Breakfast is the Bestest
Cereal killers, ghosts, and the jet-puffed marshmallow man
Each week, a menu of sorts, around a revolving theme. This week: breakfast– it’s grrreat!
If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Suppertime! I promise to feed you only once a week, and never after midnight.
Ingredient List
This week, a subscriber sent me a package with a handwritten and a book, which was a nice surprise and– quite honestly– my love language. Getting a book as a present, whether through Santa’s sleigh or snail mail, cannot be topped. Unless the book was chosen because it reminded the giver of my Substack. That’s it, I’m done. Twenty bucks and some postage and I’ll never forget you.
Anyway, the book is “The Upstairs Delicatessen,” by The New York Times’ book critic Dwight Garner. It’s a memoir, but also it’s a thorough journey through the immense repertoire of reading done by Garner over the six decades of his life, and really a love letter to his two favorite things: food and reading. For fans of both, the book is an absolute treat. He breaks it down into breakfast, lunch, and dinner (among other chapters), all packed with literary references to each. Which makes the book a delightful dessert.
Inspired by this, and by the fact that I should probably write about food a little bit since every subheading each week is related to food, I thought I’d give it a go. I’ve also been wanting to lighten things up a bit, just to make sure I keep this thing as balanced as a bipolar keto-carbonite (something I just made up, but wish was a real thing).
And now, onto dinner service.
Course 1
A Word of Gratitude: Ghost Face Cereal Killer
They say to never go grocery shopping while hungry, but the circadian rhythm of my supermarket sweeping demands that I go when my stomach sounds most like a bear at a picnic whenever the children get too close.
The growl was strong in this one as I entered the cereal aisle. I was there for one thing– the 8-pack sample of mini cereal boxes (or oversized sugar cubes, depending on how you look at it), the kind that are perfect for camping or getting your children to shut up about what’s for breakfast. I secured that package, but as I was browsing the rest of the aisle (ya know, just to see what was interesting), I came across a cereal called Ghost, which is apparently a protein powder brand that appeals to the children in all of us, with flavors like Oreo, Nutter Butter, Chips Ahoy, etc. For the cereal, they partnered with General Mills for two flavors: marshmallows and peanut butter.
The branding is very nostalgic, but instead of loads of sugar, there’s loads of protein. There’s some sugar of course, but the ingredients list is generally… good? I was skeptical. From Kashi to Cascadian Farms, nobody has made a healthy cereal taste good.
The price was off-putting for sure, but I figured the loads of protein powder somewhat balanced out the price with added value, so I thought I’d give it a shot. Also, I was hungry. Logic was thrown out the window. I went with the peanut butter version since a jar of Jif would be my desert island food of choice.
I got home and poured myself a bowl, and I must say– it’s very, very close to matching the taste and feel of sugar-laden cereal. It seems almost wrong, like there’s some devil’s voodoo going on, some hidden ball trick of science that is healthy now but will cause terminal brain cancer in five years. To be honest– it was so close to Reese’s Peanut Butter Puffs (the greatest cereal ever made), that I thought I may have to clear a line item for $32/month worth of cereal.
Of course, nothing is ever as good as the sugary original, because– as a sugar addict– your sugar cravings aren’t being completely met. Also, because the cereal is made out of milk proteins, it seems a bit cannibalistic to be eating milk with milk, like a Popeye’s sandwich with an egg on top. It also doesn’t get soggy, which is just weird to me. I like that second stage of cereal, where the grains break down just a bit, the sugar soaking in, the milk and cookies taste all coming together. This didn’t have that. Maybe that’s a good thing, especially for my kids who take thirty minutes to eat a meal.
This wasn’t supposed to be a cereal review, but I guess it is, so you may as well stick around to the end and see if I end up picking up my first sponsor.
My kids enjoyed the cereal, I enjoyed it. I’m not a nutritionist so I’m not here to say whether it’s a health food, but it’s certainly better for you (and me, and my kids). Protein is protein, and when I’m in the middle of marathon training and I’m trying to get as much as I can to replenish my muscle stores and my favorite late night snack is cereal, well… this seems like a match made in heaven, one made of marshmallow clouds and leprechaun rainbows.
And for that, I am grateful.
