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Monday, February 1, 2010

Custom Choice Cereal Review

custom-choice-cereal

There's nothing quite like the stinging terror one feels as you realize the meal you are constructing for guests has totally disintigrated right before your eyes. Literally, disintigrated. Alex and I had a good non-gf friend over for brunch this weekend, a good friend who happened to bring along his own good non-gf friend whom we had never met before. After a plethora of mimosas and general giddyness it became apparent that our slightly experimental eggless banana waffles were...well, flacid. They did that thing where you open the lid of the waffle maker and each side puts on a game of tug-of-war, both plates getting half of your now-shriveled mass of semi-cooked batter. Awesome.



If I had, at that point in time, tried the new Custom Choice Cereal stowed in the cabinet I would have swapped out our breakfast plates for bowls and served up some kick-ass cinnamon granola. They would have cried with joy and thanked me for my extreme generosity in sharing such nutritious and stunningly delicious breakfast fixins'.

I would have been crowned the Heroine of Brunch.

In case you haven't come across this company, Custom Choice Cereal offers totally customized (who knew?), totally GF cereals delivered right to your door. If you visit the website you'll see that you can choose from three "bases" and then pick and choose a variety of fruits, nuts and seeds. My personal choice was the Cinnamon Granola, blueberries and strawberries. Let me tell you, it is outrageously refreshing to reach into my cabinet and see something other than Chex (which I love, don't get me wrong) and Maple Buckwheat Flakes. Both top notch cereals, but really, I need some VARIETY. And I've been really tired of trying new gf cereals and instead slouching in front of a bowl full of soggy, extra-reinforced cardboard.

Not the case with my Granberry. Light, crispy, crunchy, with absolutely no skimping on the fruit front. The cinnamon granola actually tastes, to my ultimate delight, a bit like Kellogg's Cracklin' Oat Bran. This was one of my favorite cereals as a kid. Yes, I might as well be a forty year old male accountant. The blueberries and strawberries have the slightly gummy thing going on which is pretty typical of fruit-in-cereal varieties. I prefer it to the disc-like dehydrated sort.

custom-choice-cereal-spoon The aspect of Custom Choice Cereal that really got me going is the fact that it's entirely gluten free - all of it. There are other customized cereal ventures but only some of their offerings are gf, leaving cross contamination a big issue. Custom Choice tests their products regularly to make sure they're safe, and to that I say thank you.

My cereal was yummy right out of the bag sans milk, it would be AMAZING on top of oatmeal or other warm cereals or maybe yogurt, as a crumble topping to a fruit dessert like an Apple Crisp and it definitely begs to be made into a portable bar of sorts. So I ask, are customized granola/cereal bars in the future? Because that would make me a very happy cereal fiend indeed.

Really, the only downside is the price. I am always on the fence with this caveat because I so want to support awesome GF companies and I totally understand that manufacturing gf food is more expensive than wheat-filled food. But then I look at my bank account and get that nervous feeling. Is this cereal more expensive than store-bought cereal? Yes, including shipping. Is it absolutely delicious? Certainly. Is it awesome to have a change from your everyday, void-of-taste millet puffs? YES. So give it a try, mix up some tidbits to your liking, use it in awesome recipes or straight up with milk. Variety is the spice of life, kick it up.

4 comments:

  1. Jessica - I agree Custom Choice Cereal is delicious! It is important to keep in mind that the incremental expense over and above the price of "normal" cereal is tax deductible, which can 'help the wallet' a bit. You have great photos of the cereal!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi anon, that's true - I did just recently read about that option. Unfortunately, you must be "officially" diagnosed by a doctor in order to do this, which a lot of GFers are not. But, still a viable option for those who are!

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  3. Great service, i've been seeing a lot of these custom food websites and it's getting really really exciting! I've seen a similar site to this called mixmygranola.com, there's also a custom chocolate site out there.

    Great read, definetly worth a try.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hey Anon, the trend today seems to be 'give the people what they want' - whatever that is :) Good thing for us!

    ReplyDelete

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