Riley and Me

I can distinctly remember the first time I saw Riley Nelson play football. It was 2006, and if my below-grade-level match skills serve me right, I was a senior in high school (this, by the way, is the point where you whistle and say, ‘damn son, you’re old.’) Spending a productive afternoon in the living room of my parents’ house in Ellicott City, Maryland, I ran across a MASN-2 feed from some God-forsaken location of a university even I had never really heard of. Utah State was playing some school that day — the exact WAC opponent, I can’t recall — and stopping briefly between the anxious move to the next station and game, I caught a glimpse of a dynamic athlete.

Riley Nelson spun out of a tackle, hit the ground (but didn’t) and sprinted to the endzone. The subsequent touchdown which wasn’t (he was ruled down by contact) was the kind of thing an impressionable college football fan and teenager keeps in the back of his mind. Call it a “player cognition theory” if you will, and even extend it to the university. A few minutes later I turned the channel, but the name “Riley Nelson” and “Utah State” suddenly had meaning.

Flash forward five years later. I’m a half decade removed from that floor, yet I’m sitting here all the same. An out-of-work college graduate – ironically enough, from Utah State — I’m watching the same exact player, who, as if laughing in the face of all conception of four-year eligibility, is still playing college football. Riley Nelson and me (yes, and me, because those are how the words form in my mind) now find each other in a curious position. He’s no longer at Utah State and has seemingly burned bridges with many in Logan, yet he’s moved on. I was no longer in Ellicott City, burned some bridges, went to Logan and loved it, but also had to move on. But now I’m back here sitting on my butt, and he’s leading the school he felt compelled to transfer to for reasons all his own.

Riley wouldn’t remember the one conversation we had in our lives. It was on the phone in 2008, and the last thing he was going to do was to open up for some college paper writer looking for a sensational quote about betraying a university and community. I remember the conversation though, and I remember how stalwart he was in defending the course he’d taken in life. He really felt God had led him away from Logan, just as — oh, the irony again — I had felt God led me to Logan. I walked away from that conversation with a respect for him, a respect, I want to add, that continued even as his once-bright career looked to have passed him by with the triumphant arrival and sensational play of Jake Heaps at the close of the 2010 season.

Considering this, perhaps my fellow Utah State graduates will forgive me when I admit I was rooting Nelson while he was leading the Cougars on their game-winning drive in yesterday’s 24-21 Armed Forces Bowl win. I won’t deny a burst of sudden emotion when he brilliantly faked a spike at the goal-line only to connect with Cody Hoffman for a touchdown, and I won’t pretend like the victory didn’t mean something to me as both an individual and a fan.

You can talk all you want about loyalty. You can talk all you want about throwing away the love shown to you by an entire community, or wasting your potential on a circuitous route to only minor glory. But there’s another way to look at it, and that’s through the eyes of the person making the decisions that other label as such.Riley and me, me and Riley, we’re not so different, I think. And yesterday, sitting on my parents’ floor watching him on a football field all these years later from when I first saw him, I can’t help but think that while I’m really in the same place, I too, have found a hint of redemption.

And that’s a story worth writing about.

Frosted Toast Crunch is Not French Toast Crunch

Expectations. Like those once reserved for the budding young sports writer whose stories were to be gracing the pages of Sports Illustrated by now, the promise of something great often leads us and those around us to disappointment or disillusionment when those promises don’t exactly come to fruition. God knows Kriss Proctor and the Navy offense were supposed to cap off the 2011 season with more than “just” a win over Army, and goodness attests to the fact that Boise State’s “dream team” had a perfect run to a BCS game — or, dare I suggest, Title Game — had they just been able to meet expectations and make a damn field goal.

Frosted Toast Crunch is a cereal of great expectations. Nevermind that its brother in sweetness Cinnamon Toast has a cult following greater than many small religions, but its appeal to the memory of the bygone French Toast Crunch makes its recent appearance on shelves a must-try for any child of the 1990s. French Toast Crunch, for the more football inclined readers of the audience, is something like the ’72 Dolphins. It was perfect. Or at least as perfect as sweetened corn in crunchy form with vitamins and minerals could be. Yet, like those “perfect” Dolphins, the recreation of its overwhelming awesomeness has never quite been repeated. There have been close attempts, no doubt, but has anything truly matched it? The answer, my friends, is “no.” And so, in all its discontinued and timeless perfection, French Toast Crunch lives on in growing legend – the cereal, we say, that broke our hearts when it was discontinued on these American shores.

