The latest sign that's been on my mind is my choice in breakfast cereals. Long gone are the days of colorful, exciting cereals with cool shapes and meaningless nutritional content. The only cereals I used to eat as kid that I would even consider eating today are Corn Pops and Apple Jacks, and even then, not so much. And you can forget about stuff like Rice Krispies Treats cereal or Cookie Crisp. (Seriously, I cannot believe that the FDA would approve of Cookie Crisp. Whoever thought of this "cereal" was an evil genius - "let's sell a cereal like Frosted Flakes - only with one minor change - all the flakes will be cookies! Awesome!" Come on now, that's not a freaking cereal, that's a big bowl of cookies. That's like feeding a little kid crack!)I've long since advanced to the next tier of adult cereals - Smart Start, Blueberry Morning (which is just delicious), Great Grains, etc. At least I've managed to not eat the truly fogey cereals, like (unfrosted) shredded wheat, or worse, Grape Nuts.
Grape Nuts has got to be the worst cereal in the history of the world. I can be prone to overstatement at times, but seriously, Grape Nuts is horrible. They had pretty good commercials, and decent packaging, so one time as a kid I got a box of Grape Nuts at the supermarket. I was feeling good - at last, I had advanced to adult cereals. And it was going to be delicious to boot! Man, was that a mistake. Unbeknownst to me, the cereal doesn't even taste like grapes! Or nuts! Honestly, it really doesn't taste like anything at all. Except for crap. It does taste like crap.The taste itself is only "very bad", but what puts Grape Nuts in the Eric Ma Food Hall of Shame is the texture. A bowl of Grape Nuts is like eating a bowl of gravel rocks. I think I chipped three teeth just trying to eat it. I immediately switched to a different cereal, and just left the 90% full box of Grape Nuts in the kitchen cabinet. This past summer (9 years later), my mom was cleaning out the cabinets we never clean (you know you have some) and asked me why we had a box of Grape Nuts with a 1999 expiration date. I didn't know what to say.
The only thing that came to mind was this line I sadly heard on MTV's Emmy-award winning "Yo Momma": "Yo momma is so stupid she thought Grape Nuts was an STD." I mulled this over, and decided not to relay that zinger to my mom.Since I'll probably never give in to Grape Nuts, it seems the logical course of culinary destiny is oatmeal. My mom eats oatmeal in full force, and several years ago she forced my dad to stop eating toast and instead eat these giant bowls of oatmeal. Now whenever I'm home, I suffer the same fate. I have to eat this ridiculously large amount of oatmeal, which throws off my schedule for the entire day. It's like some weird form of immersion therapy. Oatmeal immersion therapy.
8 comments:
dear ericpma.blogspot.com,
what do you think of fiber one?
shawn
Did your parents impose the rule that you couldn't buy a new box of cereal until the old one was finished? i bet you had to hide those grape nuts
metamucil is great for you. i hope you do buy them from costco.
i would think that moving from toast to oatmeal is like getting younger. your most recent ex-roommate loves oatmeal.
and yes, you should try fiber one and write about it in your next entry.
Yeah, that's why I hid the grape nuts in the forgotten cabinet haha
Re: Fiber One
Yeah, the newer honey one isn't too bad - the original is terrible. I mean, even visually it's terrible.
But it does mean I need less Metamucil.
I don't understand how that is a positive. Metamucil is deliciously delightful, to say the least.
Yeah, I don't think I've ever seen anyone eat or buy grape nuts. Supposedly, if you microwave them with milk, you can chew it without crying.
If I remember correctly, Fiber One has a version with nut clusters. I think I liked that one. Anything with nut clusters is yummy.
@ Winston:
That's what she said.
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