Breakfast

My old standby, and favorite sugared cereal.
I'm normally not a breakfast person, and rarely have time for cereal, but recently I bought a box of my old favorite. It had probably been a decade since I ate anything sweeter than Wheaties, but I think General Mills cereal was on sale and the strung-out bird caught my eye. Once again, after a long absence, I was about to be cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

In our house, we always had allegiance to General Mills since Mom worked there two or three times throughout her career. Kellogg's and Post, no matter how hard they tried, could never measure up to the cereals the "Big G" produced. Sure, the various varieties of Rice Krispies were okay, and Frosted Flakes did in a pinch, but Kellogg's just doesn't do it for me. Post was a close second in the cereal game, since they had the Cap'n Crunch cereals, Honey Comb, Fruity/Cocoa Pebbles and one of the best ever, Smurf Berry Crunch. (Actually, Peanut Butter Crunch and Fruity Pebbles are really good, but Post cereals leave a granular-filmy substance inside the mouth that bothers me all day. That side-effect alone puts Post cereal in second place).

You can't tell me that collectively, anyone is better than General Mills. I'll run down the list: Honey-Nut Cheerios, Lucky Charms, Trix, Cocoa Puffs, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Golden Grahams, Count Chocula, Franken Berry, Boo Berry (my favorite marshmallow cereal of all time), Kix, Kaboom, Cookie Crisp and Circus Fun. That's right...Circus Fun cereal. The commercial's jingle said it all, "Horses, hoops, balls, bears, elephants and lions." It was like pouring Kix, Fruit Loops and Lucky Charms in a bowl together. It was a bit much, but great to eat as a kid.

I used to love all kinds of sweet cereal. Dad would come home from his monthly grocery store quest with boxes upon boxes of sweet cereal of all shapes, colors and sizes. I think Dad loved the sweet stuff just as much as we did. It was very common to see Dad eating raisin bran for breakfast, but just as common to see him add in some Apple Jacks or Lucky Charms, just to sweeten it up. We always thought it was weird, but we also thought it was weird how much Dad loved shredded wheat and raisin bran too.
When Dad came home with a van load of goods, it was nearly impossible for my brother and I to refrain from tearing open a new box of Frosted Flakes, Lucky Charms, Cookie Crisp or Fruity Pebbles. Occassionally we'd dive into a box of Crispy Wheats n' Raisins but that was as healthy as we wanted to go. We wanted the good stuff! Some of our favorites had artificial colors and some had artificial marshmallows, but all had artificial sweeteners, and that's really what we wanted. Eventually, I stopped eating cereal for breakfast. Actually, I stopped eating breakfast entirely sometime around middle school or high school. When I did eat cereal, I had somehow gotten to love Wheaties and Grape Nuts more than the Boo Berry and Cocoa Puffs of my past. I don't know if I was trying to be more grown-up, or if I felt like all that sugar wasn't a healthy breakfast, but the darker/healthier side of my Dad's cereal habits was beginning to make sense.

Occassionally, Dad would ask me to go with him, to pick out which cereals we wanted. It was probably that Dad wanted help bagging groceries (something he was always much better at), or maybe that he just wanted some company as he travelled store-to-store, getting the best deals on cereal at one store, produce at the other, and meat and cheese at a third.
I now shop store-to-store, like Dad did, to find the best deals on food. I know which store has the best prices on produce and where to buy the best meat for the best price. I also know where to get the best deal on cereal, and though my mom hasn't worked there for about twenty years, I still head straight to the General Mills section of the aisle and pick out some old favorites like Cocoa Puffs.