One breakfast topic guaranteed to be controversial, and that demonstrates you can’t appeal to everyone, is the great baked bean debate.
Feeling slightly mischievous recently, I posted on Facebook and Instagram, asking whether baked beans had a place on a full cooked breakfast.
Mischievous because it’s not the first time I’ve asked the question on social media and I knew what would happen.
The first time I asked on Twitter years ago, I was shocked by the vehemency of the responses, but I’m older and wiser now.
Some B&B owners refuse point blank to serve them. They hate baked beans themselves and it would turn their stomach.
But the overriding objection from B&B owners is that they make the breakfast plate look messy. For many of us, our cooked breakfasts are a work of art and beans have a mind of their own; They don’t sit nicely in one place however hard you try to contain them with a sausage – an Instagram nightmare!
The consumers of the breakfast also have many different foibles. Yes to beans but they must be Heinz, mustn’t touch my egg, bacon, sausages…
The obvious solution to this – or so you’d think – is the ramekin. The plate stays pretty and the guests can put the beans exactly where they want them.
But no! There are just as many people who hate beans in ramekins.
All this goes to show is that you can’t win at breakfast!
Now how do you feel about brown sauce or ketchup?