Course 2
Appetizer: Cereal, All of It
Is there anything more satisfying than a bowl of cereal, preferably of the sugar variety, preferably doused in whole milk? And not just in the morning. It’s a meal meant for all occasions– it exists to sate a starved stomach upon waking up, it is the savior of a sugar craving in that Bermuda Triangle between afternoon and dinner, it is a sober man’s nightcap.
I could write an entire book on my relationship with cereal. Growing up, we were given free reign of the cereal aisle. I mean the real cereal, not flakes, not bran, not anything heart healthy. I need colors of all kinds, artificial flavors cooked up in some Jesse and Walter lab deep in the bowels of General Mills. If it doesn’t have a toy or the invitation to redeem four UPCs for one, then I’m not interested.
The marketing was genius. Put everything a kid could want inside of one small cardboard box– friends, food, and fun– and once they enter the aisle of aspiration, they’ll be trapped. One of my favorite marketing tools ever is that they somehow figured out to orient the eyes of all the cartoon characters to look down, so that children were looking them straight in the eye as they walked past. Sugar Bear smiling down at you from a box full of “wholesome puffed wheat?” That’s a hypnotic pull that no five year old could ever resist. Gimme dat Golden Crisp.
The golden age of cereal had such a stranglehold on kids that they could really do no wrong. Put sugar in cereal, make colorful box, drop a cheap toy, sell. Apple Jacks made so little sense that they built an entire self-deprecating commercial campaign around the fact that their cereal tasted nothing like apples.
I’m not going to list all my favorite cereals because it would be as long as the colorful rainbow of the shelves on which they reside. But I can tell you that each one has its own personality, from a smiling frog to a dancing leprechaun to a cap’n that quite frankly should not be allowed anywhere near the helm of a ship. And each one called to me at different points in my childhood.
Against all odds, I dodged diabetes, and I have yet to develop heart disease or cancer, which is probably why I can look back on my most intense cereal phase and paint it with a nostalgic glow. But the real reason a bowl of cereal means so much to me is because it was the the ideal accompaniment to my favorite morning pastime– reading.
A bowl of cereal is the perfect partner for reading, whether it’s the morning newspaper or a gripping novel that demands attention at all hours of the day. No sticky syrup, no risk of a culinary clue left on the cover in the form of a greasy fingerprint.
As a kid, I would wake up in the summertime, pour myself a bowl of Lucky Charms or Honeycomb or Crunch Berries or Cookie Crisp or Cocoa Puffs or Frosted Flakes or Smacks or– sorry, I’m doing that thing where I list my favorite children again– and right beside it, I’d place my favorite reading material at the moment. Sometimes it was a Hardy Boys book or some tale of murder and woe, but more often than not it was the local newspaper, The Patriot News.
Our subscriptions seemed to be erratic– we’d always get the Sunday paper, but sometimes we’d have a weekly subscription. When it was in season and showing up at our door each morning, I’d usually shoot straight for the sports pages, as that was the only way to know how the Orioles were doing since we lacked cable television. There was a meditative aspect of going through the box scores, each statistic pared down to its most basic abbreviation, as newspaper square inch-age was valuable acreage back then. A few sentences on the game the night before and your imagination had to do the rest.
From there, I’d read the selected comics (only in one or three-panel formats on weekdays), the advice columns, and whatever news seemed interesting at the time.
Of course, in desperate times when the newspaper subscription had run dry or I was bored with my current book selection, there was always the back of the box. Say what you will about cereal, but the back or the box was at one time a thoughtful design. There were real games and puzzles and mazes or even good copywriting, that– when bored– would at least provide a meager meal of words to get you through the bowl. Far and away, it was better than the back of a shampoo bottle while dropping a deuce, those dire times when the longing for a Reader’s Digest was never more real.
Today, cereal copy is just throwaway material, a we-know-you’re-on-your-phone-anyway type of ordeal. It’s truly a lost art form. Always droll copypasta that remains unchanged for years on end. I can just imagine the old school copywriters coming into work every morning, thinking this is the day we’re going to make Froot Loops great again, when we will write hype paragraphs and build elaborate mazes and word searches, only to be met with a “Gary, nobody reads the back of boxes anymore. Just give us another spiel about the goodness of whole grain and go home early.” He’ll want to protest, to say that reading and breakfast go together like bowl and spoon, but he knows it’s pointless to push against the machine of big cereal.
