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| In milk, bad fake Cheerios grow to the size of donuts. Grrr! |
...until two days ago, when I purchased a case, only to discover the old-style subpar fake Cheerios, the very porous ones (right) with visible holes that look obviously punched out of a big sheet of Cheerio dough. These would, I knew, swell up unacceptably as they sogged and softened in the milk. I wanted to pull a full-bore Howard Beale moment, but had no one for an audience but the kids, who were already a bit annoyed at having to continue eating not just fake Cheerios from now on, but crappy fake Cheerios at that.
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| Not really this angry, at least not now. |
Aldi, I thought we had an understanding. Can't we just go back to the way things were?
Seriously, though, I understand and respect that the reason for Aldi's success is that they keep costs low and quality reasonably high. But somebody made a bad quality decision here by changing their private-label manufacturer. I'd rather pay a bit more for fake Cheerios than the same low price for crappy ones.
9 comments:
Finally back to Aldi! I am thinking of taking a trip to Chicago just to visit the store. It sounds so much like our Trader Joe's. In any case, Dana doesn't eat much cereal, but Juliana eats The Trader Joe's Frosted Shredded Wheats combined with the Organic Multi-grain flakes (Spelt, Kamut, and Quinoa all in a tasty flake!). We do like their "Fake-O" too, but it's a property of "O's" of all sorts that they get soggy unless they are coated in Sugar.
My suggestion: try a different cereal. It might be more expensive, but it will be more filling and less rant-inducing. :)
but it's all about the rant potential, Pete! :D The kids constantly bug me to buy real cereal. Kid2's latest grocery list for me included the following line item:
"Actual Legit Breakfast Cereal."
The same family that owns Aldi also owns Trader Joe's. Their knock-off of Honey Bunches of Oats is inedible, but if you are careful you can score some of the best wine bargains on the planet - I don't mean two- (now three-)buck chuck. They had an incredible Sangiovese last year for three dollars a bottle.
it's true, Ralph! I've blogged previously about their tasty wine and gourmet chocolate, and especially enjoy their dirt-cheap, fruity Riesling.
You had a pretty good thing going, I tend to think General Mills sends along their "gettin kinda old" stuff to their off-label outlets. YOU on the other hand were single handedly keeping the stock rotation sufficiently high that it was always fresh. This was, alas, your undoing when Gen Mills realized it was no longer moving out the old stock but having to produce fresh product for Aldi! They raised their price, Aldi shopped for a better offer. Yet another little glitch in the law of supply and demand. But fear not, without an outlet for their over-runs, General Mills will soon enough be dealing with Aldi again. Maybe you should buy one box at a time for a while though.
By the way, I'm going to have my students design and develop their own muesli/granola next year. We spend a week on cerial which I at first thought was a bit silly before I saw the possibilities . . . .
I need a Muesli Design Team T-shirt if you guys get that far. And by the way, Mike, thanks for the cereal inventory lesson. Blech. But if I bought 1 box of fake Cheerios at a time, I'd be there literally every 18 hours...
So let me know when your gang perfects their own cereal - how fun is that? You can use "Marren Crunch" as a working name for free if you want.
What about a granola design? Mueslix always seemed kind of "grainy" to me (maybe it's the raw oats.) I know granola has lots of sugar, but you can add it to the tasteless generic-Os to give them some flavor.
Also, Susan, I am not surprised that you are going through that much cereal. If Aidan and Joe are anything like Me and Robert you are going to go through a lot more before they are done growing. I would normally eat about 5 bowls a morning with a half-gallon of milk; yes, that's every day.
Not Marren Crunch. Reynaldo Crunch maybe. The kids are going to do stuff like that in teams (brigades!). It's not going to be quite as simple as "I like cherries and I like walnuts . . . ." They are going to need to try to come up with something genuinely healthy, do a nutrition analysis, describe the benefits of anti-oxidants they are sneaking into it. I'll probably make a contest of it and invite celebrity chefs and nutritionists as judges. You're invited! Do you want to be a celebrity chef or a celebrity nutritionist?
wow, Mike, that sounds fantastic! keep me posted and it would be an honor! Reynaldo Crunch, hee :D
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