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There’s been a cereal renaissance in our household as of late.

I had forgotten how much I honestly, truly love cereal. I never had cereal when I was living by myself or with roommates because I don’t really drink milk, and it just seemed silly to have milk when I didn’t use it. After the third or fourth unused quart I poured down the drain, I traded milk for Viactiv chews and yogurt and never looked back.

Last summer, about this time, I was at my desk at my previous job. It wasn’t a print day, so we were bored. It was hot. We were laying around the newsroom, being hungry and hot. All of a sudden, I thought to myself, “How good would a bowl of Golden Crisp be right now?” I kept thinking of the malty sweetness of the sugar glaze, the soft, yielding puffed wheat kernels, the ice cold milk subtly flavored from the glaze. I had to have a bowl of Golden Crisp right then and there.

I talked about it for a good two hours until finally, someone told me to shut up and buy some. I drove down to the corner store and bought a half-gallon of milk and a box of Golden Crisp and went back to the newsroom and ate Golden Crisp like a champ.

After that point, cereal became a staple in my life.

I got Marques hooked onto cereal too, after reminding him of the wonder of Frosted Flakes. Don’t you remember the crunchy corn flakes, baby? Covered in sweetness? He did, and now we keep a box of Frosted Flakes in our pantry at all times. This morning I woke up and tottered into the kitchen to make a bowl of Frosted Flakes and unfortunately, Marques had eaten all but like 4 bites of flakes and I was forced to eat Rice Krispies.

Here are my top five favorite cereals of ALL TIME:

1. Life Cinnamon

I could write a sonnet devoted to this cereal. It’s cinnamony, it’s slightly sweet, it stays crunchy in milk, it’s actually healthy, and it’s delicious. Also, you can actually see the sugar crystals embedded in each little square, which shows that it’s, you know, actual sugar and not some sort of chemical byproduct. The cinnamon and sugar leach out into the milk and make your milk slightly sweet and spicy, which is important. Hands down, number one favorite cereal. I rarely buy it because if I do buy it, I would eat nothing but Life cereal until the box is gone.

2. Frosted Flakes

They’re grrrrrr-eat! No, seriously, they are. You forget about Frosted Flakes with all of the other flashy sugar cereals out there, cereals like Lucky Charms and Cookie Crisp - inferior cereals. Frosted Flakes is a simple cereal - cornflakes covered in a crystalline sugar glaze that slightly melts into your milk but still sticks to the flake so when you take a bite of cereal, it’s sweet milk mixed with sweet flakes. Probably not dentist-recommended, but who listens to him anyway?

3. Frosted Mini-Wheats

Any flavor, though I prefer the classic regular frosted one.  They have such a great texture, even though sometimes you bite into a big chunk of the frosting and it makes your teeth hurt.  Also, whenever I eat them, I constantly feel like I have pieces of wheat in my mouth for the rest of the day.  But they’re full of fiber, so that’s good!

4.  Grape-Nuts

I have always loved Grape-Nuts, even as a kid.  Although to eat them, I had to pour on like 4 spoonfuls of sugar.  Nowadays, I’ve dropped down to 2 spoonfuls, and I love that sugar-milk sludge at the bottom of the bowl mixed in with the crunchy nuts.  Yum.

5.  Cinnamon Toast Crunch

Sweet, cinnamony, crunchy, delicious.  Also receives a high milk-taste rating.  Pretty much all of the cinnamon sugar dissipates into the milk, so when you drink the milk later, you get cinnamon milk.  Worth it for that.

I asked Marques what his top five favorite cereals are.  Here’s his list:

1.  Captain Crunch with Crunchberries
2.  Fruity Pebbles
3.  Frosted Flakes
4.  Honey Nut Cheerios
5.  Cocoa Puffs

My top five LEAST favorite cereals are as follows:

1.  Apple Jacks.  I hated Apple Jacks.
2.  Corn Pops.  This was like chunks of nothing.
3.  Honeycomb.  It reminded me of Styrofoam
4.  Trix.  If you’re going with a fruit cereal, Fruity Pebbles is the way to go.
5.  Raisin Bran.  I hate raisins.  I call them devil-boogers.

What are your top five cereals?