Looks Like Expiration Dates DO Matter...

I think I'm cursed. Okay, maybe not "cursed." Let me explain. Over the past eight or nine months every time I've found a really good breakfast cereal, that brand of cereal seems to disappear. It happened to my strawberry--chocolate--granola cereal and it happened to a marshmallow cereal I used to get all the time.

I've moved on, as one tends to do when the store discontinues a brand you liked. I've made other breakfast decisions, gotten to like other things.

But this morning, I walked into a basement storage room in our house and I saw it--boxes of a cereal I once enjoyed. I told my wife it was down there.

"Did you check the expiration date?" she asked.

I had not.

But I've had expired food before and it wasn't that bad. I'm not the pickiest eater so I thought it wouldn't be that bad.

Turns out, it kind of was.

I guess, if we were battling a zombie apocalypse, I could have finished the bowl of three-plus year old cereal and it probably wouldn't have killed me. But, there's not a zombie apocalypse (at least, not one that I know of...) so I dumped the bowl and ate cereal from a box with an expiration date in the future, not years old. 

There's another box down there in the basement. I didn't throw it out, but I will. Too bad I didn't know about earlier...like back in 2015.

Nature's Path Love Crunch Granola...Um...YUM!

I don't feel like I'm a food snob. I very much may be a food snob, but I don't think I am. Because of allergies, there are foods I can't eat. Plus, because of religious choices, there are things I choose not to drink. I don't believe I would do well in the big cities where there are fancy restaurants--even if I could afford to eat there. We do try and feed our family the healthiest food we can afford. We're always trying to do better.

Last week, I visited a friends house and he brought out a bag of Nature's Way Love Crunch Premium Organic Cereal. The variety they had--Dark Chocolate & Red Berries.

I mean, come on!

It was delicious!

"You can get it at Costco," he said when I remarked on how much I liked the food. When I got home from my visit, my son just happened to be at Costco so we texted him to be on the look out for the bag of breakfast nirvana. He didn't spot it.

Bummer.

Fortunately, I found a smaller package of the cereal at my local grocery store (Costco's items are so much bigger--buying in bulk, and all that...). I bought it. I've eaten it. It's still just as good, just not as much.

I learned a lot at my friends house, mostly about my writing and about the writing industry in general. But I also learned that I have a soft spot for some hardened cereal with dark chocolate and red berries. If it makes me a breakfast food snob, so be it. It's a cross I'll just have to bear.