Put your Creative Caps on!

I love cereal and it's National Breakfast Week so I thought I would share this competition with y'all. There is a prize for the most creative cereal idea!

What you need to do: Suggest a new cereal flavour - include ingredients and its new name and why you think this would make a great cereal. Radio jingle and box designs get you extra points. Simple, non? The hardest part is for me to get the prize shipped to you!

The prize: A cereal hamper - see pic, the packaging has even been resurrected from the Archives in America. They are the only boxes with the original packaging that exist outside of the Kellogg's museum in Excited States of America and will even contain yummy cereal for you to gobble!

Get creative! Otherwise the nice people at Kellogg's give me the prize and I have no space for any more cereal in my kitchen, it is overflowing at the moment with cupcakes still.

Good luck peeps and remember to email me your ideas using the email address in the Contact Me section.

Kiddie cerealThey didn't believe me in the office when I said this is how we used to eat our cereal as kids in Canada. There were even perforations for you to cut along in case you couldn't figure out this pattern on your own. Yum, yum, no need for a bowl! All you need is some milk, scissors and a spoon to have your cereal. You can even do these with regular sized boxes if you are really hungry! So I showed the disbelievers and enjoyed my Kellogg's coco puffs a la carton.

Morning gloryThe good peeps at Kellogg's sent me a lovely (and large) package the other day. It was a large tea crate-like box which contained cereal and a lovely wooden bowl and spoon. I think there were 4 different flavours to taste, which hasn't been too hard of a task. I have shared the cereal with my work colleagues and we are all munching on it dry in the afternoons and eating it with our milk in the morning. The consensus is that the raspberry and cherry is too sweet for all of us, am sure we will eat it when times are desperate but for now it is on the shelf, we can't seem to pawn it off to anyone.

The almond, pecan and raisin flavour is my second favourite because of the raisins and I think my first favourite is the blueberry and apple one as it doesn't have raisins. I gave Carol the raisin one! I think it is toasted so it has a nice texture and taste. It feels very hearty and warm and it fills the morning hunger gap quite nicely. The freeze dried apples don't go well when I eat it as a dry snack in the afternoon but with my (lactose free!) milk in the morning it is quite nice.

Oh what a joy it is to eat cereal again - love the Lactofree products! I have to now try their cheese that they just launched, maybe a veggie burger with some 'fake cheese' (as B calls it) is in order.

I think there is one box left to sample and it is has cashews in it which will be interesting as I love cashews. Our French colleague said she wanted to buy a box to take back to Paris as she loves granola but not sure if this can be classified as granola, what is granola anyway?

One more week til Dubai, so might have the cereal for breakfast and dinner to prepare for the bathing suit! A girl at my old work used to to this and it seemed to work. Well off to bed dear diary, am in need of a rest - am very sore from an intense Pilates session, was walking funny today!

Linuzza's Torrone
Linuzza - that for some reason is what we called my cousin Lina growing up. I guess that is a Sicilian version of her name? Trust me, we have a lot of Sicilian-Canadian versions of our names - thankfully my mother did not allow my dad to name me Calogera!! Bless you Momma Dolce. Anyway, here is a pic of Linuzza's homemade torrone that she made for Christmas Eve.

Turrón (Spanish), torró (Catalan), or torrone (Italian) is a nougat confection, typically made of honey, sugar, and egg white, with toasted almonds or other nuts, and usually shaped into either a rectangular tablet or a round cake. It is delicious and usually emerges around Christmastime.

Oddly I think she said she put marshmallows in her recipe but will verify that - maybe she is making a new North American/Sicilian version. Perhaps the recipe is from her mother in law who I recall makes some great sweets.

Her husband tried to pass it off as store bought but she scolded him a few times for the joke he kept making - saying to everyone, 'and the bakery just brought it out fresh from the oven this morning.' It was funny as she was getting quite frustrated but it was just the way married couples tease each other lovingly.

The picture isn't the greatest but it was the only one I took (the Rice Krispie squares are my mom's festive favourite- easy to make as the recipe is on the back of the Kellogg's Rice Krispie box). The festivities then took over and the family consumed lots of lobster, crab, calamari, shrimp, pasta and more!

Oh Italians do love to eat...I think I gained a nice little muffin top in the last two weeks.

:)