From Cereal Bowls to Salad Bowls

What I grew up eating and how the right bowl makes all the difference

What was my first recipe?

A bowl of cereal. Age 5.

I curated bowls of cereal each morning that highlighted the various textures and flavors that great cereal offers to the palette.

Tips for A Very Good Cereal Bowl:

• Choose your best bowl. It should be roughly 20% bigger than the amount of cereal you intend to fill it with. This allows room for milk and mixing.

• Start with the bottom 1/3 of your bowl. Layer a *robust* variety like Frosted Mini Wheats or Honey Bunches of Oats. Something that won’t become instant mush at the slightest splash of milk. Raisin Bran is an exception, it makes for a unique ground floor cereal in that it’s preferred state is actually a glutenous mush pile.

• Follow that with something like a festive Cocoa Krispie or Cinnamon Toast Crunch — to season the milk, of course. You could also turn to a Chex or a Life cereal here as well. They won’t impart as much flavor but boy do they make up for it in sweet cereal textural bliss.

• Top your bowl off with Grape Nuts for added crunch. Grape Nuts are the bacon bit of the cereal world. Tell “corporate” they can totally use that! A Peanut Butter Captain Crunch is also great here. Brings out a lovely chocolate and peanut butter finish.

• Add milk of choice and enjoy! I grew up with skim milk, which is horrifying but…

As a child of suburban NJ in the 80’s and 90’s, we grew up under an umbrella of fake “health”, fueled by lobbyists from the corn and sugar industry. It is unclear how our little bodies even survived adolescence! My diet consisted of foods that I would bet 700 million dollars are currently banned throughout Europe. My body composition was 60% cereal, 20% bagel bites, and 20% Dunkaroos!

Snackwell’s (pardon my barf) were big then too, and so many other pseudo healthy foods jam-packed with diarrhea-inducing Olestra. Thank you toxic diet-obsessed culture of my youth! My butthole and my body image/self-worth will never be the same, and I bet I’m not alone on that journey!

This brings me to my point. While I still LOVE diving into a bowl of cereal every once in a while (wink, wink). I’m more inclined to think about how to layer my salads the the way that I used to think about layering my cereal. Because, and this is science folks, the same exact logic applies. Starting with the best bowl for the job…

There are salads that require a deep sloping wall for easy tossing, while some benefit from a low stature bowl with shallow sides to emphasize the different components within. Often times if I’m making a salad and the bowl isn’t the right fit I will migrate it to a new one. Annoying for me to have to wash another bowl but better for my overall eating experience.

This steak salad is a clear plate over deep bowl example. You need to be able to see the ingredients on top. BUT I also recommend dressing the other components first in a taller bowl and then moving to a more plate like dish.

Tips for A Very Good Salad Bowl:

With a few thoughts I try to address before I build -