Lunch is the middlemost meal of an average person's day, typically the second meal eaten preceded by breakfast and followed by dinner. Other countries around the world have variations on the meal. In Norway, it is common for the people to eat sandwiches, either between two pieces of bread or one slice creating an open face sandwich with toppings such as cheese, various deli-type sliced meats, smoked salmon, along with a cup of coffee or other beverage, maybe a piece of fruit or some yogurt. Across the sea in Denmark, a typical light midday meal, or frokost, consists of items such as a piece of rye bread topped with cheeses, meat products such as fish or a pâté of some sort, and a side of vegetables or fruit along with a beverage. In Spain, the midday meal takes place a bit deeper into the ongoing day and is considered the main meal of the day. The Spanish tend to have a multi-course meal during their lunch with an appetizer, an elaborate main course, and a dessert with coffee. Russia tends to follow this pattern as well with making the midday, afternoon meal the largest meal of the day. A plethora of other countries in the world tend to eat fresher foods for lunch, but in America, we are prone to a mindset of eating whatever, whenever. And because of this, lunch is by far my favorite meal of the day. In my eyes, it is socially acceptable to eat whatever you want for lunch such as a packed lunch in a brown bag with a ham and cheese sandwich, a bag of chips, an apple and maybe a granola bar like I ate throughout my time in the public school system. However, lunch could be a roll or two at a sushi restaurant (or God forbid, a plastic-packed box of spicy tuna rolls from a 7-11 down the street), a burrito, a wrap consisting of sandwich materials but rolled into a flour tortilla, a salad, soup, pasta (typically lighter than a dish you would make for dinner as to not enter a food coma for the second half of your work shift or school day), or even leftovers from the night before. In our household, the general rule of thumb is that leftovers go first and roaming the pantry or fridge for anything second. Anecdotally speaking, American's tend to go out for a bite at lunchtime more often than the active populations of other countries, and the average American is not stopping by home during lunch to make it and eat it there. The worker will eat in the break room at their office or outside in the sun to have a break from said office, and the businessman may set up so-called “power lunches” at a fancier restaurant out in the city in order to pack away some good food and a drink or two with a client or two in order to impress them. The stay-at-home mom may eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich as she breastfeeds one child and chases the other one around the house. My father use to take cans of Franco-American Spaghetti, the name that was bought out by Campbell's in 1915 but the Franco-American remained on the label of most of their canned pasta dishes until they were phased out in the late 1990's or early 2000's, and would crack them open with the can opener in the Eastport U.S. Customs building on the border of Canada and eat the condensed mush of the spaghetti and neon yellow-orange tomato sauce cold right out of the can, a habit he supposedly started in his younger years as a boy. It could have been comforting to him to continue this habit, or it could have just been easier and less time consuming than emptying the can into a bowl to nuke in the microwave which then would take time to cook and take even more time to wash the dirty bowl afterwards. Or maybe, he just preferred the taste of the noodles when they were not quite warmed up because the flavor profile of the canned goop changed after you warmed it. I cannot explain why he would do it even after I adopted this technique myself. Through much of my childhood and into college, I ate most of my canned goods cold right out of the can. When I was a wildland firefighter, the lunch I packed for my average shift in Bonners Ferry usually included a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli that I would leave on the dash of whatever rig I was driving that day as to let the sun somewhat raise the temperature above that that the ravioli stayed at while sitting in the rolling cupboard in the corner of our kitchen in our home.

But, the territory that lunch once held strong is being encroached upon by another style of meal, one that is said to have been coined in the late 19th century in Britain by a publication named Punch to be a Sunday meal for the folks just waking up from a late Saturday night. Frank Ward O'Malley used the word to describe an average mid-day meal of a newspaper report. Brunch had always had a place in different cultures but for America, at least in small town America, brunch seemed to have its place only for certain holidays, mainly Christmas. One restaurant where I grew up, The Springs which is attached to the Kootenai River Inn and Casino just across 95 to the east of downtown, held a Mother's Day brunch. But other than this and hearing about brunch on several different sitcoms from the 80's and 90's, brunch was known less as a specific meal of the day rather than just a funny portmanteau used to describe breakfast when you rose late during the warm off-school months of summer. However, as the 2000's and the 2010's rolled around, brunch started to become a staple in American culture. I don't think that Punch was too far off from the truth with their definition but limiting it to just Sunday was a mistake. Of course, this could be due to the greater than 100 year difference between then and now, but the word brunch, depending on where you live in the United States of America, is used and enjoyed nearly as much as breakfast and lunch is. In Portland, many restaurants broadcast to the city and their patrons that they have a brunch menu available. In fact, if one types in “Brunch Portland” into Google and hits search, they would be bombarded with recommendations, lists of restaurants, and articles touting the best brunches in town. The Portland Spirit, a fleet consisting of five ships that includes a large sternwheeler, even offers a two hour brunch cruise featuring a plated meal, live entertainment and bottomless mimosas for one to enjoy while slowly boating around the river downtown. Brunch has taken over. But why? Could it be the fact that many young folks around this town enjoy the idea of brunch, or is it just that by the time they wake up most days, they are looking for food during brunch times? I am sure it is the latter, but that doesn't mean that brunch hasn't carved out a special role in the system itself. I am a man who did not quarrel over the dinner table when my mother laid out pancakes, eggs and bacon at 6 p.m. with a glass of milk or juice and some fresh fruit. Nor did I mind a sandwich spread at 9a.m. I personally have never had a problem with enjoying foods at “the wrong time”. A bowl of cereal still tastes like a bowl of cereal whether it is in the morning or in the evening, and I honestly wouldn't mind if someone surprised me with a good ham and black olive pizza right when I woke up. It's all just food; sustenance that we must ingest in order to keep going. And there are items on the menus of most family sit down restaurants that hint that I am not alone with this feeling whether the consumer of such items believes what they are eating is or is not appropriate for the time of day. Consider some popular American breakfast items. Yes, you have the french toast, the waffle, the biscuit with sausage gravy. But what about steak and eggs? Is a fine, 8 ounce hunk of red meat a “breakfast” item? As a kid, I was always confused at the words “Steak and Eggs” smack dab in the middle of the morning menu at The Panhandle because I knew that in my household, I would never be served a steak for breakfast. And in the same vein, we have the chicken-fried steak which is a hammered down, beat to shit piece of what was once a juicy steak but is now a fucked to death cow pie-shaped meat that is breaded and deep-fried into one of the greatest gravy-covered breakfast items to ever grace an American restaurant. Delicious? Yes. Breakfast? Sure but could be as easily eaten as a lunch or dinner item as it is a breakfast item. On occasion, there is a dinner version that swaps out the white-grey sausage gravy to a beefy brown gravy and the eggs and over-easy hash browns replaced by mashed potatoes, a vegetable medley, and a dinner roll. The steak and eggs goes under the same transformation when the menu changes from breakfast to dinner in these diners as well. So, why? Is it just that mashed potatoes and a vegetable medley are more sought after post-5 p.m.? I understand that at a restaurant like this, other than if they were an all-day breakfast joint, stop making hash browns and most of the eggs are put away by the time breakfast ends, and that is why the potatoes come the way they are during the morning or during the evening. Of course. But the only thing that changes what daily meal these items are appropriate for are the sides. Therefore, the steak and the chicken-fried variant of it are not breakfast, lunch, nor dinner items but more so the actual side dish of each of these respective meals. Now I have drifted away from the topic of lunch in such a manner that I do not know how to recover.