National Cereal Day is a funny holiday.

See, despite the best efforts of cereal curators and Ralston researchers such as myself, no one knows exactly when this crunchiest day of the year was first commemorated, nor who it was that first raised their (presumably) marble mug–bowl hybrid to propose the occasion. That said, if you’d like to pretend it was my Great Grand-Pappy Cerealously IV, a humble Crunch Berry farmer from the milkily humid tropics, I wouldn’t be opposed.

All we know is that since the day starting gaining mainstream traction near the turn of the 21st century, National Cereal Day has remained more popular amongst food and local news outlets than other, more contested days. Perhaps it’s a testament to the comparative cultural significance of breakfast cereal, or perhaps just to the PR power of big cereal companies—bless them all for stocking my pantry in time for National Napping Day next week.

Regardless of the date’s disputed origins, it almost always creeps up on me like a ghost in the night or the smotherly love of a 5am house cat. I tend to myself awakening in disbelief to “March 7th” on the calendar, scrambling past my plans for scrambled eggs to write something fitting for this blog’s bona fide breakfast star. But this year, my resolve was steely and my focus was clear: I simply had to write about the already-legendary Honey Brunches of Oats flavors Post has released to both celebrate National Cereal Day and potentially initiate a bold new phase of the foodstuff’s future:

A dawning golden-brown—and perhaps, eventually, honey-mustardy—era of savory cereal.

Both these bite-sized barn animals have already been spotted in both Giant Eagle and Walmart stores, but my journey from farm to pantry was more of an a-graze-ing race. The kind folks at Post offered to send me a box, but after a postal system error—during which I cursed imagined package thieves before pitying them for the surprisingly fowl bounty they were about to unbox—I had to leave a polite mailbox note and desperately wait to hear from a distant neighbor in hopes they’d still have what was mistakenly delivered to them.

Thankfully, this kind soul was able to recover my morning soul food, and here I sit: pastorally sampling the stuff to see if it’s cud worth chewing or a dud worth ptooey-ing.

Continue reading →