Reviewed: Smart Start Original Antioxidants

I am a cereal person. I eat cereal pretty much every morning, even on weekends when we sleep late and much later slide into the kitchen to begin the happy work of pancakes and eggs and, maybe, sometimes, bacon. And this is true because secretly I've gotten up much earlier and already eaten a bowl of cereal.

For a long time, cereal was the first thing I thought about when I woke up. Sometimes I even thought about it while still sleeping, so that cereal popped up in my dreams. I'm kind of....obsessed.

But I'm that way with a lot of things involving breakfast, because writing is all about mornings that stretch way past their end. I have dozens of pajamas, different combinations to satisfy all types of temperatures, seating arrangements (working at the desk this morning? couch? a pile of pillows on the floor?), and holidays. I eat yogurt and fruit, cereal and cereal and cereal. By six o'clock, I haven't been outside all day. I go to water my plants and see that they're dying of thirst. The mail is lonely and waiting in the mailbox. I've missed a package from my mother. My legs are stiff from sitting cross-legged in a chair for hours on end.

Smart Start is one of those double duty cereals. Yummy in milk (and it's gotta be skim in cereal, whole milk in coffee) but almost better by the handful as a snack. I admit, in the morning I usually reach for Honey Bunches of Oats first. Second choice, Smart Start. Third choice, Cheerios. And when I'm sick of sugar, Basic 4.

Listen to me, people. I know about cereal. If I know anything, it's cereal! I am the sister of one girl who ate Cinnamon Toast Crunch every morning as long as I lived with her, the other who couldn't decide if she liked Captain Crunch Original with Crunchberries, or Peanut Butter Crunch better. I am the daugher of a man who mixed Grape Nuts and Cracklin' Oat Bran in a big cup with milk, who later ate tomato soup mixed with chicken soup for lunch. And my mother gave no pause when buying her kids Cookie Crisp, a cereal that is literally a bowl of cookies for breakfast.

My taste has somewhat refined since then.

(I love cookies.)

92 Stars.