As the Oat Rolls

I love cereal. Not only is a look through cereal's a history a look through human history (the Aztec cultivations, the early medical profession, the women's lib movement, Jim Crow, trash-TV, etc.), but cereal is also just basically good.

Cereal, aside from my tempestuous dealings with its close companion milk (YAY! for soy!), has been a good friend to me. Affordable, filling, cheerful, easy... cereal has it all. Except for an unexplained falling-out with cereals in my early 20s, for most of my life I have been accustomed to eating cereal for at least one meal a day (more when I was a kid and the money got tight; I remember long stretches of nothing but puffed wheat -- needless to say, I cannot even touch those any more).

I have eaten the cereal of the ancient Egyptians, consumed brands from Poland to the Midwest, and marveled at the fact that rommegrot (a delectable cloud of tasty) may actually (almost) make up for Norway's infliction of lutefisk on the planet.

Nowadays, I prefer something nutty or plain, though recently I have been slumming with a store-brand knock off of Honey Nut Cheerios. When I was a kid, I craved the artificial colour and taste of the pure-sugar varieties, and thought it a grave injustice that my mum forbid them, but now I am pretty grateful for her prudence. I love any grain that can be toasted and soaked, from wheat and spelt, to millet (those canaries are on to something) and rice, to oats and quinoa. I have enjoyed cereal at dawn, brunch, midnight and all points in between.

But it has not always been an unbridled cereal experience - there are rules to cereal, too.

Under my mum's regime, we ate rolled oats in the winter (Red River cereal when times were good, and cream of wheat for special occasions), and cold cereal in the summer, and never the twain shall meet. My mum taught us that eating hot cereal in the summer gave you hives. I don't know if that is true or not, but a pattern was formed, and now that spring is here, my hot cereal days are coming to a gradual close over the ambiguous winter-to-spring transitional period.

The other day, it was warm-ish, but drizzily (a grey area), so I took a chance and had myself a Bacchanalian cream of wheat gorge-fest, not knowing whether this would be my last chance or not.

Digging out some of those frozen berries I had squirreled away back when Murph was here (Old Tyme House-Wife Trick #37: Men like blueberry pancakes), I delicately decorated by creamy wheat ambrosia with fruit and cinnamon, and even added a dash of sour plum jelly, just like my mum used to do on my birthday. Add some salty buttered toast or tea cakes and some piping hot coffee, and you're in flavour country.

Heaven!

It reminded me that each season has its perks. Winter may be inconvenient, but somethings will certainly be worth missing.