Paul Hollywood’s Spelt Bread

A nice fluffy white bread ideal for eating warm, slathered in butter and jam and makes a great lunchtime sandwich bread.

Cereal Club: Honey Loops V Honey Cheerios Rd.2

In recent years the once mighty and untouchable colossus Kellogg has been losing it’s firm grip on the cereal world. Why exactly is hard to say but the rapid growth of General Mills by hoovering up Pillsbury and Nestle is hardly coincidental. By adding the genius minds behind Cinnamon Toast Crunch to the team that brought us the magically delicious Lucky Charms and Count Chocula, General Mills muscled itself past Kellogg to dominate the cereal aisle.

Kellogg’s Just Right

‘… a harmony of whole-wheat, corn and rice flakes packed with succulent raisins, and sliced almonds’.

The world of healthful cereal is incredibly vast and could take up a supermarket aisle by itself. It’s largely for that reason that Just Right had gone unnoticed by me for years, well that and its outlandish price tag (€4.45 for 500g, cheapest found). So when Tesco had it on offer I bought a pack to satisfy my curiosity regarding it’s hefty cost, and I’m a sucker for a good deal but then again who isn’t these days. I’d always imagined Just Right was for young professionals who were too sophisticated for Fruit and Fibre or All Bran but lacking real substance to the inflated value. How wrong I was.

Cereal Club – Krave

What I liked initially about Krave was it’s marketing campaign, for the first time in a long time a cereal was being unashamedly marketed as being good tasting and not much else. In these times of health conscious mothers it’s rare to find such a thing even in the kiddy cereal aisle where Kellogg’s are hell bent on ruining old classics such as Coco Pops by adding healthful varieties to the range such as the thoroughly disgusting looking choco rolls and coco pops rocks. Eating Coco Pops for the benefit of your health is as silly as going to McDonalds and ordering a salad. No, healthy and kiddy cereal just don’t go hand in hand and that’s part of the joy of getting them. As a kid Cornflakes and Rice Krispies were cupboard staples and Frosties and Coco Pops appeared on special occasions, their rarity was what made them special and adding healthy grains reduces them to level of the common cereal. My fear is that all the wacky cereal characters will one day be wearing t-shirts emblazoned with words like ‘multigrain’ and ‘fiber’, only to eventually be abolished leaving only the text and some hideous aspartame loaded grain infused carob cereal inside. At least Krave is going some way to appease my concern

Cereal Club – Porridge doesn’t have to be boring

On the subject of porridge I am utterly ignorant, I have only recently been enlightened that porridge enthusiast do actually exist. How on earth could anyone be enthusiastic about a food stuff so utterly lacking in variety of flavour and texture was my initial reaction. The only plausible reason I could think of for putting yourself through the arduous process of cooking and eating the grey goop was in penance for some terrible act you had once committed. I apologise for my philistinism for I now know that eating porridge is more than a facet of one’s daily pilgrimage. I could easily blame Tony the Tiger or Coco Monkey for my lifelong distrust and abstinence of porridge because if their cereals hadn’t tasted so good I might have been more inclined to try something new once in a while. If it’s not broken don’t fix it was a cliché I firmly lived by when choosing what to eat for breakfast and if there wasn’t a colourful character on the box it wasn’t to be trusted in my eyes.

Cereal Club: Golden Grahams – Not eating these would be a graham-atical error!

I feel like a child, it’s saturday morning, I awoke early and poured myself a large bowl of sugary cereal and sat in my trackies watching TV (not cartoons, as much as I’d like to like them I just can’t anymore). This Saturday I’ve been reunited with an old friend, Golden Grahams. When I was a kid they were taken off the shelf (I was devastated) and have only reappeared in recent years. Perhaps it was a fear of being hurt again that has made me hesitant to quickly return. Well, they’re back and it looks like they’re back for good. Huzzah!

Cinnamon Sugar Bread – three friends united

‘Cinnamon. It should be on tables in restaurants along with salt and pepper. Anytime someone says, “Ooh, this is so good – what’s in this?” the answer invariably comes back, “cinnamon.” Cinnamon. Again and again’ (Seinfeld)

I’m convinced I’ll eat just about anything with Cinnamon in it, I’m only once step away from drinking everything through a cinnamon stick. Why do I love it so? I’m not even sure, its aroma is so intoxicating I’m convinced that cinnamon trees are somehow related to poppies and we’ll discover its opiate powers in years to come. Hoardes of people smoking cinnamon bark will fill city streets with a sweet spicy aroma. Here’s to hoping anyway.

Cereal Club: Move over Honey Cheerios, Honey Loops are where it’s at

Ever take a break from your usual brand out of curiosity or thriftiness? I did, and how disappointed I was. I love cereal and I’m not one bit ashamed to say it. I’m grumpy when I don’t have a choice of at least 4 cereals in the morning, I like how its versatility can cater for my fickle palate. Normally I’ll turn to a trusted favourite like Frosties, Coco Pops, Ricicles, Corn Pops etc. but recently in moment of bargain induced impulsion I bought a box of Honey Cheerios.