Getting to the Bottom of the Bowl

The other day I gave cindy a bowl of chocolate Lucky Charms. I noticed that she immediately ate all of the marshmallows and then complained all the way through eating the rest of the non-marshmallow-filled bowl. I was telling this story to Jacob and I posed the question "I wonder at what age does a person start doing the opposite? You know, realize that saving the best part for last is much better?" He looked at me and said, "The better question is when does a kid realize that Lucky Charms are disgusting and want to eat real food?" I was so offended! It is a well-known fact about me that I LOVE cold cereal. I love it! I could eat it every meal, every day and never get tired of it. It is so hard for me to accept that other people find it gross. Jacob has never liked it, even when he was a kid. He never seemed to enjoy the sugary cereal that every other kid had to have or the idea of soaking crunchy stuff in milk before eating it. I, on the other hand, was raised by a family that worships at the altar of cereal. Seriously, my family couldn't live without it. We couldn't have fewer than 5 boxes at any given time. We had breakfast for dinner on a somewhat regular basis when I was a kid (not uncommon) but we had cereal for dinner, not pancakes and eggs and bacon- but cold cereal and Pillsbury canned cinnamon rolls. My Dad is really the one who gave me this personality trait, he would eat it at any hour as a snack and I remember thinking, 'I am gonna do that too when I grow up' (and I do). I even remember shopping with my Dad for cereal at the store on Saturdays. Mom would arm us with an arsenal of cereal coupons and if the total price for a box came in under $2- we had a winner! So Dad would read off the coupons, I would scout out the location of the glorious goodness and then we would do the math. On occasion we could get the brand name with the coupon and that was always a treat. I even bet if you ask any of my siblings what their most common late night snack is, they will say cereal. (Or toast if you are my brother, Chris- and that goes great with cereal, so close enough.)

So my conversation with Jacob then evolved into us naming off our favorite cereals. His favorites are all neutral, bland stuff, and even to classify them as "favorites" is a little strong. They include cereals like Grape Nuts, Cracklin' Oat Bran, Apple Cinnamon Cheerios, some sort of flakes, and things like this.
(BO-RING!) So here for you now are my favorite EXCITING cereals: (I wanted to call it Top Ten Favorite Cereals, but I could never rank them appropriately, it is like picking a favorite child...)

Chocolate Chex
Lucky Charms (regular and chocolate)
Cinnamon Toast Crunch
Golden Grahams
Honey Bunches of Oats
Cocoa Pebbles
Choco-nilla Rice Crispies
Alpha-bits
Full size frosted Shredded Wheat (I hope that one day they sell boxes of the shredded wheat debris at the bottom of the bag, that is the best in milk...)
Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch
Cookie Crisp (but only the original recipe from when I was a kid)

If you are REALLY bored, go here and see a huge list of every cereal ever made, courtesy of Wikipedia, the world's brain. (See if you don't see some on there that you have completely forgotten about. Crispy Critters, anyone?)

Oh, and the reason that Jacob really hates Lucky Charms? In his own words, "the nasty squeaking texture of the marshmallows when you chew them." That is so weird because that is exactly why I LOVE them! We were so made for each other.