My kids though, they carry on the tradition of reading at breakfast, something I never asked of them. If I’m being honest, it’s quite annoying when you’re trying to get out the door for school as they’re ripping through a real page-turner. Never has my heart been more at odds with itself.
Every morning they wake up and eat cereal, usually Cheerios or Honey Bunches of Oats, both existing in the double agent realm of the cereal world– goods packaged in parent-approved boxes with lobbyist-approved armchair health claims, covered in sugar with an ingredient list longer than a Rite-Aid receipt. My oldest son eats his cereal dry with a cup of milk beside it, something I decry each morning– literally, I will ask him ‘why?’ every morning– because it’s flabbergasting to me how someone could be so close to experiencing life, but instead chooses to wake up and start the day with passive violence.
To separate milk and cereal is like putting two lovers in jail cells across from each other with a catwalk between them, the dead air moving slightly as their arms stretch through the bars, fingertips grasping towards the other, both an inch and an eternity apart. Meanwhile, the jailer just sits there, morning after morning, reading his book (usually a graphic novel like Dogman), hypnotized by the juvenile humor of his law enforcement brethren with the head of a dog and the body of a man.
But at least there are words to read. And cartoon characters that compel. And it’s fun. Kind of like the best cereals.
Course 3
The Main: Jet-Puffed Marshmallow Creme
I love a meal that tells you what it’s doing. Breakfast is up front about its purpose: it exists to break a fast. I love that its verb is not eating, or gathering, or waking. It’s breaking– we’re done with this whole fasting business; be gone you evildoer, it’s time to eat.
In American culture, we’ve gone to great lengths to purge breakfast of its goodness, mainly to balance out all the rest of the garbage that will cross our plates from then until bedtime. Here’s some keto coffee, Icelandic yogurt, and a dash of berries. That’s no way to start a day. It’s almost conceding that the fast has won.
Europe has the right idea, as with most things food and life related. Hours long meals, naps in the afternoon, drinking wine until midnight– the American way of the 9-to-5 grind took more from us than we ever realized and gave us lunch in our cars in return.
A breakfast buffet here in America will feature a sad pan of bacon as its most desired dish, looking like limp ribbon eels that lost all their bones in the oven, dehydrated then soaked again in their own oils. If you’re lucky, you may get some farm-raised lox, which I always imagine grew up in an aquarium pen next to the pigs and cows, the place where Old MacDonald’s cattle chaperone their calves on school field trips.
Over in Europe, breakfast looks like you arrived right after Christ himself had multiplied the loaves and fishes to feed the five thousand. Cured meats of all kinds, aged cheeses, sweet and savory crepes, all varieties of breads and pastries, prosecco and espresso, and on and on. Nobody would judge you if you asked where the bride and groom were. You’re it, this is all for you.
Because breakfast should be satisfying. It should satisfy. It should sate. There’s a reason it’s the only meal besides pizza that is exciting anytime between the hours of midnight and 11:59 p.m.
For me, breakfast thrives in the winter months. The best parts of it come alive while being sheltered from the cold. Growing up, our house was heated by wood stove, or sometimes oil, but the mornings were always cold. Getting up for school was an exercise in perseverance. I would always try to sit on the heat vent, just to get a little warm, just to ease me into the morning, getting as much as I could before my mom or dad told me to stop wasting the heat.
After that, I’d get up and sit at the kitchen stool, where my mom set my breakfast. It was usually the same thing for months on end, but I’d go through phases. The winter seemed reserved for things like Eggo waffles, the syrup filling each square, the precision cuts along the factory formed grid. But my favorite breakfast– and this is why I probably took a nap in second period every day– was a mug of hot chocolate, with a big dollop of Jet-Puffed Marshmallow Creme right into it, which I would then dip buttered toast into. The self-comfort levels were off the chart. It was like eating a giant melted s’more for breakfast, but somehow better, probably because I didn’t smell like smoke and have melted marshmallow in my hair at the end of it. The hot chocolate would soften the toast at the same time the marshmallow stuck to it, creating a perfect bite, one that you felt yourself sinking into, like a velvet bean bag chair.
