Part of a Complete Breakfast

On top of the fridge

2009-03-25T00:12:00.000-07:00

Here's a peak at the top of the fridge.
A lot of those cereals have been eaten by now, but you get the idea.

Sugar Cereal!

2008-05-07T10:34:00.000-07:00

Part of the amazing thing about cereal is there are so many varieties that there's always the perfect cereal for how you feel, or what time of day it is.

With that being said, I love sugar cereal. I don't want to only eat sugar cereal since I do like the healthy stuff too, but I really do enjoy eating a bowl of sugar with milk and a spoon, that doesn't necessarily have the texture of eating a bowl of sugar with milk and a spoon.

When my sister and I were little, our parents only bought us healthy (usually less expensive) cereals such as Rice Krispies, plain Cheerios, Raisin Bran, Bran Flakes, Corn Flakes, etc. Cereals like Kix, Frosted Flakes, Honey Nut Cheerios, and Honey Bunches of Oates, even though they aren't really that sugary, were a pretty big deal.

By the time we got to high school, Mom pretty much left it up to us to take the proper measures to not get cavities. If we wanted to eat sugar cereal and we didn't get cavities as a result, then by all means.

That's when we graduated to the good stuff. I mean the REAL good stuff. Trix, Lucky Charms, Coco Puffs, and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. These are classy sugar cereals. These aren't, "hey lets see how unhealthy of a cereal we can make" but rather "lets make a cereal that really isn't that healthy for you, but isn't all that bad for you either".

The only real drawback of sugar cereal is it's not very appealing to eat first thing in the morning. If your mornings are really afternoons, this isn't so much of a problem. I'm talking early in the morning, as in, rising with the sun.

Sugar cereal first thing in the morning is like waking up with a cold shower. If you have to do it, do it, but if you can avoid it, it'll be a better way to get your day going.

Frosted Flakes Gold

2008-04-28T19:17:00.000-07:00

Usually, I love all cereals. Some taste better than others, and different cereals are ideal for different times.

With Frosted Flakes Gold however, I can't really see a time when this cereal would ever be considered good.

The front of the box describes its contents as "Crunchy flakes made with whole grain and baked with HONEY". Tastes more like poo. Rather, petrified bran flakes covered in candy shells, which isn't what I typically look for in a cereal. Thankfully it becomes slightly tolerable after 5 minutes of soaking up milk and the sugar has washed off a bit. Then again, that's like praising a wild, rambunctious child for eventually getting tired.

My housemate theorizes that when companies make these wild experiment products that mess with the usual formula for success, it's because they came up on a bunch of whatever the extra ingredient is.

I can't really think of any other reason why someone thought this cereal was a good idea. Didn't they focus group this stuff on someone else besides 6 year olds? I guess when you're a refined sugar peddler though, that's the only demographic that really counts.

I can't believe we made it through the whole box.

They'll get tired eventually.

The Collection

2008-04-28T19:12:00.001-07:00

Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous.

In a later post I'll share with you the secret to acquiring a vast cereal fortune, such as the one pictured above, with a relatively affordable investment.

Rice Krazies.

2008-04-07T10:55:00.001-07:00

Hey kids! Here's an exciting way to spice up your regular old Rice Krispies without adding a pound of sugar!

What a way to knock out two of those pesky fruits and veggie servings from the recommended daily five.

Honey Bunches of Oats

2008-04-06T23:33:00.000-07:00

Unbeknown to many people, and despite being packaged in one convenient box, Honey Bunches of Oats is actually two cereals. Usually, the first half of the cereal consists of the various kinds of flakes with a few bunches of oats. After all that goodness is eaten up, you'll find yourself pouring a bowl of honey bunches of oats (like literally the honey bunches part) and a bunch of crumb-flakes.

I remember once reading on the cover that the contents of the box may have sifted, or something to that extent. Since then, whenever I buy HBoO I'll usually let it sit upside down for at least a couple of weeks until it's ready for consumption.

