30 Seconds to Mush
I just ate my first bowl of Frosted Flakes in probably two years. It was like a race against time. No sooner had I suppressed fresh memories of ripping the boxtop flap in an effort to open the box and ripping the inside bag down the middle in an effort to open that than I discovered just how quickly today’s Frosted Flakes denature in (2%!) milk. I pined for a bowl of Gritty Kitty. And realized, while shoveling heaps of the wet-hay-like substance into my snarling mouth, that everything involved in a box of Frosted Flakes seems to have gotten seriously thinner. Thinner box. Thinner bag. Thinner flakes.
Thinner patience.
I may not be the President, I may not be the Pope. But as long as my breakfast cereal stays crunchy in milk, I shall never mope.
You should join the yogurt revolution. Plain low fat or non-fat yogurt is more flavorful than milk, your flakes stay crunchy far longer than in milk and yogurt lasts much longer without spoiling.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Apr 15, 04:13 PM · #
I know. This is what I get for failing to self-identify as fully Greek and abandoning the breakfast goo of my ancestors.
— James · Apr 15, 04:38 PM · #
There is a hilarious bit in Neal Stephenson’s novel “Cryptonomicon” wherein the protagonist eats a bowl of Cap’n Crunch in a carefully-calculated method designed to maximize crunchiness. After a lengthy discourse on the Cap’n‘s signature striated-pillow formation and the correct chewing technique, he describes the secret to eating cereal at the professional level:
“World-class cereal-eating is a dance of fine compromises. The giant heaping bowl of sodden cereal, awash in milk, is the mark of the novice. Ideally, one wants the bone-dry cereal nuggets and the cryogenic milk to enter the mouth with minimal contact and for the entire reaction between them to take place in the mouth. Randy has worked out a set of mental blueprints for a special cereal-eating spoon that will have a tube running down the handle and a little pump for the milk, so that you can spoon dry cereal up out of the bowl, hit a button with your thumb, and squirt milk into the bowl of the spoon even as you are introducing it into your mouth. The next best thing is to work in small increments, putting only a small amount of Cap’n Crunch in your bowl at a time and eating it all up before it becomes a pit of loathsome slime, which, in the case of Cap’n Crunch, takes about thirty seconds.”
The principle is much the same for consuming flake-type cereals…only put a teensy bit at a time in your bowl, pour on a bit of milk, and eat quickly!
— Salamander · Apr 15, 04:45 PM · #