For the love of cereal…
I love food. Just ask Fiancé. I’m practically obsessed. Ok, I am obsessed. But not in an inappropriate way. I’m not an overeater or stress eater or emotional eater at all.
I just love everything about food, the history, the culture, the ingredients, the cooking style and most importantly the taste.
You can say that growing up in such a cosmopolitan city like Los Angeles has spoiled me with some of the best food in the world. I’m used to swinging by the taco cart to get something at 2 am and waiting in line for a hot dog for up to an hour (at Pink’s). Whatever I craved I got. Here it’s an entirely different story.
I was thinking the other day about how I got to be this way. Why do I love food so much?
I believe it started with cereal.
Looking back I can’t believe I ate as many sugar-filled cereals as I did. I guess you can say that that’s just the American way. Enriched cereals packed with sugar. Yum.
As a kid (and an adult) one of my favorite things to do (especially when in another country) is to go to the market and peruse each and every aisle. Back home my favorite aisle was the cereal aisle.
When I was a kid, my dad and I would go grocery shopping and I would always be able to convince him to buy me my cereal of choice. Then after we get home I’d always eat it for dinner. I guess the toy was an added bonus but anyway, I love cereal. Now that I think about it, I don’t think cereal even comes with toys these days.
My favorites as a kid were Lucky Charms, Cookie Crisp, Kix, Frosted Flakes and Fruit Loops. My back-up favorites (cereals I didn’t love but had cravings for) were Pops, Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Captain Crunch.
I loved rice krispie treats as a kid as well as an adult but I will not eat Rice Krispie cereal on its own. Yuck.
With Lucky Charms I’d always save the marshmallows for last. I also think that Lucky Charms started my love of marshmallows too. Then there’s was Chex and Chex mixes. Yes, I am an 80s baby.
Living in South Africa a trip down the cereal aisle is way less than exciting. I’d say that bran flakes, wheatbix and corn flakes dominate the aisle. It must’ve been the british influence with constipation, in my opinion.
There are some imports like Fruit Loops and Frosted Flakes but no where near the variety in the states. I remember a trip back home last year I went to Von’s and just stood in the cereal aisle, overwhelmed with the selection!
The other popular breakfast food here is muesli or what we Americans often call granola. I use to buy the stuff until I discovered a home-made version. I’ll never buy store bought again. Then again, never say never.
You’ll have to wait for the recipe because I’m not going to post it now. This is still a post about my love of cereal.
So basically… I think my love of cereal was what sparked my interest in food. Why, if I could get super excited about cereal and eat it immediately when I get home I think as I got older I saw what other wonderful foods were out there.
Obviously there isn’t a great selection of ethnic foods here but it’s growing. I’m surprised that sushi took off as well as it did. Of course the quality and authenticity is questionable so I find myself on the Internet researching for recipes so that I can make it at home.
Mind you I’ve never really cooked until I moved here. It was rough at first but I get better the more I cook.
Fiancé does find it odd that I love food that much. He brought up one day that something I often do is ask what we’re having for dinner….during lunch! I can’t help it. My day revolves around what I’m going to eat that day.
And don’t get me started about travelling! Eating is a HUGE highlight for me. I’ll leave it at that. The best countries I’ve been to with the best food? I would say my top 8 are: Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, Italy (Italian food outside of Italy just plain sucks), Hawaii (I know that’s not a country but darn they have yummylicious food) and Mexico.
What are your favorite food destinations?