For the record, the flake parts of HBoO take a turn for the nasty around two minutes after milk is added but the bunches hold up just fine.

For this reason, when the cereal is remixed (usually by storing the box upside down and shaking the bag) and allowed to re-fuse to its intended state, HBoO reaches its maximum flavor potential.

Funny side story - we left the milk too close to the top of the fridge for a while and part of it ended up freezing. As an amazing side effect, the super cold milk seemed to slow down the sogification of the HBoO flakes and transformed it into an entirely different cereal, all for the better. It seems like it'd be kind of a hassle to keep the milk at freezing temperatures just to have perfect HBoO though, so I wouldn't recommend it unless you're pretty bored.

Heavy Hitters

2008-03-03T10:32:00.000-08:00

When I was at the cereal store last week Diana and I saw these. I told myself I wouldn't buy any more cereal since between Irish and I we have >20 boxes on top of the fridge right now (pics/video soon) but I really couldn't pass this up.

Each box is about 1.5 pounds (24 and 24.5 oz) and they were 3 dollars each. Even the clerk standing nearby said you can't beat that.

Over 3 pounds of sugar and cereal for 6 dollars.

It's kind of ridiculous...

Total

2008-02-24T00:27:00.000-08:00

Have you ever wondered what pure %100 whole wheat looks and tastes like? Me too but I presume Total is it.

It's also %100 Calcium and %100 Nutrition. Through analogies we can conclude that wheat, nutrition, and calcium are all equal to each other but maybe my math is a little off. Or maybe General Mills's math is the fishy one.

Regardless, after diligent research I've discovered that the creators of Total cereal, no other than Mr. Charles Total and his 5 children, set out one fateful day to create the most bland cereal possible.

They would have succeeded too if Rebeca Cheerios, Snap, Crackle, and Pop never came along with their own bland cereals.

Seriously though, Total is like the celery of cereals. It's so healthy you're likely to be burning up more calories (and whatever else were not suppose to be eating in this weightophobic society) than you pick up from eating it.

Further proof of Total's lack of pizazz can be seen right on the box art. General Mills has such little faith in the stand alone taste of Total that they chose to depict it with berries for added flavor. Either that or they designed total as a sort of accompaniment cereal to fruits which still reinforces the notion of blandness. Whatever. I can imagine that this actually tastes pretty good when you're feeling bloated...or constipated.

No prize or fun puzzles on this box btw, just boring adults doing unexciting adult things, i.e. trying to eat their way to good health.

Kudos.

Recent Acquisitions

2008-02-24T00:23:00.001-08:00

I also picked up like 5 lbs. of Grape Nuts and had a recent fling with flavored oatmeal as per recommendation in the comment section. I'll write about my experiences in due time.

Back to Breakfast

2008-01-01T18:55:00.001-08:00

Fear not, I'm back to blogging!

For those of you wondering: over the summer, in a frustrating coincidence, both my laptop and digital camera were in my backpack when it got stolen out of my car while I was out one evening.

Both items were eventually replaced and if I really wanted to I probably could have found a way to blog before then. Really though, when your important material things are stolen from you, going out of your way to write about cereal seems a little arbitrary and depressing.

I'm shooting to continue updating on Mondays to start the weeks off right. Verb and noun agreement aside, it feels good to be back.

Also, if you have a particular cereal you enjoy and want me to try out I'm more than willing to give it a shot. Just leave a shot out in the comment section.

I wonder what kind of random, humorously marketed, delicious, or sugar laden cereal I'll eat next...

Rich Chocolaty Chex Mix

2008-01-01T18:30:00.000-08:00

Another post from the grandparents house.

Chex mix and its many incarnations are pretty amazing when you think about it. On one hand, there's the standard salty version, while on the other there's the sweet and salty variety. Of course there's also regular boring ass plain Chex cereal too but the world needs stuff like that.

