Cooking with cold breakfast cereal

Some people like cold breakfast cereal -- as a bachelor, I love it! It makes for a quick breakfast in the morning when you're trying to get out the door as quick as possible, and it is also a quick and nutritious midnight snack as well. In fact, I can eat breakfast cereal any time of the day.

Unfortunately, some cold breakfast cereals have gotten a bad knock because a lot of them are just too sugary and too low in fiber and protein, especially the cereals aimed at kids. On the other hand, many of the cereals aimed at adults are geared toward the dieting set and often contain very few calories per serving. None of these are particularly filling, which is something I look for in what is basically a staple food. Another factor confounding things are the nutritional value of different cereals, as some are fortified with vitamins and minerals, but often the "natural" or "organic" cereals have little in the way of these essential nutrients. And sometimes they just don't taste all that great either.

So as a cereal connoisseur, I developed the idea of "cooking" with cold breakfast cereal. This involves "recipies" which are essentially mixing different types of cold cereal together in the same bowl. The cereal that started me along this road was Kashi GoLean. It is a cereal that is low in sugars and fairly high in fiber and protein (in comparison to other cereals), but it is fairly low in calories and can be bland tasting. So I ended up mixing it with Kashi GoLean Crunch, which is a much sweeter cereal. That way I ended up cutting the sweetness of the GoLean Crunch while upping the palatability of the original GoLean cereal.

But then, I looked at the nutrients, and neither of the GoLean cereals offers much in the way of essential vitamins and nutrients. So I ended up adding in Kashi Heart to Heart cereal which is fortified with various vitamins and minerals. After this revelation, I started to realize that I could extend this idea of "cooking with breakfast cereal" to many other different breakfast cereals. The idea is to moderate the sugary cereals that may taste good with some other cereals that include higher levels of fiber and protein. That way you can still enjoy the taste of a sugary cereal without its drawbacks.

The basic rules that I use for cooking breakfast cereals together are:

1. Match a sugary cereal with a non-sugary cereal.
2. Include a cereal or group of cereals that will offer a decent amount of fiber and protein.
3. Include a cereal that includes or is fortified with essential vitamins and minerals.
4. Match cereals with tastes that will complement each other.

The fourth rule is the one that is most open to experimentation, as everybody's tastes are different. Here are a few other breakfast cereal recipies that I really like.

• Cracklin' Oat Bran plus All-Bran plus Life
• Frosted Mini-Wheats plus Smart Start Antioxidants
• Kashi GoLean plus Fruity Cheerios
• Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds plus Kashi Heart to Heart

And of course, there are plenty of other variations that I've tried out. The possible breakfast cereal recipies are almost limitless. It's basically up to your imagination and your palate as to what you can come up with. The main thing is you can tailor the recipie to your tastes but not have to compromise on nutrition. You can still enjoy the sugary cereals you might've liked as a kid but without having to give up eating a nutritious breakfast or midnight snack! Give it a try and let me know if there are any particular breakfast recipies you really like. Oh, and don't forget, you can even easily add in some fruit like banana slices, blueberries, and sliced strawberries to add some flavor and include some fruit in your breakfast.