Alpen Cereal

I was at the market today and found the Alpen brand of cereal that was a source of an unpalatable nightmare from my stay in London. I no longer recall why I had no milk, but I did have cereal. I think I had planned to eat it with just yoghurt ala Euro style as I had a big tub of Biopot (yum!). Well, upon dumping the cereal out into a bowl, I noticed a lot of white powder all mixed in. Ehh??? Has it gone bad? Or is this an enhanced cereal of some sort like soy powder that's all the rage in smoothies? I had a bad feeling about this...but I threw in my yoghurt anyway. Of course, it congealed into a huge ball that sucked the yoghurt dry. Yuck. Worse still to come a few mornings later when I ran out of yoghurt. What did i do? I added water to the cereal. After all, maybe the powder is for those without milk, like...instant cereal, right? The answer is a big NO. Don't do it!! It was just awful. It looked disgusting as well with the powder floating on top. If I'd used milk, at least they're both white and so would be camouflaged. Thankfully, these boxes of cereal aren't that large though they come with a hefty price tag. I shook the remaining cereal around to let the powder drop away and then ate it dry. Not particularly better in that plenty of powder remained to make my mouth dry while leaving a gritty coating on my teeth and tongue as I ate. Ugh! The next time I went to market, I chose pure muesli. None of this Alpen stuff. Back then, I had concluded the powder was whey powder as listed in the ingredients. It doesn't matter whether I read the ingredients list or not as it seems rather innocuous on the label. The picture on the box had none of it clinging to the cereal either! Who'd have guessed???

So back to the present. As I stare at the all too familiar packaging, I notice it's on sale. Hmmm...I wonder whether it's the same stuff...so I pick it up to read the ingredients list and aha!!! I see skim milk powder as an ingredient. I suppose whey powder is either unacceptably worded here or too unfamiliar or even perhaps negatively associated with body builders and their giant tubs of GNC whey powder. =P Or they changed forumulations even. I'm sure my fellow shoppers thought me crazy as I audibly laughed upon finding the revolting ingredient that still makes me cringe. Sure enough, I am crazy as I threw it into the cart. This time though, I knew I had milk in the fridge. I figured I should at least give it a 2nd chance by eating it properly...

Well I ate it with a massive amount of milk and the verdict? Better, but still gross. Considering how much inexpensive wheat flakes they throw in, this stuff is still overpriced. How can they call it muesli with a straight face? It's more like skim-milk powder covered wheat flakes with a smattering of oats and raisins. If you're lucky, some invisible nuts (sliced they say) too. I'd forgotten what it tasted like, but ah, the unpleasant memories rushed back. The first few spoonfuls were a bit gritty from undissolved skim-milk powder. Lovely, lovely. Fortunately, it had all dissolved a short while later, but then I started to relive the *next* unpleasant memory. I now realize that it's not just the skim-milk powder that sucks any liquids up, but also the wheat flakes. Before I was halfway through the bowl, the cereal had already congealed into a loose ball. It's no wonder my yoghurt attempt was such a massive failure!! I'm incredibly thankful (again!) that this is a relatively small box of cereal. I may need a gallon of milk per bowl's worth to finish it off though...

On closer inspection of the picture on the front of the box, I could just make out white specks on the cereal, but only probably because I was *looking* for it. The picture is like a drug addict out of rehab who's starting to snort again but denies it. What you get out of the box is cereal that is flying high on cocaine with white powder all over his nose. Doctored marketing shot? I'll say. The offending specks as seen below all over the cereal and clinging to the bowl:

So am I crazy? Stupid? Well, I've concluded I'm stupidly curious...sometimes outrageously so. It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion. This is reinforced by the same question people always ask: "What were you thinking?!?!" Hmm...well...it usually starts off like this: "Hmm...I wonder...."