Anyways, here we have Chocolate Chex: With a Touch of Cocoa. Does that mean that it's already chocolate chex and they added extra cocoa?

Whatever.

Honestly, it tastes like someone just took plain chex cereal and added a handful of rich, chocolaty, Ovaltine (hence the blog title).

The chocolate pieces stay noticeably crunchy in milk while the plain pieces sog at a regular pace which is not bad at all.

Chocolate Chex is also about just sugary enough for sophisticated adults to eat as a guilty pleasure over the regular bland cereals I presume they eat regularly.

The best part of this cereal? Afterwards you get to drink chocolate milk!

Note that it does taste more like cocoa than chocolate so maybe the label on the box is correct and just missing a coma or two.

Really, if it has cocoa in it, doesn't that mean it's given that the product is chocolaty? Then again, Chocolate Chex: With Added Cocoa does sound better than simply Chex With Cocoa which leads me to believe I'm done complicating this.

What the hell are Cereal Straws?

2007-07-02T20:52:00.001-07:00

The last week I was in Santa Cruz I was at Safeway and saw these. I was immediately confused and excited to try them out.

What the hell are Cereal Straws?

These things are being marketed as cereal in straw form that you use to drink and enjoy milk with. Alex Nitta pointed out a critical flaw in the cereal straw concept in that as you drink the milk and eat the straw, it becomes increasingly difficult to make the two meet.

Essentially, these are Pirouline cookies that sort of taste like the cereals they represent. They are a nice snack when driving or on the go actually though I don't think they should be marketed as cereal. They are actually the polar opposite of cereal in my opinion.

Dictionary dot com defines cereal as such:

1.any plant of the grass family yielding an edible grain, as wheat, rye, oats, rice, or corn.
2.the grain itself.
3.some edible preparation of it, esp. a breakfast food.
–adjective
4.of or pertaining to grain or the plants producing it.

which actually could qualify cereal straws as cereal, but in its colloquial understanding, these aren't cereal.

Within the straws there is a lining of soy milk which is kind of redundant when you eat them with milk. Seems like they got caught up in trying to market these as a reshaped cereal bar and instead created more of a hands on product. Whatever.

There's actually less to say about these than I thought there would be. Not as bad/weird as they sound, definitely different, nothing special really. Time will tell if they catch on.

More pictures -

I'm back!

2007-06-25T11:37:00.001-07:00

Sorry I took 3 weeks to make a new post, school ended then summer started and I haven't been into the blogging mood. Now that things have settled down, here I am. I promise entries will be more timely from here on out but many (all 3) of you probably stopped reading.

A couple of weeks ago I made a trip to the mecca of cerealdom. Actually, it wasn't some cereal heaven but just my Grandparents house which happens to be where I spoke my first English word, cereal. They use to keep the cereals in a cabinet at floor level (perfect for children who also happen to be close to the ground), near the sink but now the cereals are near the wall.

My Grandma (Po Po) is VERY strict on healthy food. Well, she's not fascist strict but certainly very cautious and nagging, but in a concerned loving way. She runs a pretty tight ship but whenever we come to visit my Grandpa (Gung Gung) seizes the opportunity to go buy some junk food in anticipation of our arrival and snacking desires. This usually ranges from cereal (though not as often these days) to cookies and potato chips, lots and lots of potato chips. Most of these are considered contraban since they cumulatively led to Gung Gung needed (if I remember correctly) a triple by-pass heart surgery. Yikes.

Getting back to the cereal, in the morning I ate Trader Joe's Brand Banana Nut Clusters. This was a semi-unique opportunity for me since when I buy cereal, I tend to be a name brand elitist which has its ups and downs. BNC is like Honey Bunches of Oates but banana flavored and with walnuts in it. It actually tastes better than it sounds, if my description sounded unappealing to you.

Also of interest, in my family, we're all about freshness preservation. When you open the box of cereal, make sure to roll the bag down so air doesn't get in, close-pin it if you have to. I'll probably do a writeup on the importance of cereal preservation later but for now I'll leave you with this. My grandparents have the ultimate method of both keeping the cereal fresh and ant free.

