Living in a Cereal World

...and now I've reached my maple/apple (mapple?) quota for the month. I picked out this recipe for  Apple Cinnamon Waffles  a few weeks ago to make sometime this month and it just happened to work out the same weekend as the yogurt in my last entry. No matter; it's waffles . It may look deceiving in the batter but it actually ended up being neither too apple-y or overwhelming in cinnamon flavor. Sometimes I just want a little extra something in my waffles but not so much that I can't add maple syrup to it. Oh, yeah, I didn't make the cider syrup in the recipe. I'm not a fan of apple cider and even if I was, honestly, it sounded kind of gross. A butter-cider-Bisquick topping? Pass. ****** I should  be reviewing a cereal soon. I have three waiting...

Last week's yogurt was  Sauteed Cinnamon Apples with Maple Yogurt . (I don't know to whom this should actually be attributed, but there's the recipe anyway.) You may recall that I'm allergic to raw apples, but even a little bit of cooking makes them tolerable. I guess they aren't really cooked in packaged yogurts--I haven't found one yet that didn't make my throat fuzzy. So that was the main reason for trying this recipe. Just glancing at the ingredients made me think the finished product would be more like canned apple pie filling but, refreshingly, simple chopped apples with cinnamon and nutmeg are, well...just that. Simple. And just the right combination of flavors to blend with maple yogurt. I really like how I'm getting more fruit this way.

"Hey, make something with that," my mother (basically) said as we walked past the meat case. The "that" in question was Hillshire Farm turkey polska kielbasa. We did not know such a thing existed. We're not big sausage eaters. But I went to the source, the  Hillshire Farm recipe page , to find something to do with kielbasa. I settled on the Baked Sausage with Lentils and Vegetables because I knew I had nearly a cup of lentils sitting on the shelf and no other particular use for them. And even though it took a hour and a half to cook (and I nearly screwed up the lentils--just boiling lentils) it's mostly hands-off time, so you can go and do something else while you're waiting for dinner. Turkey kielbasa, it turns out, tastes almost just like regular kielbasa. The texture is a little bit different but hardly noticeable. And this dish is very filling. Not too tomatoey but just enough. There must be a lot of spices in the meat because it tastes like more t

Note that this product is correctly called "granola mix." It's not just granola; it's granola with Chex in it! That's the main reason I wanted to try this. It just looked so cute that day. I know, I'm weird. Surprisingly, it's not as strong of a honey nut flavor as Honey Nut Chex, so maybe it's just a light honey flavor with the sliced almonds filling the role of nut. I don't mind this; I like a mild granola to not overshadow my fruit/yogurt flavor. The granola clusters are kind of dry, by which I mean there's no slick coating like you find sometimes, but the clusters are nice-sized. I paired this with my yogurt of the week, raspberry almond, for the obvious reason, and I wasn't disappointed.

Thank goodness for winter coats and self-checkouts--I don't need the nosy, judging Looks from people when I'm buying a cereal I don't visibly need. But I provide a service . I'm doing this for you dear reader/occasional reader/person who randomly found this blog today. Also, I wanted to try this flavor. And I had a coupon. To the cereal: It's like they combined the tiny corn flakes from Honey Bunches of Oats with some really thin  (and possibly wheat) Frosted Flakes, and then threw in some oat clusters and almond slices. It's kind of all over the place and so is the flavor. It would've been better to focus entirely on the cinnamon, I think. I'll be mixing this with something that has a heartier flake so it'll stand up under the weight of fruit. And if anyone else were to put their spin on this--Fiber One Nutty Clusters and Almonds without the Nutty Clusters, some kind of Special K, or if Kellogg's brought back the Fiber Plus line--I would try

I'd never made scones before because some  people in this family insisted they didn't like them--so what would I have done with all those scones? But I'd also had this recipe for  Maple-Oatmeal Scones  forever (well, five years felt like forever) and even after my cousin told me I should go ahead and make the scones anyway I still waited another year to take that advice. Whoever didn't like it could eat toast... ...and also crow but I'm not one to rub it in. Most of the time. Of course  they loved the scones. Anything loaded with butter and maple, how could you not? I cut this recipe in half (because a pound  of butter? Seriously?) and still managed to make ten scones. It's not unlike making biscuits but easier. There's no kneading, just roll and cut. The baked texture is kind of funny, dense but flaky. Like shortbread but not as dry and crumbly. You'll want to eat two but you shouldn't (trust me on this. Not my personal experience, but close enoug

Where to start? The shape is unlike anything I've had before--when you think Special K, you think flakes, you know? Maybe it's a thick, rectangular ridged puff slightly reminiscent of Golden Grahams? It's some kind of dense, crunchy nugget. They're thicker than the picture on the box would have you think but not at a detriment to chewing. It tastes of corn but there's also wheat involved. There's definitely a strong brown sugar/cinnamon flavor, so you aren't getting cheated there. The consistency of this cereal is made  for fruit--I had mine with strawberries. Overall, weird but good.