that if it had been a Tim Hortons on Main Street instead of a McDonald’s, our Saturday mornings would not have been helped in the least by the Tim Hortons Breakfast Sandwich.

I reflected as I walked home:

1. The biscuit was a nice variation, yes. Better than the Bacon ‘N’ Egger, I think,
though
1. a) A&W did introduce a “Homestyle” Egger which substituted a whole wheat bun and added a slice of tomato – unfortunately this was only available in the Ham or Bacon version and I do enjoy the Sausage – which was a nice change and did create the illusion of Health.

and
1. b) The sweetness of the biscuit almost sent me down sweetness alley and made me want to douse it in maple syrup.

on the other hand,
2. The McDonald’s English Muffin is just the right texture to absorb the grease from the sausage (or bacon), providing just enough resistence to your teeth while still being not too tough to chew.

Therefore:
3. If the McMuffin included a normal egg (like TH’s) and a slice of tomato (like the Homestyle Egger) then we would have a clear winner. A clear hybrid winner. Fantasy Breakfast Sandwich! Activate!