Frosted Mini Wheats

2007-06-04T16:32:00.000-07:00

http://www.mini-wheats.com/index.shtml - warning, lots of annoying mini wheat narration

My fondest memory of frosted mini wheats is from my grandma's house when I was little. I was eating the Big Bite variety and the concept of breaking up the cereal before consuming was pretty foreign to me (it still is actually). I thought it was odd that despite being called mini wheats, a single chunk barely fit on my spoon, let alone made for a practical cereal. A quick search on wikipedia confirms that I'm not alone with this experience.

We had the normal sized frosted mini wheats a couple times at home over the years but it's been a while. I figured that I'd out a couple of the new flavors (I presume) and that they would also make for an interesting blog post.

What can I say? Now that I'm an adult and my mouth has grown to adult proportions the cereal is that much more edible.

I picked up the "Maple and Brown Sugar" and Strawberry varieties. At the store, I noticed the maple, frosted, and vanilla creme (ooh, fancy) versions were adorned with Shrek 3 promotional materials, namely, turn in 5 special cardboard tokens (from 5 boxes) and get a free Shrek bowl. You could also use just 1 token and send in 3 dollars but where's the fun in that? Then again, I don't think I could stomach 5 whole boxes of this stuff.

Anyways.

I thought it was interesting that the Strawberry version didn't have the Shrek promotion, leaving me 1 token further from my free novelty bowl. When I look at the box I feel as though it's marketed to the sophisticated business woman (or man, but society tells me that pink is less masculine and so 2006) who doesn't want cartoon characters, 3D or not, displayed on her(/his) cereal box while she(/he) shops around the grocery store. Why such a sexist comment? I don't mean it as such, but where is my fucking Shrek token?!

Looking at the sides of the boxes, strawberry let's me know that eating this cereal will keep me regular, which is definitely good to know, and it is apparently part of Kellogg's Smart Start Breakfast. At the bottom they bust out the same measuring tape from Special K to reaffirm my assumption that by buying this cereal I am investing in wellness which is important with my busy lifestyle.

Maple and Brown Sugar on the other hand tells me that it's important to consume a breakfast of heroes on a daily basis but won't tell me the the exact contents of such an empowering meal. Instead, that knowledge must be earned, though I presume only true heroes at heart will have the strength and wisdom to solve this riddle. Perhaps strawberries are one of the secret ingredients (gasp, are the Strawberry Mini-Wheats also training heroes?!) since it is pictured next to the riddle. Since I know how to spell strawberry, I can tell now that no, strawberries, according to this list, are NOT for heroes.

Bonus points to the first hero to unravel all of the mysteries of morning nutritional empowerment in the comment section.

So what have we learned today? 1) that we can add another cereal to the list of grown-person cereals that you can proudly parade around in the store knowing that it will bring balance and wellness to your stressful life of excesses and 2) if you desire a box with such information instead of its equally sugar coated yet cleverly marketed siblings then you are unworthy of the Shrek bowl.

Fruity Pebbles

2007-05-21T13:18:00.000-07:00

A good source of fiber indeed.

You know how matza is essentially bread without yeast? Well, Fruity Pebbles tastes like the matza of the cereal world. Post was probably trying to make their own Rice Crispies and forgot to put the yeast in, or whatever ingredient they put in rice cereal to make it not taste like crap. I imagine the board meeting down at Post that day went something like this:

"Um, boss? We forgot to put the yeast in our rice cereal and it sticks to your teeth now and tastes awful.

-Hmm, well then, just make the flakes different flavors and add a swimming pool's worth of corn syrup.

Ok boss, but who would in their right mind would eat this stuff?

-(Shrugs shoulders)...Cave men?

Hmm. Cave men..."

Limited Edition: Spider Man 3 Cereal!!!

