Care to Join Me for some Cereal? (Milk is optional)

After reading this funny post I started thinking about my relationship with cold cereal.

Cold cereal was a very rare thing when I was growing up. With thirteen people to feed every morning, cold cereal was just too expensive. Most mornings consisted of Malt-O-Meal with brown sugar and butter or an egg with toast and hot cocoa. They were delicious breakfasts and more work for mom, but television marketing had worked it's magic and I wanted something else--that sweet and tasty morning meal advertised by Tony the Tiger, the big scary Fruit Loops bird, the silly Rabbit and Mikey, the lucky guinea pig brother who inadvertantly got what I always wanted.

Cold cereal.

My childhood memories of actually having cold cereal consisted of family vacations, when we'd splurge on the variety pack because if you opened them just right, the bag inside could be used as a bowl, Mom's home-made grapenuts (they really were homemade and toasted in the oven, not found in the woods by Euell Gibbons) and Sunday evenings for about a year when our family had church from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. (my dad was the ward clerk and had to take care of tithing after church, so we usually pulled into home around 8:30 or 9:00 p.m.) Those Sunday evenings were thrilling because we got all varieties of Chex and shredded wheat (not the frosted kind, but the big bale-of-hay-looking biscuits) with bananas sliced on top.

When I grew up and went away to college, my love affair with cereal really began. I tried them all but my favorites were Fruit Loops and Lucky Charms. Now there are some grown up choices! Now that I'm really grown up, I favor the more "adult" kinds of cold cereal--you know, the Honey Bunches of Oats and Frosted Mini Wheats kind, although I do still enjoy a good bowl of Lucky Charms when they're on sale.

Because all good parents want more for their children (or because I don't want to cook breakfast in the morning) my kids usually have cold cereal in the morning. On rare occasions, it's broken up with scrambled eggs, Malt-O-Meal, or oatmeal. We still have waffles, pancakes or a good omelette. We just do that for an easy dinner a few times a month.

My kids will probably be more like my Mom and will feed their kids a hot breakfast--because all parents want more for their kids!