Living in a Cereal World

(If you're looking for the previous two, you can find them  here  and  here. ) (Also, how did I miss 2018?) So I'm a month late with this entry. What can I say, it was hot, I kept making smoothies. To the best of my knowledge, these are the smoothies I had in 2019: Cinnamon Roll  -- because you shouldn't eat cinnamon rolls all  the time. 😜 Peach Pie -- again, treats for breakfast! Double-Berry Banana  -- although I think mine was single-berry, as I didn't have raspberry yogurt that day Pumpkin Pie  -- I have several pumpkin pie smoothie recipes but the picture looked familiar so I guess it was this one 😁 Raspberry Cheesecake Smoothie -- this is the only one I couldn't find. I know there was cottage cheese involved (which I'd never heard of before) but nothing in my searching rang a bell Pina Colada  -- this one's another guess. There's so many pina colada smoothies out there... Strawberry-Almond Butter  -- you know, the first ti...

Hey, a two-week turnaround, that's not bad: 1. Find out about new cereal. 2. Find new cereal in store and purchase right away. 3. Try new cereal. 4. Write review. 5. Share review. I'll be honest, the longer I sat on this review, the more this cereal grew on me. I figured I'd like it anyway, because, you know, coconut , but going out of my way to recommend it IRL? That's not as frequent as you might think. Let's get to the good stuff: sniff test first--like ordinary regular Cheerios. Did I want a stronger coconut scent? I hope this doesn't taste like regular Cheerios. Oh, it is  just oats, no other grains? Good job, sniffer. Eye test--they look like regular Cheerios, too, maybe just a little dusty. Not  like Frosted Cheerios. Taste test--this tastes like Honey Nut Cheerios. Where's the coconut? It's just a generic sweetness--oh, there's  the coconut on the back end. It's very subtle. Seriously, though, if you like Honey Nut Cheerios and ...

AKA the OG Honey Bunches of Oats. Would you believe after all these reviews, I've never gotten around to this one? Could you also believe I've never tried this flavor? True, I tried the  granola  many years ago, but not the cereal. Considering all the flavors of Honey Bunches of Oats that have come and gone, Honey Roasted is the constant. The known quantity. Why didn't I try this one first? Ok, so after all that hype I suppose you want to know what I thought of it. First off, the flakes in the freshly opened box were surprisingly sturdy. You know I've often pointed out the scraggly scraps of flakes in various Honey Bunches of Oats. To be fair, they're not called Honey Bunches of Flakes. But these had a nice crispness to them. Where they really stepped up--beyond my expectations, actually--was the size of the bunches. If you're sampling the original Honey Bunches of Oats, you want to know what's so great about the bunches. What's kept them in produ...

Apple-ade isn't a thing, so what was I to do? I'm a problem solver and I enjoy a challenge, so of course I'd figure something out. Right away I thought of this  Crockpot Applesauce  recipe that I printed, literally, that morning. I'd never made applesauce before and this seemed pretty hands-off, so I was willing to give it a try. If you're willing to chop up apples and blend the finished product in batches, it's really not complicated. I even left the peel on, which I never do for pies and such. But everything cooks down and is totally edible. The best part? It tastes like apple pie. Exactly  like apple pie but without any crust or butter.👍 We ate it for dinner the first night and I used the rest in yogurt. This is definitely a make-again. So that was the Galas. But then I still had the golden delicious. I had a taste for waffles so I went with this  Apple Cinnamon Waffles  recipe from Minimalist Baker. I think I already had a copy of this recipe but never ...

As peach season was winding down I thought this should finally be the summer I try my hand at peach pie. Not any of the  peach-berry   combos  I've made over the years. Not my mom's favorite  Peach-Mango . Just peaches. Peaches and pie crust. Not even a crumble to disguise any faults. So I made this  Peach Pie  from Eating Well. And okay, I didn't make the pie crust from scratch. Next time. Still, who could turn down a pie that looks like this? I could have used one more peach, but no matter. We ate it. And two weeks later, because I wasn't quite ready to let go of the peaches, I made these  Peach Pie Oatmeal Cookies . And then forgot to take a picture. You know how it is after a trip, trying to get back into your daily rhythms--then I add baking to my tasks for the day. So these cookies: again, I could've used more peach chunks, or at least cut them smaller, but when you get a bite of everything it really does taste like peach pie.👍

Here's another Cascadian Farm cereal I overlooked until the box redesign. We'll keep this quick because raisin brans are pretty straightforward. I swear there's two different flakes in here. Supposedly it's just your classic wheat bran flakes but some of these flakes look like they have pressed oats in them...and some don't. These "oat-ier" flakes have more of a gray tinge than brown (cue the "cardboard" jokes). But other than that there's not really anything remarkable here. The raisins seem smaller than the usual. Could be a certain variety. There's no extra sweetness; like I said, it's a basic raisin bran. But if organic raisin bran is important to you, here's an option.

I like how they call it "limited batch" as opposed to "limited edition," as if bears were actually in the kitchen cranking this out. I had just about given up on finding this anywhere when I happened to walk past a display at a Giant in VA. Set it up in front of the self-checkout? Of course I'll see it. 😉 But it was worth the wait/search. Seriously, it's so  good. I don't usually rave about store-bought granola but I have to this time because I marvel at the ability of food scientists to put just the right flavors together. It's blueberry. It's lemon. And oh, is it cheesecake 😋. And my taste buds picked it up in exactly that order. You know that candy in Willy Wonka that tasted just like a complete dinner? (That's the one that turned Violet violet, right? It's been a while since I've seen that.) Anyway, it was like that experience. I don't know how they duplicated the cheesecake flavor but that just takes it over the top. I wo...