To be perfectly honest I can’t remember much about French Toast Crunch. Like watching highlights of the ’72 Dolphins that came well before my time, my ability to come to grasp with its perfection as a breakfast cereal is based on conjecture. That being said, I feel confident in proclaiming that the new Frosted Toast Crunch cereal is not French Toast Crunch. To use a football analogy (new readers…get used to it) it’s not even the 2007 Patriots or 2011 Packers. What it is is like so many NFL teams that go 12-4 or 11-5 during any given year. A good, but not quite great, cereal that leaves you sitting in front of your television after the Division Championship Game asking yourself what could have been.

Looking at Frosted Toast Crunch is like looking at Cinnamon Toast Crunch. The “Frosted” part isn’t so much what you’d see on Frosted Cheerios or Frosted Flakes (those being more of a glaze) but rather a liberally applied coating of sugar. As you can see from the pictures, the coating sticks to your fingers with even the slightest touch, making snack-baggage a dubious difficulty, especially should you attempt to snack on these on the job or near a computer.

The taste seems similar to Cinnamon Toast Crunch minus the cinnamon, which, despite the promise of cinnamon on the box, really should have been featured more prominently. Despite only nine grams of sugar per 30 oz. (as opposed to 10 grams in CTC) the sweetness seems greater, although I still find it a bit one-note. As for the vanilla flavor, I suppose it’s there, but I need prompting from the back-of-the-box description before noticing it. Not that one-note sugar and slight vanilla taste makes for a bad cereal. To be honest, the toasted wheat flour and rice base does offer more variety in texture and chew than, say, Frosted Flakes. But like an offense that gets away from a balanced running and passing attack, it can only take me so far. I miss the assertive cinnamon flavor and want something to richen the coating, but find both desires unmet, and settle for trying it with milk.

Interestingly enough, Frosted Toast Crunch is one of the few cereals I seem to enjoy more with milk than dry. Like Cinnamon Toast Crunch it takes on a pleasant level of sogginess while still retaining its sugary sheen, transferring an ideal sweetness to the milk that a long-standing lacto-phobe like myself can appreciate. What you’re left with is an end-milk that would be banned in most public school systems due to added sugar, as well as a dissolving crunch in the wheat and rice base.

Final Thoughts

Would I buy Frosted Toast crunch again? Eh, maybe. Overall, I still like Cinnamon Toast Crunch better, and find the taste of the cinnamon sugar to hold a hint of the butter flavor that once made French Toast Crunch so popular. And perhaps that undermines the very idea of Frosted Toast Crunch. Expecting a step forward to the return to French Toast Crust — the return, if you will, to the perfect season — I instead find something which is just good. I have had many good cereals though, and I’ve watched many good football teams. But excellent? No, not even in the same ballpark. Ultimately, Frosted Toast Crunch isn’t a failure because it’s not good. But it’s a failure because it can’t live up to something it promises — through indirect marketing or my own unrealistic expectations — and subjected to a sea of sugary milk and woulda, coulda, shouldas.

•  Price: $2.50 (on sale at Topps)
• Ranking:6/10
• Chances I’d Buy Again: 10%

Peanut Butter Multigrain Cheerios, Dulce de Leche Cheerios, and the undisputed awsomeness of “Cheerio” as a greeting

When I was working as a front desk receptionist at a resort in Virginia, I occasionally would have the great pleasure of speaking with individuals visiting or calling from the United Kingdom. Aside from providing my auditory receptors (read: ears) with a much-needed break from the sometimes entitled accents of the local Virginia gentry, these conversations proved a welcomed change of pace from the usual American phraseology. I will, of course, trade a “uh…ok” with a “cheerio” any day of the week, especially when that day had left me with nothing in the way of being cheery about.

Such is why I love British people visiting America. Always happy and always upbeat, they’re grateful for any assistance even a stuttering, directionally challenged front desk employee can provide them.

