Sunday, February 15, 2004
Flaking Out
I was six, we were in Rome for about a week between stints in Oxford and Israel. I was reasonably adventurous when it came to most of my meals - about two-thirds of them. But there was only one breakfast I would eat and that was cold cereal. Or, under some circumstaces, certain hot cereals. But no eggs, no potatoes - I was a milk and cereal purist from the old school. Okay, maybe a little bacon sometimes on the side, but that’s all.
We’d stayed in Oxford for six months and England was already to some extent a cultural colony of the US, so mom had had a chance to find me a suitable variety of breakfast options. But now we were in Rome - Rome, Italy, a town which willfully persisted in the belief that they had their own independent culture, of a sort. Which is all well and good until you realize the practical implication: I was in a euro-breakfast zone. Our hotel cafe had no cold cereal on its menu to sustain me for that most important meal of the day. I checked carefully, and then slowly proceeded through a sequence of emotions starting at fretful and them moving through anxious, nervous, tense, and frustrated, concluding at the verge of overwrought. Cereal had to be obtained - and soon. My parents and I scoured the labrynthine streets of the eternal city in an increasing panic. If no cereal could be found by daybreak tomorrow, the vacation would be an unredeemable disaster.
After a few hours we did finally find one little shop that carried Kellog’s Corn Flakes. Lowly, undistinguished corn flakes. Never had I been so glad to see that stylized rooster. “Will this do?” mom asked. I grabbed the box firmly and told her, “It’ll be fine.”
The next morning when we went downstairs to break our nocturnal fast I brought my pristine box of flakes. Mom and Dad and presumably Lilsis ordered their Italian breakfasts, probably a sausage selection, tira misu, and a depth charge; I just asked for milk and a bowl. When the time came, they brought me a large soup bowl and a pitcher of hot milk. Barbarians! How could they get this wrong?!! No wonder their city’s in ruins! I fumed silently in my booster seat. “Please bring some cold milk,” was what I actually said, choking back an anxious quaver.
The waiter retreated, carrying away with him the detestible hottle of caldo latte, the very thought of which nauseated me and frightened my precious box of cornflakes. When the tableboy returned with more milk, fresh from the icebox where god intended it to be, a small but curious coterie trailed behind him. He gave me my milk and I set up my kit: opened the cardboard box and wax paper liner, inhaling deeply that first imprisoned exhalation of Battle Creek air; poured the cereal into the vast bowl; sugared it substantially (cornflakes being little more than a medium for the consumption of granulated glucose); and then, to the shock and amazement of the crowd, I poured the cold milk over the cereal, gave it a quick stir with the confident wrist action of a seasoned cereal addict, and started ramming flake down my carb hole for all I was worth. I stopped even thinking about the gawking busboys and the line cook who watched me eat as if I were performing an entirely new, heretofore-unheard-of and rather distasteful act of injestion. They meant nothing to me. I had my cereal. I was home.
Since then, I never really looked back from my relationship with the cardboard box at the bottom of the food pyramid. I read every panel of those boxes as I cheerfully munch away, all six panels (back, front, both sides, top and bottom), perusing them over and again, gleaning little truths and random facts. (Indeed, contents may truly settle during shipping...) Getting the occasional prize was an exciting diversion, but if they’d been giving away prizes with eggs I still wouldn’t have eaten eggs. Eggs were gross - it was the cereal I loved, for itself and itself alone, and not the geegaws and fripperies of a marketing machine gone mad with overselling my faithful breakfast friend.
I’m trying to eat less cereal now in general but there’s no way I’m giving it up altogether. Still, these days I am obliged to seek rather more of my cereal pleasures in nostalgia, those halcyon days when I would kill a box a day, day after day, in blissful carbohydrate-fueled ignorance of the consequences. Thus, in the spirit of great posts from the past, I find myself remembering the following FAVORITE CEREALS FROM WHEN I WAS GROWING UP:
Team Flakes: I’m as surprised as you are that this tops my list - I couldn’t even find a link for this delicacy. It was a real standby, though, with a sturdy crunch and positive message in the name. Team Flakes, the cereal that plays along with you! There are no eyes in Team! (- Which would have made for a really gross breakfast, but one I probably would have wanted to try once just for shock value.) Well, there was pretty much nothing in Team but cereal - and that was good enough for me. In my heart I’m really a simple man. Four species of grain is enough variety for my breakfast cereal. Anything else is overkill.
Then again, overkill has its place. Thus:
Apple Jacks: for some reason, in my home, I wasn’t allowed to have sugared cereal - but I sometimes got Apple Jacks. They were the one species of forbidden fruit that was accessible to me. They turned the milk a great pink color and the little flavor chunks were zesty and flavorful. Good toys, too.
Life: I didn’t care what Mikey had to say about it, I liked Life cereal all on my own. Cinnamon Life was also good. I didn’t care for the name, however, as it made my foray into sugary (mom didn’t know) carb-pillows seem healthy and appropriate. It wasn’t. Calling that stuff “Life” was like calling McD’s “Health.” But it was still good cereal and it still is good cereal. Gets mushy fast, but it’s a good mush…
Lucky Charms: I only got these at other kids’ houses, or sometimes at camp or some such place. Mom didn’t cotton to cereals with marshmallows in ‘em. I liked the multiplicity of shapes and colors, and the soft shatter of the marshallow bits as I crunched them. The milk turned amazing colors, too, especially when you poured the dust that remained after the whole pieces were all consumed into a little milk and made a glucose slurry. Mmmm, slurry....
