Aunt Jemima Sausage, Egg and Cheese Croissant Sandwich

Some folks get very cranky when they don't start their day with a tasty and nutritious breakfast sandwich.

How many times have you heard people say breakfast is the most important meal of the day? Without it you just don't have the energy for your various work or downtime activities, whether they be accounting, taxidermy, serial killing, dry cleaning, watch repair, animal control, sponge-bathing the elderly, fellating sad men in bus stop shelters at six in the morning, collecting sock lint for the government, taking peyote or preparing for a Tiddly Winks competition in Atlantic City. But in this day and age it's enough just trying to get all your proteins without worrying about your proper trans and saturated fat intakes. Thankfully, Aunt Jemima has the solution with these nifty fits-in-the-palm-of-your-hand croissant breakfast sandwiches. I love foods that come in patty form as they look so sleek and uniform and contemporary, like a sea otter sitting on a a piece of modern Danish furniture. With this breakfast fabrication you get not just one but two patties in egg and sausage varieties and they stack so nicely on top of each other you wonder why nature didn't make them this way in the first place and save people a lot of time, energy and having to wear shower caps on the assembly line until their retirement day. I have to say, for the first time in years I awoke with a bounce in my step and a twinkle in my rheumy eye knowing that these wondrous creatures were slumbering in the deep freeze of my refrigerator, waiting to kick start my morning with the pleasures that only preformed patty proteins can deliver. The early bird may get the worm but it's the late-rising human that gets the breakfast croissant sandwich. Now, if you're like myself and live by the motto, "time is money," because the cheap wristwatches you keep buying stop working after a week and you have to buy a new one from the street vendor who claims they're real Rolexes, then the conventional oven method of heating these things is not in your vocabulary. No, only the microwave will do when you need to get up and go and move from the bed to the couch in your bathrobe (unless you have a sofa bed in which case you don't have to move at all) and start rolling coins from your pickle jar full of change, which is an energy consuming activity, not to mention the time involved (there's that time is money thing again). So, into the nuclear reactor this thing went. I must say, in its frozen state the croissant sandwich doesn't look particularly pleasing. Its jailhouse pallor and diminutive nature make it a candidate for the sickliest-looking breakfast sandwich this side of the equator but I was hoping that like a butterfly, it would emerge from it cellophane cocoon as a beautiful creature ready to take flight in the world of culinary delights. Well, it certainly looked better after its microwave spa although the croissant isn't really a croissant as you know it. Rather it imitates a croissant shape but just barely, like an bad celebrity impersonator at a rundown casino showroom where the biggest draw of the evening is that everyone in mall scooters gets a free plate of chicken wings if they show their senior's I.D. Don't get me wrong though for this thing shows heart and I can empathize because if you ever saw my own celebrity impersonator one-man show, Don Knotts, The Man Behind the Myth, you'd want to throw a croissant at my head, perhaps followed up with an ashtray or highball glass. Nevertheless, there was a kind of faux-fluffy texture to the bread and the pork sausage patty inside lost some of its gray complexion, showing promising brown discolorations that intimated that a hot grill might have touched its surface at one point in its conception. The egg disc had a spongy consistency and kind of bounced back with each bite like a miniature trampoline. There was a decidedly pungent aftertaste, almost funky, like what I'd imagine a well-used oven mitt would taste like if you decided to chew on it. Luckily the thoroughly-melted, almost liquified slice of American processed cheese tempered this flavour profile and the smoky sausage with its greasy residue chipped in to the effort. I guess you can say these little guys don't try to hide behind their monoglycerides but wear them proudly on their emulsified insides. Still, in the end these sandwiches strike me as sadder than a George Jones song on a scratchy jukebox but that's a kind of sadness I don't mind as long as there's a shot of whiskey in my morning coffee to complete the experience.

When you've got three mouths to feed, time and money is the key. This sandwich will waste one but utilize the other wisely (I'll let you be the judge of which is which) and as long as those mouths are connected to tiny heads, one or two of these breakfast sandwiches should suffice.