Buying Breakfast Cereals, a daunting task

Setanta, you and I share the same taste in cereals. I think my favorite is shredded wheat. Two biscuits, crush 'em up, cover with a few fresh berries and pour on the milk. What could be better?

Trader Joe's has some fantastic ginger granola -- when we've lived closer to a TJ's it's been pretty much our only cereal, now that we're further away we stock up but it always gets eaten up well before we go back to buy more. So we also usually have Honey Bunches of Oats (especially with almonds), some variety of Cheerios, and Raisin Bran.

Sylvester Graham, born in Connecticutt in 1795, invented "Graham crackers" in 1829. He was a vegetarian and an advocate of coarsely ground whole wheat for bread and crackers for its "bulk"--or fiber content as we say today.

He was largely ignored, although whole wheat flour did become known as graham flour. But late in the 19th century, his ideas were expanded upon by Will Keith Kellogg, a Seventh-Day Adventists, who became a physician and was trying to find a way for his patients with digestive problems to consume grain products. He began his cereal company in 1894 in Battle Creek Michigan. He tried boiling grain, but had indifferent results, until he tried the method with corn meal, rolled the results and invented corn flakes.

Charles William Post, who preferred to be known as "C.W." already had a "rest home" in Battle Creek, which may have been what attracted Kellogg. Post touted vegetarianism, and began his breakfast food company in Battle Creek in 1895, some say because Kellogg had started his. The cereal wars were off and running, and Post initially came out on top, because of his canny advertising.

The National Biscuit Company had decided to capitalize on the popularity of crackers, which were then made and sold locally all over the country--people would go into a store, grab a paperbag, and go over the cracker barrel to fill it up. Nabisco sold the "Uneeda Biscuit" which they touted on the basis of its sanitary packaging--and later used electric power generated by the Niagara River, so they put Niagara Falls on their packaging to help sales. They had a host of products . . .



Another big selling point of their waxed paper packaging was that the crackers wouldn't get ruined in damp weather on the way home . . .



Many of their products are familiar to this day . . .



I recall, although i don't know if others will, that animal crackers came with a string on the box, which i thought was a great way to carry them. Apparently, Nabisco intended for them to be hung from the Christmas tree as favors for the children. Animal "biscuits" were baked in England for almost 200 years, but Nabisco trademarked "Animal Crackers" in 1902 . . .

I was a purist, Miss Flyer, i left the biscuits whole and cut them with my spoon as i ate them . . .

Shredded Wheat used to come with Lone Ranger cards between the layers of biscuits.

Edgar--

We own two garden rakes. One is a top-of-the-line gift from son and daughter in law. The other, Mr. Noddy found at a flea market. Guess which garden rake he'd rather use?

You pays your money and you gets what you pay for.

Advertising campaigns were a little "wordier" back in the day . . .

I remember forever eating Nabisco Shredded Wheat as a kid. My mother always bought it, not for its nutritional value, but because at that time, it was a tremendously low-priced cereal.

My older brother would put two biscuits in a bowl and add hot water, than squeeze out the excess before he added milk…it made the cereal watery and very mushy.

Shredded wheat - a bale of hay in a dish....

I have inherited a collection of Shredded wheat box dividers that my older cousin, who died a few years back, must have gotten in the boxes of Nabisco. It had a bunch of Indian lore and "how to trap game using a dead drop or a snare" It would never make the PC sensors of todays Beatrice Foods folks.
There were cards on how to fashion " Imdian warbonnets' and how to nap rocks and make arrows.

WOW set, I never knew triscuits had a history . I just remember eating them when I had no other food in the apartment in college.


My tastes run to sweet crunchy things made of OATS. I used to like shredded wheatlets with the icing but once found a small insect baked within the matrix of the biscuit. This, like a certain brand of pie that was made by a MRS............ label, was stricken from my menuendo. Same reason I wont eat brocolli, since I found half of a worm in my cheese sauce , arggghhh.

I remember a kids joke about cereal.
Hear about the new cereal?
no
Its called Kellogs Prostituties
It doesnt snap crackle or pop. It just lays there and bangs

Sozobe, I just discovered Ginger Granola and LOVE it. I eat ginger in various forms, chopped up in recipes, candied, etc. (together with tumeric, it helps to control inflammation)
When we have cereal for breakfast (about four times a week) it's always Cheerios, the whole grain kind. Our concoction is guaranteed to keep you regular and energetic. We put in the bowl: Cheerios, non-fat vanilla flavored yogurt, low-fat soy milk, walnuts, cranberries, sliced banana, wheat germ, cinnamon, thawed blueberries and ground flax seed.
I have been actually losing weight with whole-grain products. My favorite bread is Orowheat's winter wheat bread (no trans fats or partially hydrogenated oils). It has wheat, nuts, twigs, seeds, bark, just about any thing Eul Gibbons would have approved of. I sometimes think it is like throwing my back yard into a chopper and eating the results. And it is SO tasty I eat it like cake, by itself.
BTW, Edgar, your opening post had the charm of an Andy Rooney report. Really enjoyed it.

So, JL, have you run across ginger soy milk yet? Our market doesn't have it often, but I get it when I see it...

Ah, the future looks better every minute.

I'm with JLN, first-class effort, EB . . . great thread.

Farmerman--

I envy you your memory lane. The cereal was soggy unless you ate very quickly, but those divider cards were IMPORTANT.

JLNobody--

Try running crystalized ginger and cottage cheese through the blender. Delicious.

We always bought three kinds of cereal at a time and mixed them up. One time my Mom sent me to the store for a box of cereal, so that little Veely, my small brother just recovered from an illness, could mix some of it with the cereal we already had. I bought Post Toasties to go with the Kellogs Corn Flakes. And got chewed out.

I used to, in my young adult years, combine post toasties and wheaties by layering them and pour hot milk over each layer (like a lasagna). I've alway preferred soggy to crunchy cereals--that was before discovering Ginger Granola, which, by the way, I have just been snacking on, with a cup of green and black tea.

I make green and black tea together in the same pot, to drink all the work day; only switch to coffee in the evening.

Also makes a decent iced tea.
Edgar, most people like myself drink coffee in the morning and tea at night. How could I say "most people"?; I've never done a survey. I should have said "most people I've asked" (a pitifully small sample). I CAN drink coffee at night, being blessed with insensitivity to caffeine. My wife, however, must drink decapitated coffee after mid-day.

Headless coffee and bootless companionship . . . your poor, poor wife . . .