Finding the Perfect Ratio

As kids, my sister and I ate cereal every morning for breakfast. We loved cereal. Mom would allow us to select our own cereal. For many years, our selections had to be non-sugar-coated selections. Dad loved Wheaties. Mom loved Grape Nuts. Kix was good choice for us.

Pat and I always ate breakfast together. The story we heard from our parents is that one morning when we were very young, Patty came into our parents bedroom on a lazy Saturday morning. "Moke," she said to the sleepyheads. "Make moke go way." Yeppers, they jumped up and ran into the dining room to see the toaster on fire. My sweet big sister was making the two of us breakfast of cereal and toast. The bread caught in the toaster and set the dining room on Smoke. The burnt spot under the cabinet was still there when Mom sold the house in the late 1990s.

Yes, breakfast was a sister-together project.

As we grew a bit older, we would read while we slurped our cereal. It started by reading the cereal boxes. The backs of the boxes had reading and crafty stuff. There were adventures. There were advertisements. There were things to cut out and make. Heck, they even had records on some of them. Very entertaining, these cereal boxes. And when Mom allowed us to select certain sugar-coated cereals, life just got better and better. Sugar and wheat and box-backs! Pat's favorite was Sugar Crisps and Sugar Pops. I loved Alpha Bits. Oh and when they arrived in 1958, I loooooved Coco Krispies.

Now there was always a problem with the balance of milk-to-cereal ratio. Often when the cereal was gone, there was too much milk left. So we would need to pour a bit more cereal into the bowl. You know, to keep the ratio correct. And perhaps a bit too much cereal was poured into the bowl; therefore, we needed to add more milk. This might go on for a few times before we achieved the best ratio. We went through many boxes of cereal that way. Coco Krispies was very difficult to find that ratio ;)

So we read, kept our eye on the perfect ratio, and enjoyed breakfast. We moved from the back of the boxes to bringing books to the table. And there we'd sit, slurping cereal, reading our books.

As we grew older, cereal became a true comfort food for me. As an adult, I couldn't buy it because I would eat too much too fast. It didn't matter what I'd buy. I even tried Wheat Puffs, but to make them palatable, I needed about a cup of sugar.  So I changed my breakfast to eggs and toast, or simply a drink of something--maybe milk or juice. Now I make myself a Iced Chai Tea Latte every morning. I still read while I eat breakfast. Breakfast is for reading.

My sister never left behind cereal for breakfast. She has it every morning and happily goes about her day. Whine she was here nursing me back from knee surgery, as with every visit, there was a box of cereal for her. She would make my breakfast of eggs and toast and latte, but rarely ate anything but cereal. When she left (thank you so much for helping me!), Doug made my breakfast for me. 

When I could stand for a bit longer, I began to make my own breakfast. I found that pouring a bowl of cereal was much faster than making eggs and toast. I started by eating the remainder of Pat's cereal instead of cooking something. Then, with my bowl and little plate, I'd hobble back to The Chair and settle in. Instead of reading, I started watching old episodes of Perry Mason. Why Perry? Well sure...because he is Perry Mason.

And now, thanks to my sister, I have cereal again every morning. As an older adult, I no longer buy Coco Krispies (I still can't control myself!) but eat Raisin Bran Crunch every morning. Milk is poured just right so that there is a bit left over to slurp from the bowl. 

Who wants to cook eggs when you can simply pour and slurp?

And so it goes...it's all my sister's fault that I must have a bowl of cereal every morning. That's just the way it goes.
peace~~~