Breakfast means breakfast cereal to me. I eat the same breakfast for many years. It began when I was a teenager: Cheerios during the week, a dusty sundae on Saturday (vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, with powdered malt on top); and waffles with maple syrup on Sunday.
I know this isn’t the right place for it, but I have to write about chocolate syrup. When I was a teenager it was always Hershey’s, and I kept using it for decades until I talked with Rita. She was from New York City, and said that Fox’s u-bet was better. I didn’t believe her and insisted on a blind taste test – she was right! In comparison, Fox’s has a better taste that was just chocolate. I now dislike and avoid Hershey’s.
Cheerios
This was my first long-term cereal, begun in my teens and lasting for decades. Unfortunately, I wasn’t happy with generic or any knockoff I could find. It had to be the brand name and I’d go though two of the largest boxes a week. My process: fill the bowl with cheerios, add milk until some cheerios fell out of the bowl, place the escapees carefully on top, and carry it carefully to the table. Looking back now, it was boring – but I’m happy with boring breakfasts. Paula, in contrast, has to have something different every day. Eventually, due to its sugar content, cheerios was replaced by shredded wheat.
Shredded wheat
About the time I became interested in vitamins (see my vitamin post) I became aware of the sugar content in cheerios. Shredded wheat was its replacement. For this, the different brands were less important to me as I found something to like in most of them. Also, as the cereal was denser, I didn’t fill the bowl as full as I could.
Vermont Visits
When I visited my grandfather in Vermont we always had cooked cereal for breakfast. (By the time I was visiting my grandfather by myself we had lost my grandmother.) We cycled between Maypo, Wheatena, oatmeal, and something else I can’t remember. Sundays were waffles with maple syrup.
We always have Vermont maple syrup on hand. My grandparents retired there and they sent us a gallon twice a year while I was growing up – even when we were on Guam. Since I’ve grown up I don’t use as much, but we always have it in the fridge (it lasts longer there) or in the freezer (it lasts forever there). Our favorite is a dark grade with intense flavor without being bitter. We have more than a gallon left from 2014, the last time we found it. At the rate we’re using it we may have it for the rest of our lives – at least we hope so. Finding that kind of syrup is luck, it happens randomly and rarely. My friend Orville made some, and we split what he had left with my cousin Nate. As he has four kids, I expect his is gone – and that he will be jealous when he reads this.
The Cereal Bowl
While I was attending HBS (see my Harvard Business School Doctorate post) I bought a new cereal bowl. Normally, this wouldn’t be something to mention, but it turned into a production. I had wandered into a store with many bowls and decided that I needed a new one – but it was $5! I know it isn’t that much, but I had furnished my entire kitchen for $3.50 at Tom’s Swap Shop in Ohio. Somehow, it didn’t seem right to spend 40% more on a single bowl. But I liked it; it had just the right curve and was just the right size – so, eventually (it might have been two hours), I bought it. And I’m still complaining about it. Sometime in the early 2000s it cracked, but I kept using it.
When we were driving near the Sugarbush Ski Area in Vermont, Paula and I stopped in a pottery shop. There we found some purple pottery that appealed to us, serving pieces and bowls. I looked closely at the bowls and decided that some of them would be acceptable as a replacement for my cracked bowl. I think we bought eight bowls; we now have four – of which two are acceptable cereal bowls. The others work for ice cream, for example, but I dislike them for cereal. Their curve just isn’t right. I’m hoping the two remaining bowls will last. I look for cereal bowls occasionally, but I haven’t seen another acceptable one in years.
Muesli
My sister ate muesli frequently. She had spent years teaching in Germany, and continued to eat muesli when she returned. I tried it several times when we were together, but it always seemed too sweet to me. After we moved to Cranston, Rhode Island (where we now live), I started looking for a muesli that I liked. After trying all of the box brands that I could find I tried one from a bin in Whole Foods – and I liked it. It had enough components that the bites varied in taste and texture, and it wasn’t too sweet. (Paula said it was too sweet, but I was OK with it. Also I sprinkle a cc of green tea extract on it, which cuts the sweetness. See my Vitamin post.) Luckily, the label had the maker’s name printed on it as Whole Foods stopped stocking it. So I ordered it direct from the company, Grandy Oats. I ordered two three-pound bags at a time for a decade. I came to like doing it that way as it was fresher. Then, they stopped selling it in three-pound bags, so I ordered a larger bag. When it arrived – thin plastic, not resealable – I was irritated. I wrote to the company and complained. They, very politely, said “Sorry, that’s the way it is. But you can now buy it at Whole Foods.” But I liked the freshness, and I didn’t like the change. So I started looking again. (Whole Foods stopped using bins because of the coronavirus so Grandy Oats began selling three-pound bags again, but it was too late to get me back.)
Daddy’s Muesli
I’d learned from Grandy Oats’ muesli that I liked a variety of components in my cereal. I searched. I tried Bob’s Red Mill muesli, but it was too plain. Eventually, I found Daddy’s Organic Muesli on Amazon, among several others that I wanted to try. Daddy’s was the best for my taste. I’d ordered a pound to try it, so I ordered five pounds and worked to eat up the others. It came in a non-resealable (but thick) plastic bag, so I accepted the packaging. In the early days of the coronavirus I looked at Daddy’s web site and found that they were in Sri Lanka. As I didn’t want to run out I ordered the 15 pound pack. It came in a resealable, thick plastic bag in the largest USPS flat rate box – it just fit! While I’m still using up the last of my Grandy Oats muesli (20% with 80% Daddy’s), my cereal has never tasted better. I’m almost ready to order another ten pounds; it’s expensive per pound, but this quantity is the cheapest per pound. It lasts a long time and I’ve never tasted a better muesli. My breakfast rut is now very comfortable; I’m happy.
Fruit
When we have suitable fruit I add it to my cereal. But I can’t find good tasting fruit for much of the year, so I thought of dried fruit. In trying other cereals I learned that I like the taste of cranberrys in cereal. That sort of tang was the one thing I thought that Daddy’s was lacking. So I looked for a supplier. While I like craisens – particularly their texture, like raisins – they have too much sugar for my taste. So I looked for unsweetened, dried cranberrys and found Cherry Bay Orchards. I like their taste, but they are more difficult to chew than the rest of my cereal. Trying to find the same effect without the hard chewing, I tried some unsweetened dried tart cherries and liked them. I’ll update this with my opinion when I have one – including about freeze dried fruit.
Four months later: For the added fruit I’ve settled on dried tart cherries; however, the only unsweetened one I’ve found is Sareks (link) on Amazon. While some others are advertised as unsweetened when I read the fine print I found that they added artificial sweetener and/or oil — neither needed by me. Occasionally I add a few whole freeze dried cranberries. While these float on the top they give a nice burst of flavor and tartness.
Freeze Dried Fruit
As I don’t write about cooking – that’s Paula’s department – I don’t know where else to put this, and the subject deserves mention. I’ve tried several freeze dried fruits from North Bay Trading Co. While I haven’t tried them in cereal yet, my recent reading of comments makes me want to. I keep freeze dried bananas and pineapple near my exercise equipment because occasionally I have a blood sugar crash. So I eat a couple of handfuls and drink some water, and it goes away. I found the company through their 32 Bean and 8 Vegetable Soup. It’s far and away the best bean soup I’ve tried; I thought I didn’t like lima beans but their giant Christmas limas changed my mind. I’ve ordered some other freeze dried fruit to try with cereal, and I’ll update this when I have an opinion.
August 16, 2020, January 3, 2020