Why Does a Salmon Set Meal Look So Much Like 'Breakfast'?

I grilled salmon for dinner.
My husband said, 'It looks like breakfast.'

When I looked at the menu I had laid out on the table after he said that, I saw grilled salmon and rice. Along with miso soup, a rolled omelet, pickles, and salad. In short, a salmon set meal.

My husband usually eats whatever I make, saying it's delicious. He was just commenting on the impression it gave, not complaining in particular. But for some reason, that one remark really bothered me. 90% of my brain was suddenly taken over by this unexpected quiz. Why would it look like breakfast when it's dinner?

Staring at the warm rice I had just finished making, I pondered, 'It really does look like breakfast. Why is that...' Seeing me clearly flip my 'difficult' switch, my husband must have regretted his careless remark. Beside me, as I couldn't just let it go with a 'Haha, you're right!', he carried the salmon in question to his mouth, looking half-exasperated.

There was no point in staring at it forever, so I also ate some of the salmon, which had a nice charred look. It had gone completely cold while I was lost in thought, but thanks to the strong saltiness, it went well with the rice. I continued to think while avoiding the large bones. Is the problem the main dish or the composition? If it had been nikujaga (meat and potato stew), he wouldn't have said that. But since there was salmon there today, it couldn't be helped.
I picked up some salad with my chopsticks. I had to use the leafy greens before they wilted.
Pickles as a palate cleanser. The cucumber made a crisp, crunching sound. It's probably necessary for this lineup.
Rolled omelet. It adds a bright color to the whole thing. Plus, I had a lot of eggs.

Meals are a once-a-day, three-chance opportunity. When I stand in the kitchen, the gong for my internal battle rings, determined to make a satisfying dinner. As an art school graduate, I have a strange sense of pride when it comes to making things. Even with daily meal preparation, I want to serve it with a feeling of 'How about that!' Even if it's just a convenient pride where my inner Doi-sensei smiles and says, 'This is fine,' on days when I'm too tired to make more than one dish.
On the other hand, if I can make one soup and three or four side dishes, it's a huge victory. Always wanting to be praised for something, I usually can't help but say, 'I did it,' and my husband hypes it up by saying it's luxurious. Even if the breakdown includes things like cut salad and pickles that I just took out of a bag and plated.
That's why, to me, a salmon set meal was in the category of 'a fairly substantial dinner that I worked hard to make.'

In the first place, breakfast in our house is usually bread. Since we got married, I have never made a breakfast using fish. In fact, I can count on one hand the number of times I've served white rice for breakfast. ...Maybe I haven't even done that.
The reason is simple: it's much easier to throw a slice of bread taken from the freezer into the toaster. At my parents' house, breakfast was always bread, too. However, I have served grilled fish and rice for dinner many times.
Why on earth?
What exactly does 'breakfast-like' mean?

Morning is a war.
Even on a morning with time to spare, that time disappears by reading the same picture book five times with my two-year-old daughter. If I close the book, she gets angry, and the time to send her off to nursery school is fast approaching. I'm already bad at mornings, and I'm barely making it through the morning with my daughter, being woken up by my husband.

What's needed for such a morning is overwhelming 'convenience.' So what happens if I try to make a salmon set meal?
Just the word 'grill' that pops into my head first makes me throw in the towel. If it were night, that would be one thing, but the kitchen would smell like fish from the morning, and I feel sorry for my husband who would end up having to wash the grill. I don't wash it. There's also no time to eat slowly. I'm a slow eater, too.
I can't call a salmon set meal convenient, as it would probably take an hour earlier to wake up to make it. I would need to be prepared to 'make it' from the night before. Moreover, my pride would likely pop up again uninvited, and getting carried away, I'd probably pull out tableware I don't usually use.
I don't want to see my husband's resentful face in front of the sink. I have to be a decent human being.

This only deepens the mystery. Even though a salmon set meal isn't convenient, it still has a 'breakfast face.'
The reason that image exists must be because we see it or eat it in the morning.

So where?
At least not in our house.


The answer is at inns or hotels.

If you stay somewhere while traveling, you'll encounter it the next morning, whether it's a set meal or a buffet. The true nature of its convenience is clear. My husband would be happy with this.

The many luxurious dishes prepared when you head to the venue in a groggy state in the morning.
I take some fluffy grilled salmon, scoop up some steaming rice, and just as I pick up a cup of natto, I reach for a flaky croissant that scatters crumbs everywhere, add some almond tofu for dessert, and my tray becomes a total mess.

Even on such a chaotic tray, the salmon, standing tall and shining, is the 'symbol of extraordinary luxury' and the 'perfect image of a Japanese breakfast.'
The culprit that gave the salmon set meal its 'breakfast face' was 'longing.'

When I started talking energetically the next morning, saying, 'About that breakfast-like thing from yesterday!', my husband listened, saying, 'Huh!? Yeah...'I had been thinking about this from the time of the meal, through my bath, until I went to sleep and woke up. It takes a trivial thing to flip my 'difficult' switch, but it takes a long time for it to turn off.

I notice that other dishes have labels, too. Freshly made curry wears the face of the night, wrapped in the scent of spices as if to say it is the star of the show, but second-day curry, left overnight, has the face of a morning-after, no-makeup lunch. I imagine it for myself and nod, thinking, yes, that's exactly what cooking is like. A one-man sumo match.

As I continued my one-man classification—hot pot is for the night, sandwiches are for lunch, and so on—I remembered something. When we were still newly married, I was bored and suddenly declared that I would make hamburgers for dinner. To me, burning with my usual self-imposed enthusiasm, my husband responded with his accustomed look, striking a pose that said, "Go right ahead."

I grilled the hamburger patties, drained and cut the vegetables, made the sauce, and warmed the buns. There was no room left for the fried nuggets, and the fries were getting cold. Homemade hamburgers are surprisingly busy work. Oh, if only I had bought McDonald's, none of this would have happened.

Besides, if it were just hamburger steak, it would have a "proper dinner face." In contrast, what about a homemade hamburger? It makes me angry that it has a "casual lunch face."
It's more work than hamburger steak, so why does the more effort I put into it, the more it cements that lunch face? Have a proper dinner face, for heaven's sake. It was hard work, you know.

And yet, my husband said, "This is delicious!" and ate it all in seven minutes. I had only just finished catching my breath.

My struggles with menu planning begin at the grocery store. When I open the fridge, I stare down expiration dates. The more seriously I think about my family's nutrition and trying to increase the number of dishes, the more my perspective narrows and the more painful it becomes.
Having a salmon set meal with a breakfast face or a hamburger with a lunch face for dinner is cute by comparison. One day, a screw that's been tightened too much will pop off, and things like summer festival stall menus, indoor picnic lunches, or spaghetti festivals will run wild in my brain. Right now, the phrase "pancake decoration battle" is crossing my mind. The Doi-sensei in my heart is also in a state of readiness, saying, "I won't lose."
Tonight, too, my husband and daughter will be at the mercy of my troublesome obsession and wacky ideas, waiting until I finally burn out. I'm sorry. But isn't it fun to suddenly make pancakes for dinner and laugh together about what a strange meal it is?

There might be a tomato on the plate as a token gesture, but my daughter will be happy.
If I have one worry, it's that pancakes might become a "dinner face" for my daughter, but if that becomes a "special dinner face," I think that's fine too.
Even a salmon set meal was made into a breakfast face by someone.
In our house, that's the pancake decoration battle.

Our family's dinner has a hundred faces.
It's dangerous, as 90 percent of my brain is about to be taken over by it.

My husband will probably say:
"Here we go again."