No really. I think its quite possible.

I mean, most of my childhood breakfasts were made up of some sort of premade boxed breakfast cereals…

Well, except for the special occasion breakfasts like birthdays and holidays.. and for a while we didn’t have the money to buy breakfast cereal, but we raised chickens, so we ate a lot of french toast and scrambled eggs.

And sure, my fondest childhood breakfast stories do NOT center around the almighty box of cereal. Most of those breakfasts center around stories that are just too good not to tell. Stories that really have a message, Stories that I feel compelled to write down so that someday, when I can’t remember for myself, I can look back at what I wrote down in my younger days, and smile.

The Breakfast cereal stories aren’t so special. They typically begin with me, as a really young kid, drowning a bowl full of otherwise healthy corn, oat, wheat or other grain based cereal in a heaping mound of granulated sugar, and quickly pouring a healthy dose of milk on top before my neverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.commom or dad could tell the difference between my cereal and theirs.

I’ll admit it. I loved sugar on my cereal. I wish I could say I was exaggerating, but I really did pour a ton of sugar on top of my cereal. Probably a half as much as the amount of actual cereal in the bowl, was sugar.

I found ways around it, when times got tough and my parents started noticing that the sugar supply was dwindling. I’d use my dad’s coffee creamer, half and half, even whole milk, if I could convince my mom to buy that instead of the regular skim that she bought. Anything to add a little bit of sweetness to my cereal, and I was happy.

I was raised on unsweetened cereal.

I was eating grape nuts and corn flakes when my friends were eating sugar smacks and going coo-coo for cocoa puffs.

After begging and pleading with my mom to buy the “kids” cereals, I finally took matters into my own hands, and applied my own sugar. If you’ve ever eaten grape nuts cereal with skim milk, I’m sure you understand.

Cereal, still, was a mainstay in my childhood home. It was there, on top of the refrigerator for many late night cereal fueled scary movie watching slumber parties, It was there, in the cabinet next to the stove, when my mom didn’t feel like making dinner, or it was just too hot to cook.

Finally, when my little sisters were born, and my parents were too preoccupied worrying about the twins than worrying about my older sister and me eating florescent coloured cereal rolled in 7 different types of sugar, we were finally allowed to get the good stuff.

Frosted mini wheats.

I know.. I know, frosted mini-wheats sounds downright healthy compared to fruit loops, sugar smacks, cocoa pebbles, capt’n crunch and his crunch berries, and a whole barrel of other sugar drenched cereals, aimed and marketed directly at children.  But to us, they were amazing.

You see, we were familiar with a cereal that my mom called “Bales of hay”. Better known as Shredded wheat.

It  came in a regular  cereal box, and there were four paper tubes inside, each with two “bales”. These bales were huge, healthy, and not all that flavourful. My mom knew just how un-tasty they were, so she would allow us 1 teaspoon of sugar per bale that we ate. This was actually how I learned that you can put sugar on cereal, and what began the downward spiral towards total sugar annihilation with the grape nuts.

My sister and I found that the best way to apply the sugar was after the bales had been rolled in a half filled bowl of milk, spooned directly onto the top of the bale, and once the milk had started to absorb into the sugar, spread the sugar/milk paste on the bales, then quickly eat them before the sugar dispersed throughout the milk.  We were both big on drinking the milk after eating our cereal, and overly sweetened milk just did not work well for cleansing the palate.

Anyways, so when we found out that there was a smaller version of our bales of hay, only they came pre-sugared, and you could ACTUALLY SEE THE SUGAR ON TOP, which was a sure sign of a delicious cereal in our minds, we begged our mom to buy them for us. She agreed, probably not even paying attention to the box, she’d just had twins for goodness sakes.

We quickly got bored with regular frosted mini-wheats. Sure, they sounded good in theory, but the sugar on top melted into the milk too quickly, and the wheat part got soggier a lot faster than the larger size shredded wheat. Plus, back then it was a lot more expensive, so we settled on getting mom to buy florescent cereals like froot loops, and the various other movie/cartoon/television themed cereals that came out in the early 90’s.

Since then, I’ve pretty much stuck with the healthier types of cereal out there. Sure, I partake in the occasional box of krusty-O’s, and every now and then my husband picks up a bag of the generic version of Lucky Charms. I’m not gonna argue with him. hehe..

I’ve even been known to eat grape nuts, only without the added sugar. I guess I grew out of that habit. Thank goodness.
So just the other day, I went to my moms house, and what do I see, but my little sister sitting on the front porch with her hand in a box of strawberry flavoured frosted mini wheats.

Entering the house, I tell my mom how funny I think it is that they’ve gone and made a new variety of frosted mini wheats.. and she proceeds to pull four more DIFFERENT boxes of frosted mini wheats from the cabinet by the stove.

Apparently Kelloggs has been busy making a few different varieties of frosted mini wheats. And I couldn’t help but photograph them all.

Five different varieties-

And apparently, the strawberry and vanilla cream flavoured versions have “Crunchlets” listed as an ingredient.

These ones have an amazing smell to them. I really liked these ones, I felt like I was smelling a vanilla bean.

These were a little heavy on the cinnamon for me. A little spicy, but I guess some people Like that. My mom thought they tasted like cinnamon rolls.

I love these.
They’re pink, they don’t taste like fake strawberry, and they made the milk pink, but not overly sweet.

Definately the most boring new flavour. Similar to pancakes with syrup. They were good, but the maple was much stronger than the brown sugar, and I had hoped it was the other way around.

The original.
Ok, so its the bigger size. Halfway between a full sized piece of shredded wheat and one of the bite sized mini wheats, Who doesn’t love the original?

after much deliberation, and many bowls of cereal and milk, I had to make a decision as to which was my favourite…

Vanilla Creme- for the win!

It was just simple enough to make a good breakfast, and not fake tasting at all. One might actually think its healthy for you… until you inquire about the crunchlets.

-A.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 3:08 am and is filed under August 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.