Cereal

A deranged-looking Captain Horatio Crunch aboard the SS Guppy

It takes a long time to break a bad habit. I've read it's seven weeks, but sometimes the struggle is much
longer, or feels it.

One of my successes is breaking my love of breakfast cereal. More precisely, sugary cereals.

When I was very young, my parents taught me how to pour a bowl of cereal and milk so I wouldn't have to wake them in the morning. And, every day until I was 36, I ate a bowl (sometimes two) of cereal. Froot Loops, Apple Jacks, Fruity Pebbles, Cap'n Crunch, Lucky Charms, and the cult classic monster cereals and Quisp. The observant among you noticed I didn't call out any chocolate cereals... though I'd buy and eat them, to me they were only a step ahead of Special K or Raisin Bran.

I bought up vintage cereal boxes on eBay (sometimes with the vintage cereal still unopened) and learned as much as I could about the characters, prizes, marketing, and history of the chemical recipes. I became incensed when a company changed its formula or production method (that's for you, General Mills, for your yo-yo strategy behind Trix!)

Breaking this habit, obsession, and way of life was not easy. But I was able to create a ritual of making breakfast. Slow cook oats, yogurt, an egg or two, and when I lived in my little house, I'd pick fresh strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, and apples from my yard when they were in season. And for someone who's a notoriously simple cook, I can manage a near full-English by myself for a few guests.

These days, I only buy cereal under three circumstances: if I am extraordinarily busy (think end of term when everything is due at once and you can really use that 20 minutes of prep time on some other task), as a very special treat, or when traveling and experiencing foreign sugary cereals.

2022, hello.

Happy New Year! Fingers crossed for 2022.

I'm not really into resolutions per se, but I do like to target bad habits and minimize them if I can't eliminate them.

Here and there, I've been able to evolve bad habits into a ritual. In this way, coffee is a victory.

I don't think I even had my first cup of coffee until I was 23. I somehow survived university without it, but I couldn't escape it in Saint Louis. Even still, it was a social drink for me. It took me another six years to actually buy a coffee-maker for my apartment.

From there, a few cups turned into a pot, with extra fill-ups within an hour or two after I arrived at the office.

At some point I was given a single-cup maker, and though fresher, it didn't make a good cup of coffee. I avoided the packaged K-cups, using the refillable thingie. At least I wasn't adding to landfills.

I tried a French press, but never really took to it.

Enter the mocha pot.

I was in Glasgow with my French friend Xavier Lancel, editor of Scarce Magazine and two American comic creators--Greg Lockard, living in Spain at the time, and Monica Gallagher. And in our AirBnB was a mocha pot, a stove-top espresso maker. I fell in love!

On my return home, in my building's free room was a used mocha pot. I grabbed it. I was a full convert, and when the handle broke off, I broke down and bought a new pot. 

It takes enough effort that I never make a second pot. So I've made a ritual of preparing the coffee, as well as boiling some hot water for a tiny teapot I picked up somewhere, so I can make myself Americanos.

Perhaps I should have converted from a trip to Italy rather than Scotland, but one can't choose these things.