Until college, cereal was something only to be consumed at breakfast.  It was something I ate without much of a liking for it, but I had it every morning with milk and orange juice.

Then, I got to college and faced the experience of eating in the dining halls.  Our entire cross country team would pile into the Caf every night after practice and sit in the same cluster of tables.  Most of the time, we were exhausted from whatever workout or long run we had done that day and were dying for food.  Of course, the stingy workers would only hand out a few pellets of nasty roast beef or a few noodles of pasta after standing in line for ten minutes.  We were starving — give us more!

“Get back in line,” the workers retorted.

Thus, after whatever inhaling whatever meager rations the Caf workers gave us, everyone on the team finished their dinner with a nightly ritual: cereal.  Cereal wasn’t portion controlled by the miserly Caf workers, so we ate a lot of it.  When I first arrived as a freshman, I couldn’t believe everyone else ate cereal for dinner.  It seemed so out of place, but soon enough, I found myself doing it every night along with the rest of my teammates.

The Caf always had Kellog’s granola, which in some way or another became my cereal of choice for breakfast and dinner.  A bowl of it in the morning gave me most of the energy I needed to get through a day of class and practice.  It was also great after plenty of grueling workouts.  So, I not only ate cereal with almost every meal, but I became addicted to granola.

At first, I stuck to the Kellog’s brand, which I ate at the Caf.  It wasn’t until my sophomore year that I discovered bulk granolas in the grocery stores, while a few years later I found Trader Joe’s, which sold the same bulk granolas as well as other granola-based cereals for cheap.  All the while I continued to eat cereal for dinner while at school: my parents would have a fit if I did that at home.  Then, after screwing around on the Internet, I found that it was easy to make your own granola with a minimum of ingredients.  I found a great recipe here and also here, but my version is as follows:

Preheat oven to 275 and combine the following in a large mixing bowl:

• 4 cups rolled oats
• 1 cup pecans
• 1/3 cup, heaping, packed brown sugar
• pinch of salt
• 4 tsp canola oil
• 1 cup pure maple syrup (I use Grade B, but Grade A Dark Amber is also good)

Place on a cookie sheet with cooking spray.  Bake for about 40 minutes, stirring every 10-15 minutes to allow the edges and center to dry evenly.  When the oats turn golden brown and the syrup has been absorbed, it’s done.

Since I don’t eat in the dining halls anymore, I wonder if my old teammates still finish off every dinner in the Caf with a bowl of cereal.