a cereal story...

 When we were young we ate a lot of shredded wheat at our house.  I think my father liked it and it was probably relatively inexpensive.  Which was good because my two brothers each grew up to be 6'6" tall and they did eat a lot.  My spouse teases me because I eat fast.  It was a lesson learned in childhood; necessary if I wanted to get my fair share.

The shredded wheat we ate came in large pieces, I guess I would describe them as pillow shaped loaves, each about 5 inches long and 2.5 inches across, 1 inch thick in the middle. Certainly not the mini wheats you can buy today.  In the winter mom would pour boiling water over the shredded wheat in our bowl, then drain it off and put milk and sugar on it.  It was a quick and easy warm breakfast.  

However my favorite memories of shredded wheat do not involve the food itself.  Instead it was the packaging that was fun.  Lots of children's cereals came with little plastic toys back then, until someone decided they were a choking hazard, which they probably were.  

Shredded wheat, on the other hand, was layered into boxes, I think four pieces to a layer, three layers in a box. Between the layers were flat pieces of balsa wood (later replaced with cardboard) which had airplane pieces that could be punched out along the perforations and assembled.  One piece would have a silhouette of the body of a plane and the other the wings, which could be slid through a slot in the body.  Then, wonder of wonders, you could throw those planes and they would glide through the air, usually for at least several feet.  Much more satisfying than folded paper airplanes.

Of course writing this made me curious about the origins of shredded wheat.  I discovered that Henry Perky, a vegetarian focused on healthy simple foods, was granted a patent for Shredded Wheat on August 1, 1893.  The patent covered the process of boiling, shredding and baking wheat into pillow-shaped biscuits.

So how appropriate is it that I'm writing this on August 1?  This should be "National Shredded Wheat Day" if it isn't already.  

I just checked and it's not.  Instead today is celebrated as "National Girlfriend Day."  Maybe you could at least give her a box of shredded wheat as a gift.