These days, the end of autumn or the start of winter are my favorite times to run. A long run on a Saturday morning when the initial cut of air is sharp, but that lessens as the miles go by until my body heat balances the equation. At the end of two hours, I’m just warm enough while moving, but when I stop, the cold catches up quickly and latches onto me, acting like I abandoned it in the next town over. By then it’s time to get inside, and for the past hour I’ve been thinking about breakfast.
Honestly, I think my favorite thing about running is thinking about food. The anticipation of it, the visualization of it, and finally, the actual act of it. It elevates the entire experience, as hunger should.
Pancakes and bacon, or French toast and sausage with maple syrup– that’s basically all I want. If I’m at a diner I’ll always get French toast with Canadian bacon, because it just seems right and diners always do both those things the best. Also, it seems like I’m well traveled by ordering two dishes of international designation. Speaking of other countries, if it’s Waffle House, then yeah, I’m getting hashbrowns smothered, covered, chunked, and capped. At any time of the day. If I’m real going the breakfast sandwich route at a bagel shop here in the Mid-Atlantic/Northeast, then it’s an everything bagel with egg and cheese and Taylor ham, that Spam-like creation that replenishes all my salt supplies in one fell swoop. Sugar and salt, and lots of it. That to me, is perfect.
Afterwards, I’d like to say I turn on a Netflix movie or take a nap or lie on the couch, but I have kids and all of that resting type stuff seems like a distant memory to me now. Which is why this entire thing was about breakfast, and not about brunch, an experience that only exists in the world of twentysomethings, hungover people, singles, and childless couples.
Maybe I’ll write about brunch in twelve years, if that still exists when my kids are out of the house. But for now, breakfast is best, because that’s the world in which I live.
Course 4
Dessert: A Repast of the Past Week
Thanks to everyone who waited so patiently by their email inbox for a whole two weeks, waiting for their server to drop the latest edition of Suppertime onto your table. After a busy summer and writing this newsletter on a weekly schedule for the past six months, I needed some time away to just spend with my family, no computers or emails or social media or marathon training. Just us together, camping in Pennsylvania. It was really refreshing and head clearing, even if it was a massive effort to get everything packed and unpacked and packed and unpacked again.
We went to the Lawrence County fair, swam in the campground pool, swam in another pool of a friend of a friend, went fishing in my friend’s parents’ pond, and had a wonderful dinner with them (thank you Mr. and Mrs. Gardner). We had campfires and s’mores, we slept relatively well, and finished the whole thing off by going to an arcade, where my oldest son hit the jackpot on one of the ticket games, which is hopefully a core memory.
Now it’s back to marathon training since the Berlin Marathon is coming up at the end of September. We were blessed with some incredible weather this week with low humidity and temperatures in the high 50s, so I logged almost 50 miles and it felt pretty easy overall. Feeling strong, so I’m hoping I can close this training out with a couple more solid weeks and see what I can throw down in Germany.
Some other things I wrote and/or edited this week:
To Paris With Love, Our Recap of the 2024 Olympic Games (for Believe in the Run)
I also contribute to The Drop, a weekly email from Believe in the Run, where I round-up running news and stories in a generally sarcastic (and sometimes heartfelt) manner. You can subscribe here.
I’m also the co-host of The Drop running podcast, one of the top running podcasts in the country, where we mostly talk about things other than running that thousands of people seem to find entertaining. This week I interviewed ultrarunner Cameron Balser, who just completed a circumnavigation of the perimeter of the United States, a total of over 8,000 miles of running. I legit loved talking about this and hearing all his amazing stories from the road. You can listen to this week’s episode here.
END OF MENU
Thank you for dining with me this evening, I hope the service was acceptable. Tips (whether monetary or recommendations to others) are appreciated, but not expected.
Your marketing worked...I got up and got a bowl of Reese's puffs and finished reading while eating cereal. We'll done General Mills' AI version of Robbe. You got me.
I had completely forgotten how much I used to read with my cereal...this took me back. Simpsons comics and gaming magazines for breakfast, not exactly refined, but I could read them dozens of times over without getting bored.