Sugar Pops: Later, these became “Corn Pops.” Running dog lackeys of nutritionalist pigs, they’re made of sugar, with corn added - that tough cowboy on the box wasn’t going to mess around with grains first thing in the morning. He’s got branding and lassoing and active ranchy things to attend to - he needs the sudden desparate burst of energy that only mostly sugar can bring. Also, this cereal came in box with a foil wrapper, not just a wax paper wrapper. That amped the coolness ratio significantly right there all by itself. While the foil presumably improved freshness, it also kept the aliens from reading the Sugar Pops’ thoughts. I usually got this cereal at summer camp.
Booberry: and, to a lesser extent, Frankenberry. These were fun flavorful cereals, rife with the savor of artifical fruit, without which no young child’s breakfast can every be truly said to be complete. Again, good toys and fun boxes, with the promise of a powerful blue or pink slurry. It occurs to me that, had I ever a chance to mix those two together, I’d have gotten purple milk and possibly a permanent braincramp. These came out so rarely that I could usually lobby mom for a pity box once a year. I didn’t even know about Fruit Brute and Yummy Mummy till a few years ago.
And it’s worth noting here that I’ve left out Count Chocula and all the other chocolate cereals because I’m not a big fan of the chocolate cereals. Neither Puffs nor Krispies - the only time I liked chocolate in my cereal was when I was camping and we mixed chocolate milk powder into the milk we had with our plain cereal every morning. That was just decadent and therefore started the day on the right foot. But I never liked the flavor of chocolate cereal itself. Maybe I’m just a purist - I like my artifical fruits unsullied by organic cocoa flavors. I’m funny that way.
Frosted Flakes: These were not actually “great,” as the tiger insisted to me that they were, but they were perfectly fine and kept their crunch for a long time in milk. While they didn’t turn the milk any interesting colors, they did make it a thick sugar gravy. There’s a place for that in my life. I got to eat these at other kids’ houses.
Froot Loops: These took the cake for sheer synthetic complexity. Each flavor was so distinct and so artificial, and the cereals were tough enough not only to keep a crunch after a long milk bath, but even to shred the palate of my mouth as I ate them. I never got enough of these, because my friends didn’t keep them in the house. Toucan Sam scared me but the cereal seemed to be the total package, whether measured by weight or volume. Hell, the volume on those loops went up to 11.
Kaboom: I didn’t get these too often and my appreciation was mainly related to how bizarre they were. Decomposing clown faces in weird washed out colors, the milk seeping up through their empty eyeholes and gaping mouths… that’s a sight that lasts a lot longer than breakfast itself. I can see them staring at me still. And yet the cereal was tasty and fun to eat. Go figure.
Skinner’s Raisin Bran: I discovered this one late. It’s not sugared - till you fix it up, I mean - and the flakes are small and tough. The raisins are big and soft though, and this cereal makes me feel like I’m waking up and getting in shape as I eat it. What kind of shape, remains to be seen - but it’s a damn tasty raisin bran and since I have a hell of a time finding it these days I get it whenever I can. It’s what makes this country great, or at least what keeps this country regular. But I eat it for the flavor. Honestly.
Malt-o-Meal: this is good hot cereal, and I like to make it with diced dried fruit and cinnamon and lots of butter and maybe a bit of sugar thrown on top for good measure. Or maple syrup. On a cold morning when my head is stuffy, this will either make me feel like going forward with life, or will convince me that I have to crawl back into bed. It must be utterly lumpless. As am I.
Steel-cut oatmeal: This doesn’t need fancy additives like malt-o-meal - its the breakfast cereal version of Guinness, thick and hearty and very filling. It’s good with butter and of course sugar, white or brown. Takes half an hour to make it though, so if it’s a cold morning, you’ll be cold for a while. But it’s so worth it…
Weetabix: this is a British cereal that’s more like a starch mush. The cereal comes in biscuits that you crumble up in the bowl, but then once milk hits them they completely disintegrate. Then you dump sugar back in till it becomes solid again, and then you can eat it. This is why there will always be an England, and why it will continue to go through regular cyclical periods of hyperactivity followed by lethargy.
Kix: (okay joke’s over here it is, “high puff” and all) This was a simple unsugared cereal, and I appreciated that. After getting my jaw jolted with fake fruits and weird shapes and sugared occult symbols and little candy-coated oat-flour menageries, it was nice to have plain corn spheres that gave a soft, surrendering crunch when consumed. They also could absorb a lot of sugar. If you like that sort of thing, I mean.
These days my usual breakfast is a slice of whole-wheat toast with cottage cheese on it. But sometimes I pick up a special box of “dessert cereal” for a treat on those late nights when I stumble home giggly and peckish. And I do keep my eye on the burgeoning cereal shelves, tracking market trends and watching for rare opportunities to present themselves. After all these years, I still feel as if I have so much to learn.
