Hina's Fave Breakfast Cereals

Cereal is one of life's great comfort foods. It's a "Saturday morning cartoons" breakfast. It's the happy snack with prizes in the box. It's the late night, movie watching, popcorn alternative. It's the best milk-flavoring device ever! (Chocolate cereal goes into the bowl, plain white milk goes over the cereal, eat all the cereal, and PRESTO! Chocolate milk! Just like magic. And you know you only ate the fruity cereals so that you had that fruity pink milk left over to slurp up.) I love that there are so many different varieties of cereal available out there!

As I grew older, I moved away from the super sweet kiddie cereals laden with marshmallows and frosted with sugar. Instead, I focused on super sweet adult cereals laden with nuts and berries and frosted with sugar.

My absolute favorite cereal of all time is Trader Joe's Super Nutty Toffee Clusters. It's loaded with Brazil nuts, pecans, almonds, and delicious toffee flavored granola clusters. This is the most delicious, most uber-fabulous cereal in existence. .....However, a serving size is ONLY 3/4 cup and contains 250 calories and 9 grams of fat. And that's before adding any milk!

Quaker also has a great cereal called Cranberry Macadamia Nut cereal. This fruity-crunchy-nutty combo is one of my favorite movie time snacks. It's the perfect mix of sweet, rich and crunchy. Unfortunately, 1 cup is 245 calories with 5.9 grams of fat. *sigh* The best tasting cereals are the most calorie rich.

Now, I must confess that while cereal is a lovely start to your day, many cereals are loaded with sugar and fat. So I have some back ups which I munch on periodically.

Cheerios
Plain old original flavor Cheerios. At only 100 calories per cup, this is a winner. .....But I like to tweak things to suit my sweet tooth. My favorite way to eat it: Add 2 tbsp. roasted, unsalted sliced almonds (90 calories), 1 tbsp. Blue Agave Sweetener (much like honey, but it's low-glycemic, so no blood sugar spike - 60 calories), and 1/2 cup Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Breeze (20 calories). Total 270 calories. I suppose you could just buy Honey Nut Cheerios, which has lower calories at only 110 calories per 3/4 cup (about 147 calories for 1 cup), but adding nuts and sweetener of my own is extra yummy!

Trader Joe's Organic Morning Lite
Sooo yummy! High fiber, low fat, low sodium. "A Delicious Crunchy Blend of Organic Whole Grains & Honey." 1 cup = 130 calories. This is a great start to the morning. It's sweet and crunchy, it resists soggies fairly well, and if you mix in a 1/2 cup of Fiber One Original, you only add 60 calories, plus you get 14 grams of fiber! I like mixing the two together because I get my fiber for the day, and the Organic Morning Lite tastes great and makes the Fiber One bearable.

Kellogg's Special K Chocolatey Delight
A 3/4 cup serving is 120 calories. This mixture of crunchy rice and wheat flakes has chunks of chocolate. It's a good sweet breakfast, or a nice low cal dessert.

Soooo....... everybody share. What's your favorite cereal?