Cereal Killers

In this tight economy, I can imagine many households having discussions about their financial situations. Tension usually arises when couples have to come to the tough reality of a budget. In fact, many marriages dissipate because of the disagreements about how to spend money. Casey and I have both kept our jobs and are very thankful that we do not have that extra stress of figuring out how we are going to pay our mortgage each month. This does not mean that I'm not immune to the weekly interrogation of "What Did You Buy at Target?" or any other odd fill-in-the-blank store. These conversations can get me pretty heated, because of course I needed the newest lash enhancing, super pumping mascara from Maybelline and also, tank tops were $7. I don't make any huge purchases, but enough where a $30 bill soon turns to $50 one and enough where Casey is a bit frustrated with me and I hear the old, "Just take it easy with your spending this week."

However, my trips to Target don't ruffle feathers like this one other thing in our household does. We have this bone that we pick each week, same issue, roughly same time of week. One opens the cupboard excited and hoping to find the Crunchy Raisin Bran box for a morning bowl or a late night snack, but soon discovers that the box has been killed. What?? We just bought the box not even a day ago and all the cereal is gone! How can two people eat an entire box of cereal in a matter of 24 hours?

Accusations start being hurled between the two of us: How many bowls did you eat? Not nearly as much as you do when you sit with the entire box while you watch TV! Oh, well, that's funny, your so-called-bowls are about 3 serving sizes when you fill the entire thing up! I can't believe you ate the whole box! I can't believe that YOU ate the whole box! Great, now we're stuck with plain Cheerios until we go shopping next week, because I'm not buying any more. Awesome. Yeah, real awesome. Don't talk to me right now, I'm still really mad about not having good cereal.

Many of you may be wondering what the big deal is about Crunchy Raisin Bran. Isn't raisin bran in general gross? Yes, you would be correct. This is why I buy plain Cheerios and plain raisin bran each time I go to the store. We will not gorge ourselves on those cereals because they are boring, healthy and have no taste. As your may or may not know, I don't buy treats anymore because I will eat an entire half gallon of ice cream in one sitting if given the opportunity (see previous post) and certain cereals have proven to be a little bit of a problem in our household.

It started when I bought Kashi Go Lean! cereals in many different flavors because they were tasty as well as healthy and high in fiber. Did I mention that they were REALLY high in fiber? As in, I thought my stomach was going to explode from the inside out after one week of eating it. I couldn't pin point why my belly was turning itself over and I was in the most extreme pain of my life from the hours of 2-9 at night. After finally putting 10 grams of fiber + one already regular digestive system together, I subtracted the culprit and I finally could return to yoga or any other public place.

With the exit of this awesome cereal, I needed something to fill the void--healthy and tasty. I've always been a lover of cereal from the time I was a child. However, we had some rules when it came to picking out our cereal in the aisles of Pete's County Market. We could never choose a cereal that was over 10 grams of sugar, which terribly limited our selection of the cereals that we really wanted to eat. Cinnamon Toast Crunch was an all-time favorite, Frosted Mini-Wheats was always right up there, too. I would always beg my mom to buy Frosted Flakes or Count Chocula but I would get the inevitable "No." It seemed like everyone else was enjoying the likes of Cap'n Crunch and Fruity Pebbles, and the closest thing that we came to sugar cereals was Froot Loops at my grandparent's house. Finally in high school as the only child left at home, my mom let me choose whichever cereal I wanted and I went directly for the most sacred cow of cereals...Lucky Charms. It was my morning breakfast and late night snack from September of 1998 until April of 1999. I stopped eating it in April because one morning I accidentally poured orange juice on my cereal without realizing it and totally ruined my love and affection for Lucky Charms.

However, I did not lose this love and affection for other cereals throughout the years. As pretty health-conscious adult, I can't bring myself to buy those untouchable sugar cereals now, it's very Freudian and psychological. So, Casey and I have tried to fool ourselves into thinking, if it has a healthy sounding title, then really, how bad can it be for you? I would never dream of touching the Sugar Smacks, but Crunchy Raisin Bran sounds soooo much healthier. If we were to compare the nutrition labels on the aforementioned cereals, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that they have an equal amount of sugar and both really have no nutritional value.

Since I do the majority of the shopping, I will get to pick the coveted "Special Cereal" for us. For a while it was Crunchy Raisin Brain, sometimes Frosted Mini-Wheats, and a couple of times Honey Bunches of Oats. See? They all sound really healthy, however, they have something that our boring cereals do not: a light coating of sweetener somewhere. This is enough for me and Casey. This would be the one and only item in our house with an artificial sweetener, besides the peanut butter, which is a whole other blog in itself. It has become the most desired product in our kitchen. A person needs to strike while the iron is hot! If it's in there, you better eat it, because you have roughly 24 hours before the goods are gone.

Yesterday, while at the grocery store, Albertson's was running a special where their generic Cheerios, which are actually way better than the original, were a dollar per box! So, of course I bought 2 boxes, but to top that off, the generic apple cinnamon Cheerios were also a dollar. Oooh, a healthy sounding name, but I know that this is very deceiving and will become THE cereal to eat in our house. Surprisingly, it's been 24 hours since I bought it and more than half of it is left. A miracle! Casey told me today that he felt sick this morning and could barely stomach toast. I think that's the only reason I was able to sit in front of the TV tonight for my late night snack! I give it until tomorrow night until we have the next victim of the Cereal Killers!