I tell this little story because it is without question my greatest significant reason for purchasing Cheerios the cereal. Don’t get me wrong — Cheerios of all flavors and nutritional profiles are welcomed in my pantry, and none are truly revolting — yet in a world of cereal options, even offerings of chocolate and frosted really don’t scream “yo, buy me!”

But Peanut Butter and Dulce de Leche? Now we might be onto something. Spotting these brand-spanking-new offerings on shelves just the other day, I decided it was time to test whether the iconic brand could perk my interest in the same way the former Limey patrons of the resort could (and I say that with all the love only a military history buff can).

Dulce De Leche Cheerios

I first discovered the flavor of Dulce de Leche while making cookies my the same name with a friend of mine during my senior year of college. I distinctly remember the evening, as it was one of those wholesome Utah activities that only a born-and-bred Catholic east coaster like myself could interpret as a “wait a second, is this a date?” type moments. Nevertheless, what I remember of the cookies we made — with that sweet, slightly smokey caramel depth that comes from heating sweetened condensed milk — was awesome. As for the new Cheerio flavor advertising “rich caramel flavor and the goodness of Cheerios,” I have mixed feelings. On one hand, the taste does strike me a distinct in caramel flavor. Two types of lightly glazed Cheerios both taste of a deeper brown sugar than one usually comes across in cereal, and both pack a pleasant sweetness that is neither cloying nor restrained. Nevertheless, there is an off taste I associate with banana bread that has been left out on the table a day too long, and an altogether weird mesh of sweetness and not-quite-caramel flavor that strikes me as artificial. A lack of richness (see, no saturated fat) comes off as well, as does a lack of development in the depth of sugar. Decent, but probably not something I go out of my way for in the future.

• Price: $2.50 (on sale at Topps)
• Ranking: 5/10
• Chances I’d Buy Again: 15%

Peanut Butter Cheerios

Ladies and gentleman, I think we’ve just met a new member of Adam’s Top 10. I recently published my thoughts on another new Peanut Butter flavored cereal, concluding — amongst other things — that it did not live up to the current gold brownish standard of Reese’s Peanut Butter Puffs. Unlike the new Pebbles Boulder Chocolate Peanut Butter flavor, however, Peanut Butter Cheerios doesn’t try to match the often difficult to execute taste of candy in cereal form. Instead, Peanut Butter Cheerios (which comes in the multigrain flavor base) has the strongest peanut butter flavor of any cereal I’ve sampled to date. The ingredients paint a picture of five different grains (including Sorghum and Barley) but I only noticed three different colored O’s. Nonetheless, they have both a slight glaze and external coating, with a mouthfeel that’s more oily that most cereals, but not in a pleasent, honest-to-God peanut butter manner. It is, the be sure, peanut butter, pure and simple, and not just in flaor. Neither too salty nor too sweet (despite nine grams of sugar) its greatest asset is its simplicity. I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but the choice not to flavor with HFCS and/or brown sugar keeps any “off” flavors from developing, while the multitude of grains makes snacking on the O’s very much like eating a homemade PBJ on a nice slice of oat bread. Not only am I loving the flavor, but at only 110 calories and no saturated fat per 28 grams, it’s healthy enough to please even the most stuck-up of food bloggers. Good stuff, for sure, and a must buy.

•  Price: $2.50 (on sale at Topps)
• Ranking: 8.5/10
• Chances I’d Buy Again: 80%

Final Thoughts

I should have mentioned both of these cereals were eaten in a dry-run setting. While snacking on dry cereal is clearly my modus operandi when consuming toasted oats, the appeal of a flavor based around milk makes me curious how the Dulce de Leche actually fares in the drink. As for Peanut Butter Cheerios, I’m already contemplating the possible mix-ins to include with it in my custom cereal snack mixes. Chocolate Cheerios and Banana Nut Cheerios are obvious choices, as are anything with berry flavors (do they still make Berry Burst Cheerios?). In any case, I will highly recommend the latter flavor from General Mills, and report back if the addition of milk should make Dulce de Leche Cheerios any more appealing.

Check ‘em out: Cheerios.com