2007-05-14T11:06:00.000-07:00

I picked this up a couple of weeks ago for about 2 dollars. It's Spider Man!!! If this isn't as exciting as cereal gets, I'm not sure what is.

In addition to pimping out the Spider Man license to established brands of cereal, General Mills went and gave Spidey his own "Lightly Sweetened Fruity Corn Puffs" cereal available for a limited time. I remember when the Ninja Turtles movie, either 1 or 2 came out, there was a promotional cereal that was essentially lucky charms but with Ninja Turtle shapes. My parents caved in and bought it for me. After that, I always wanted to have Ninja Turtle cereal again but didn't quite grasp the concept of "limited time only".

Well, I'm 21 years old now and I think I can spot these sweet opportunities when they come around.

Just looking at the box, you could conclude a couple of things. 1) That Spider Man has taken a break from fighting crime to steal the photographer's most important meal of the day right from under her/him. Or 2) that the thick ass "milk" in the bowl and that strange white fluid coming out of Spidey's suit are somehow related. Eew. Or some combination of the 2.

The actual cereal is just Kix but with sugar/food dye. You know how Mom and Dad are suppose to approve of Kix because there's no sugar added, it's just naturally sweet? Well this is what Kix would be like if the kids got their way.

I didn't get the color scheme until I poured myself bowl and it screamed SPIDER MAN to my face. Maybe the white stuff in the bowl on the cover clouded my interpretation.

Other than that, it's interesting to note the "puzzle" on the side is the Spider Man version of shoving a square peg into the round hole. Can you match up 3 entirely different photos that have been ripped in half? I mean come on! If kids are old enough to feed themselves, they could solve this in 10 seconds tops. Way to lower the bar and give the kids a false sense of accomplishment General Mills.

Special K

2007-05-07T12:36:00.000-07:00

In the first of many entries, I will take a look at a specific cereal and write what I think about it.

This week is Special K. I picked up 2 boxes on sale for $2.50 each at Safeway last week. It turns out the whole special part of the cereal just means that it's Rice Krispies...in flake form. When I was eating some this morning, I looked down into my bowl and thought, "huh, there's some Rice Krispies that got mixed into my Special K." Then I realized they were the same.

I like to think of Special K as the adult contemporary Rice Krispies. It's much more sophisticated than having three brightly dressed leprechauns tell you that your cereal is going to tell you things if you put your ear up to it after adding milk.

There's a measuring tape around the box and a pitch telling me that "Losing up to 6 lbs in 2 weeks just got easier". Great. With Special K not only do I NOT get a free toy or puzzles on the back, but I'm reminded that I'm transitioning into an adult and am not the skinny kid I use to be. Thanks a lot Kelloggs.

Part of a Complete Breakfast: Waking up

2007-04-25T00:27:00.000-07:00

I've decided that my admiration of breakfast cereal (the cold variety), which from here on out will simply be referred to as cereal, has led me to this: a blog entirely dedicated to the thing. How much could one right about cereal you might ask?That's a question that I'm looking to answer as well, but in the meantime I've got some good ideas.

I'll begin, and wrap up this post, with an introduction to myself. My name is Alejandro and I am a cereal enthusiast. My house mates most likely think I have a sort of O.C.D. or am strangely obsessed, which may be true, but I prefer to consider it a passion. I've remembered recently that the word "cereal" was indeed my first word which is kind of weird since I hadn't recognized myself or identified as a cereal enthusiast until relatively recently.

I love cereal because, for myself and likely for others as well, it can be eaten at all times of the day: early morning, late morning (or afternoon), for dinner when you're too lazy to cook, and late at night as a snack. I'll get more into my personal eating habits later.

For now, I just want to get the day going and possibly propose a toast. Suggesting a metaphorical toast with cereal, word-play acknowledged, is much more cheesy than I had planned. Let's put it this way, next bowl of cereal you eat, stop reading the back of the box for a second and appreciate how amazing it is.