Today, many hotels advertise their ‘power’ breakfasts in various national dailies to woo customers. These power breakfasts are normally a Western set or table d’hôte menu served as a large spread of buffet that would typically consist choices  of breads and meats, cereals, marmalade, butter, cheese, eggs; sea food, vegetables, dairies, juices, exotic fruit platter, and tea and coffee.

The word power is a tad worn out vocabulary for breakfast or dressing now, although it entered the Valley lifestyle lexicon much later through some star hotels, more as a marketing gimmick to add some novelty, an enigma if you like, to attract the nouveau riche raised on humble dal-bhat most of their lives. We learnt about the virtues of power brunch consisting of dal-bhat early on in our lives. Before going to school, we would stuff ourselves with dal-bhat and vegetables, usually, a green one and potato and onion stew. It was always ‘kalo dal’, ‘aloo pyaj’ and ‘rayoko sag’ for brunch and dinner. The carnivores of the day mostly ate buff on Saturdays. Mutton and chicken were reserved for Dashain and eggs for Tihar and birthdays. The calorie and protein in dal-bhat was enough to sustain us from 10 am to 4 pm, which was the normal school and college hours then.

It was just a matter of time before we switched to Western food, courtesy of my father. We started having bread, butter, tinned Britannia biscuits or crackers, Brook Bond or Lipton tea with Lactogen powder milk, and fish for power breakfast. As days went by and we started earning our first salaries, we started indulging in luxury champagne breakfasts on weekends. Since getting hold of champagne was not easy, we started substituting it with beer and Scotch for our leisurely breakfast or brunch. In those days, champagne was like the proverbial ‘elixir of life’ that one could get only through the courtesy of foreign friends. We would have champagne or beer or Scotch with bread, butter, salad and pomfret fish, a novelty in Kathmandu then.

Today, we continue to enjoy our power breakfast at home. Having our power breakfast at home not only saves money but also precious time we would have wasted in the notorious traffic of Kathmandu.