Recipe

Good news everybody out there in blog-land! I had a night of insomnia and amongst the other strange ideas my brain burped up whilst laying in bed sleepless, I stubbed my toes on a 3 or 4 really lame things to blog about, so brace yourself for a some really lame and random ramblings that my brain decided was important enough to sacrifice sleep time to mull over. Without any further introduction... Idea numero uno!

You may notice some blogs have recipes of the author's favorite meal they have just tried. While I am sitting here blogging waiting for my breakfast to settle before I go for a bike ride (OH! Another blog idea, I better write that down "The Great Breakfast Conspiracy", stay tuned... more to come about that) I thought I would write down my favorite recipe for today:

Take one bowl
fill it about 3/4 to the top with LIFE cereal
add just enough milk so that you can see it peeking around some of the LIFE flakes
stir around the flakes so that they get soggy and the flavors mix in with the milk, because if you have to taste the milk, just by itself, it is disgusting!
Enjoy!

Yeah... it's a recipe for a bowl of cereal but it's one that I like. Apparently I can't get that right all of the time either. Last week I made one of my specialty blends of milk and cereal for Walker and I was informed that I did it wrong. I didn't put in enough milk and his flakes got soggy and there wasn't enough milk to drink at the end. My point was that, that is what makes it taste sooooo good! And that brings up my two controversial points here: Soggy cereal is good! Milk tastes bad! Bear with me as I introduce my two points of debate (that I expect all readers to offer their opinion on, but more about this and I will reveal a mental challenge that I have been silently dealing with for my whole life... to come later in a different blog)

I still can't understand why anyone would want to eat crunchy cereal or Quiznos (I have always maintained that they have their slogan wrong... it should be Mmmm, mmm, mmm... SCRATCHY!) The flavors of these crunchy type foods are wonderful, but the texture is ALL wrong! I don't like the feeling that I just removed the pitcher from a blender and just spent 20 minutes gnawing on the spinning blades of a blender that is set on "frappe". I don't think anything in Man's natural diet is meant to gouge slice and pulverize our mouths. If it was we wouldn't have soft, bleedable gums loaded with nerve endings and blood vessels. If it weren't I would be the first one to sprinkle some Garlic butter on a box of razor blades and toss them down the old gullet.

Milk is gross! We eat lots of gross things, dead chicken embryos, cultured bacteria, McDonald's... to name a few. If we look at history and wonder who the first person was to say "Hmm... I think I'm gonna eat that!" Then we probably would see a lot of very hungry people and probably another group of hungry people standing around to see if that thing killed the first person... if not then they said "Hmm, Ralph isn't dead...yet, I think I'll bite off a piece and see how I like it too!"
I am sure it was an awkward day when someone strolled up to a cow and watched a calf drinking from it's mother's utters and he said to the crowd of spectators "I don't know guys... 50 bucks to try that? How about $75... no $100 and you got a deal" After the milk didn't kill him, we got lots of great inventions like go-gurt, Grilled cheese sandwiches and pasteurization. But, milk individually? Blech! It tastes like how cows smell... like manure. Trust me the guy in history that scooped up a steaming pile of manure and gulped that down spent the few short remaining hours of his life doubled up with stomach cramps, before he died. We now know that isn't good for us.
I have always hated the flavor of milk. In grade school we actually a lady, Stana Wood, who would actually check our trays before we finished lunch to make sure we ate enough. If we didn't eat enough of one thing, she would turn us around and make us go eat some more. There were of course tricks. If you rolled your tomato soup around in the bowl it made it look like you had eaten some and she would let you go. She always picked up my carton of milk and shook it and then would point back to my table where I was sitting and would say "Go drink more of your milk!" My stomach would turn over and I would have to try not to throw up thinking about it. Then I would go back to my seat, close my eyes, tilt my head back and gulp down the rest of the milk and prepare for the horrible after taste. I always envied the kids that had milk allergies, because they got a glass of wonderful, golden orange juice. I am by far NOT a picky eater. I like everything... except plain milk. Love chocolate milk, love strawberry milk I have even tried strange things like es cargo and have enjoyed that. But I put a big "X" in the "No Thanks" column when offered plain milk. Mandy loves it. My kids who won't even eat a quesadilla, love milk. I have even heard them say, on a hot day when they have been playing outside in the heat "I am sooo thirsty! I want some nice cold milk!" I hear that and my brain registers "I am so thirsty and overheated that I think it would be great to swab the toilet seat with my tongue!" and my natural reaction is to scream "Egads! That's disgusting! Have some ice cold water!"

To tie this all together let me share a painful childhood experience to punctuate my disdain for milk and crunchy cereal. When I was young, we obviously didn't have very much money. I was too young and too clueless to pay attention to things like that, but I did notice that the only cereal my mom ever bought was King Vitamin. The MOST plain tasting and THEE MOST crunchy cereal out there. I actually think the cereal puffs were made of foam insulation mixed with rocks and then coated in a heavy coat of impermeable, epoxy enamel. It had no flavor and absolutely scratched the living hell out of your mouth. Each bite was the equivalent of placing a tiny, frantic, sharp clawed cat into your mouth. I am still not sure why, but every day I would get up and have a bowl of King Vitamin before school... and I would finish ALL of the milk in the bowl. On this particular morning I swallowed the last bite of King vitamin with the usual chunks of mouth flesh that was accompanied by the after taste of blood. Then I looked at that half of a cup of cereal in the bowl and my stomach turned over. I thought of Stana pointing back to my chair and telling me to finish it... and like a good little German I dutifully did as the Nazis said. I tilted back my head and poured down the rest of the milk. Trying not to think about the cow smelling flavor in my mouth I headed to the sink with my bowl, but before I got there, my stomach put it's foot down. Had had too much of this nonsense! And it reversed thrusters and without any warning I watched a stream of milk and King vitamin come back up. As I watched in slow motion the milk and the cereal splash on the floor I realized something... Although I chewed that cereal, it was still in it's original shape, I don't like crunchy cereal and Milk probably tastes just like the rear bumper of Holstein. But, on the other hand... I do like rump roast, with some potatoes and carrots... little bit of gravy... Mmmm! Just glad I was not the first guy in history to try that one!