Patio Pondering: One Man's Quiche, Another Man’s Casserole

Rain came through our area early this morning, the pitter-patter on the roof pulling me out of sleep before the alarm had a chance. The patio glistens as the morning sun finds its way through the landscaping. My coffee is hot and on the strong side as I settle into what I call the Terra Level Executive Suite — my home office, ground floor, close enough to the garden to feel honest about the day ahead.

My wife brought me breakfast while I was organizing my to-do list. A slice of quiche.

Every time I hear that word, I think back to a book from my youth — Real Men Don't Eat Quiche — a satirical poke at masculine stereotypes that was everywhere in the early 1980s. I'll be honest with you: I never read it. But that title stuck with me for forty-some years, and this morning it finally told me why.

One man's quiche is another man's breakfast casserole.

Same eggs. Same cheese. Same satisfying weight in your stomach on a rainy Wednesday morning. The only thing that changed was the word on the label — and somehow that word carried enough cultural baggage to make grown men defensive about what they put on their fork.

How many times in our lives do we let definitions define us?

In agriculture, we do this constantly. A "small farm" versus a "family operation." A "hog confinement" versus a "modern production facility." A "consultant" versus someone who couldn't keep a corporate job. The facts on the ground are identical. The perception shifts entirely based on the vocabulary someone else handed us.

I spent 25 years in an industry where I watched good ideas die because they got labeled wrong, and I watched mediocre ideas thrive because someone dressed them up in the right terminology. The quiche versus breakfast casserole divide isn't just a generational joke — it's a case study in how quickly we outsource our judgment to a word.

The lesson I took from my Tuesday morning quiche: be skeptical of the label, especially when it's making a decision for you. Ask what's actually in the dish before you decide whether real men eat it.

Turns out, real men eat whatever their wife brings them with a smile. And they're grateful for it.