Cold cereal sales.

Cold cereal is definitely considered a kitchen staple, right? Like sugar, flour, salt and pepper? I don't think my kids would survive without a pantry full of these boxes. It's an "anytime" snack in our household.

When I was growing up, my mom would buy good for you cereals. You know, like granola, cheerios (because there was no visable sugar on the O's), shredded wheat, grape nuts, raisin bran ... I do remember a time when there was a new cereal called KABOOM. The box was yellow with a picture of a clown on it.

My siblings and I couldn't imagine why our mother would have bought it since it tasted good - but I guess there must have been less sugar in that particular kind or it wouldn't have made it to our cupboard shelf.

I remember that we would go through the box so quickly and complain that we hadn't gotten our fair share before it was gone, so my mom decided that to keep the peace, she would buy 5 boxes of it and put our names on them. NO ONE was supposed to touch anyone else's cereal!!!!! I know I never did, but my boxes always emptied sooner than I thought they should, so ... I don't know - ?

Now, although I do sometimes hear that same complaint about ice cream at my house, I don't hear it about cereal. There is almost always an abundance of cold cereal ... the good kinds! :)

My poor mom! She really did raise her children in a home filled with consciousness about nutrition. I'm not quite sure what happened, but I just don't share the same enthousiasm for healthy food choices. (Really, Polly? We couldn't gather that on our own from reading your blog.)

As a little side note - I do remember when my rebellion of all things nutritious went a little south. It was when I first left home and went to college. I was able to eat whatever I wanted, and whenever I wanted to. It made me feel like I had finally reached adulthood, it really did. Because if I wanted to eat a hostess lemon pie from the 7-11 across the street from my dorm at 11:00 pm, I could. And if I wanted to eat two quarter pounders with cheese and then walk across the street to go to 31 Flavors, I could. (I would deny that except there were witnesses - you've heard about the "freshman fifteen?" Me too.)

I never used to look at the prices of cereal though. If it was the kind we liked, I bought it. But then I became friends with "Miss Coupon Queen USA" and she told me that I should never pay more than $2 a box for cereal. I thought she was nuts - I was paying $4 and $5 for some of the big boxes! But she assured me, even if you don't cut coupons, cereal is always on sale somewhere and I should never pay more than $2 a box.

Boy, you can learn something new everyday - because I started paying attention, and sure enough! I buy cereal for $2 a box. Sometimes just a little more for the biggest boxes, but often times, even less. The biggest cereal jackpot I ever hit was about a year ago when a new Smith's Marketplace opened up, and tons of cereal was just a BUCK a box ... I went a little crazy.

My kids were in heaven. :)