For me, breakfast is an important meal. I’m not big on cereal or doughnuts or the like however. Ever since my time living in Thailand, I adopted the habit of eating leftovers, fried rice, noodles, or random things on toast. Today I fried some chicken scraps from a Thai soup with dried chiles, and ate it with pickled spicy cowpeas on a toasted hamburger bun with mayonnaise. I also boiled an instant Polish mushroom soup that I found at Bell’s Market.

Chinese pickled vegetables are lovely, and this is a particular favorite of mine: spicy pickled cowpeas 泡豇豆. Cowpeas look a lot like Asian long beans, and here in the states, the peas are also known as black-eyed peas.

Pickled cowpeas

These pickles are excellent at room temperature, eaten together with rice porridge. They are also incredible in breakfast sandwiches (which are popular throughout China as street food). The breads used in China are often pan fried breads that resemble English muffins. Fillings can include fried eggs, stewed pork, and many, many other things.