Breakfast Foods: The First Colonists

When the first colonists arrived in the New World from Europe, one of the things they quickly discovered was that the foods they were used to were no longer available. Wheat for bread and porridge was difficult to grow. The pigs and hens that might provide breakfast meats and eggs were scarce. Milk cows were few and far between. Coffee and tea were simply too expensive and exotic to be imported. What the colonists did find in the new land was a new grain: Indian corn, or maize. And though at first they longed for their Old World wheat, they found that maize could be baked into bread, cooked into porridge, and prepared in many new ways, demonstrating that maize not only staved off hunger, it was also an appealing food.