As a housebound 21st century man responsible for 80% of the domestic procedures, it can be very difficult to maintain your status as a masculine individual among your peers. As I’ve stated numerous times in the past, manhood is often connected to bringing home the bacon, not cooking it to be added to a delightful quiche for Sunday brunch.

Because of this, I do my best to find ways to prove that I am still a man despite what my role in our household happens to be. This includes growing facial hair, wearing a leather jacket and walking around my neighborhood listening to the theme from the movie Armageddon. Still, I felt like I needed to add a bit more fuel to the flames of my manhood. Fortunately, I’ve found just the trick; breakfast stacks.

For those not in the know, a breakfast stack is just as it sounds. Instead of arranging the components of your breakfast in an orderly, aesthetically pleasing way, you instead stack everything up in a pile that can best be described as a flavor explosion. This accomplishes a few very important goals.

First, a stack is easier to shovel down as long meals are the least manly thing one can partake in. Men don’t have time for idle chit chat, there’s chainsawing and fist fighting to do (though not at the same time, unless you’re in a situation where doing so is your only means of survival.

Additionally, a stack requires a maximum of only two utensils; a knife and a fork. This prevents you from having to waste even more time figuring out which spoon is the grapefruit spoon (FYI, it’s the small one with serrated edges that tapers a bit at the end). Really macho men don’t even use utensils, instead slapping two pieces of bread or butter milk biscuits around the stack, thus forming the best meal item ever, called the breakfast sandwich. To take it to an even higher level, this breakfast sandwich can even be unified with pancakes, waffles or two glazed donuts.

Finally, the very act of stacking hearkens back to a time when men built up great structures, like the pyramids, castles or cozy log cabins in the woods (used primarily for dishing out the love making to your latest sexual conquest). Because most of us are neither architects or carpenters, we miss out on leaving our mark on the world. While we may never create something that can be viewed from space, we can at least eat like the men who did.