I love cereal. My husband loves cereal. My kids love cereal. Cereal is a family affair. It can be breakfast, or lunch, or snack, or even dessert. If I am home alone, it often is dinner. Sometimes it is a late night snack. It can be eaten dry or soaked in milk. I prefer it with milk but the males tend to eat it dry.
My favorite is Honey Nut Cheerios. Mayhem likes Reese’s Puffs and Havoc & DH are partial to Cinnamon Toast Crunch. We’re a General Mills sort of family. DH & I both grew up on Coca Puffs, Kix, Cookie Crisp and Lucky Charms. He takes issue with Cookie Crisp these days day so we don’t buy it but the rest of them appear in rotation in our cupboards. It never lasts long. General Mills sent me a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch to review last Thursday. It was gone by Saturday evening. Cinnamon toast is one of DH’s favorite snack. Cinnamon Toast Crunch saves him waiting for the bread to toast and he doesn’t have to get a knife dirty spreading butter.
Breakfast often looks like a cereal commercial, everyone with a bowl of cereal with milk and a glass of juice and I find myself mentally hearing “Calcium & vitamin D fortified, nutritious breakfast. 8 grams of whole wheat, less than 12 grams of sugar” in a 70’s commercial voice over tone. All I need is the rabbit to appear at the doorway.
The true beauty of cereal, as my parents & in-laws could tell you is = the kids can serve themselves! I, like my parents, eagerly looked forward to the day when the kids could be trusted to pour a little milk in their bowls. because then I could leave bowls & boxes on the counter Friday night, put some milk in a juice bottle in the fridge and SLEEP IN Saturday morning! My kids get up at 6am, only because the rule is you can’t get out of bed before then. Cereal for breakfast means we get to stay in bed until almost 7 (because about 45 minutes or so of unobserved togetherness is all the boys can manage before a fight breaks out)
But cereal is often evil in foodie & parenting circles. I should be up at the crack of dawn boiling oats to serve with my home preserved fruit or grinding whole grains to make waffles. Possibly I should be making veggie omelets or maybe egg white veggie omelets with tofu.
Yeah, that’s going to happen.
I might toast a waffle & spread some peanut butter on it, but that is about as much effort as I can manage before my coffee. Cereal is awesome. It’s always ready to go & you can’t beat that when you are not a morning person & have to drag your tired butt out of bed at 6am.
Yet Another Jay and Deb Production.
