MyBlogSpark Cereal Giveaway

My mom never let us have sugar cereal in the house.  When we asked why she would tell us to “look at the label-the first ingredient is sugar!”  This rule was broken once a year on our birthday when we could pick any cereal in the aisle for our special breakfast.  I can still remember how excited I was to try Strawberry Shortcake (the character) Cereal (I have a long tradition of being susceptible to advertising!)

 

 

The lesson has stuck with me over the years and I look at more than the calories when I’m shopping.  When I started South Beach I made some cheat day exceptions for whole grain or “sugar free” foods.  I had problems finding fun food that was made with whole grains.  While I am no longer low carbing, I am still looking for foods made with whole grains.

 

I thought this picture would be more useful for reading the ingredients..I guess if you get out a microscope it is!

 

I was asked by General Mills through MyBlogSpark  to try out some of their cereals that now have whole grain as the first ingredient.  I enjoyed each of the varieties and to be honest couldn’t tell any difference in the flavor.  Don’t get me wrong, I know that a little more whole grain does not make lucky charms a health food (especially if you pick through it just to eat the marshmallows, not that I did that or anything…)

 

Hmm, the cinnamon toast crunch seems to be opened already…I wonder who was too excited to wait!

 

General Mills through MyBlogSpark sent me five boxes (full boxes-not samples!) of cereal to try and have offered to send five boxes to one of you too!

 

To be entered into the drawing for the contest just leave a comment below telling me what your favorite cereal is. The giveaway is limited to US Residents-sorry!  The contest will be open until Tuesday Feb 21 at Midnight.  Check back on Wednesday to see if you win!

 

Note: I received a free prize pack from General Mills through MyBlogSpark, the opinions in this post are all mine!

Sophomore Slump

Sometimes I feel like a culinary midas.  I’ve made fudge, caramels, puff pastry, popovers, gougeres and the first time I made each recipe it worked like a dream.  I won’t lie, I kind of thought I was awesome.  This was until I attempted each recipe a second time and it went all wrong.

 

 

Does this happen to anyone else? The first few times I make a recipe I study it intensely to make sure that I get all of the steps right. The second time I feel confident, only referring to the recipe once or twice. Not surprisingly, something many things go wrong. I try to make up for it-sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. 

 

 

Last night was no different.  I was preparing a three course meal for Valentine’s day and since I had cooked squid on Sunday I was sure I’d be able to duplicate the success.  Unfortunately, I didn’t study last night’s recipe enough and I messed up.

 

Since I am used to eating squid in rings I went ahead and cut it into pieces.  It wasn’t until I was in the middle of the recipe that I realized that I was supposed to be cooking squid fillets.  Oops.  To make matters worse, there were not many other edible portions to the dish.  The jalapenos and garlic were left whole, and the lemon maintained all of its lip-puckering bitterness.  As a result, our dinner consisted of a few rubbery squid rings and pan-fried breadcrumbs.

 

 

I have a thing or two to learn about cooking squid!  Thankfully, the rest of dinner was good.