An Ode to Cereal
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While we were all doing one of two things—either chomping down on some packaged meal-in-a-pellet or steaming quinoa with freshly-blitzed almond milk—we forgot about cereal.
You’ve defaulted to tossing depressing (and, likely sugar-packed) fruit and grain bars into your briefcases. We’ve taken to painstakingly poaching eggs, sautéing spinach, and, like a gnarly game of Jenga, balancing each atop a toasted English muffin. But all the while, cereal was sitting on the shelf, strong and silent. It deserves our attention again, because it’s the happy medium between the two aforementioned approaches to breakfast: it requires a pleasing amount of assembly, but the bulk of the work has already been done by Kellogg’s* or whoever.
Morning meals aren’t where cereal’s awesomeness ceases to affect us, though. Here’s why cereal is king when it comes to the three most important meals of the day: breakfast, dinner, and second dinner.
Breakfast: Cereal is versatile, encompassing our desires for both childhood nostalgia (Frosted Flakes, Fruity Pebbles), as well as grown-up “togetherness” (Kashi’s twigs and zillion grams of fiber). And think of the ritualistic pleasure of cereal: Open your kitchen cupboards and place a clean spoon and bowl on the table. Pour those little oat clusters into the bowl. Slice half of a banana—see? you’re cooking!—and put them on top. Screw that milk cap to the right (one, two, three turns). Pour in the liquid (depending on your style, glug glug glug or splish splash). Then dive in with your silver spoon. Crunch crunch crunch. Rinse bowl. Off to work.
Dinner: While combining flakes and milk in order to make breakfast says “I’m taking care of myself,” tucking into a chilled, texture-rich bowl of carbs in your flannels while marathoning through the last three episodes of “The Mindy Project” says “This is my idea of heaven and it’s all my own and I’m so comfortable and no can see me shoveling this into my mouth and laughing so hard I snorted and I don’t even care.” (Sorry. The memory is fresh.)
Dinner #2: Cereal is there in the cupboard when you come home from a long night out, when you need some eats but you’ve mysteriously lost the faculties that allow you to safely ignite a stove. Thanks, cereal, for being there when we need you.
Cereal, you’re the semi-homemade meal we can get behind. You’re the one we run to. You’re our rock.
* Kellogg’s did not pay us to write this amazing article.
