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    The Great American Cereal Book

    By | Shine Food – Tue, Jan 31, 2012 3:38 PM EST

    By Esther Sung, Epicurious.com

    If you're a cereal lover, you'll enjoy poring through Marty Gitlin and Topher Ellis' The Great American Cereal Book: How Breakfast Got Its Crunch (Abrams Image). Full of factoids and countless cereal boxes from days of yore, Gitlin and Ellis trace the history of this most iconic of American breakfast dishes. It's a lot of fun to look at how cereal packaging has changed over the decades, and for anyone a little bit nostalgic, it's the perfect venue for a walk down memory lane. In fact, seeing the box of Honey Combs reminded me of how I lost a baby tooth while eating some, and why I could never eat them again.

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    This book is encyclopedic in its range but as is stated in the Preface, they focus on cereals produced only by Kelloggs, Post, General Mills, Nestle, Nabisco, Ralston, and Quaker Oats Company. So the cereal brands in my kitchen, Arrowhead Mills and Barbara's Bakery, aren't in this book. But that's ok.

    So, let's take a walk down memory lane. Do you remember eating any of these cereals? Got a favorite? And like me, do you sometimes eat cereal for dinner?

    Photos: Cereal boxes © 2011 Rob Ritzenthaler and Don Chick. Courtesy of Abrams Image.

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      My after-school snack was a sacred ritual. I sat on the carpet in my parents' bedroom at a low table, the television turned to "I Dream of Jeannie," and ate a peanut butter and honey sandwich cut into neat squares. I wasn't fussy about crusts. I just loved the sticky pairing of creamy peanut butter with syrupy golden sweetness drizzled from a honey bear in diagonals across the soft white bread. Nothing else--save for maybe apples and peanut butter in a pinch--could have made for as sweet an