newyorker:

The Museum of Food and Drink’s Dave Arnold explores the origins of breakfast cereal with the puffing gun: http://nyr.kr/13yFrud

Okay, this is just getting creepy. I was already having the kind of day where you feel all weirdo because a word you’ve never heard before/haven’t thought of in a long time popped up twice. It was ‘burdock.’ The name of the street my grandparents lived on. Also an ingredient in a new tea I’m trying. Also saw it on a menu for a Korean place I won’t be going to tonight because it closes too early. Then I started searching for nearby restaurants open past 8pm and— BLAMMO— BURDOCK A THIRD TIME! This time in a very intriguing recipe: pulled burdock burrito at Live Food Bar in the Annex. Anyhoo.

The other night I was munching on some bedtime cereal, as you do. I recently decided to buy Froot Loops. It was a total act of whimsy. But then I became immediately obsessed with them. I had them for breakfast, after work, before bed. I think the sugar in them was totally addicting, as I’m not normally the kind of lady to eat sugar cereal. (Usually my breakfast is oatmeal.) Anyway, I thought perhaps a tiny baby step towards a more healthy way of being, or at least a baby step away from being addicted to Froot Loops, was to buy Multigrain Cheerios instead. I know they’re also full of sugar, but at least they don’t have all the freaky colourings, so they must be a smidge better in that way. From there, I’d phase out the sugar cereals to go straight back to regular Cheerios, and from there, SEE YOU LATER SHORT-LIVED BUT FRIGHTENING KIDS CEREAL ADDICTION. I laugh in your face, Toucan Sam. Ha! Ha!

So there I was, prepping for bed with a little crunchy delight of Multigrain Cheerios when I wondered, out loud, to the disinterest of my boyfriend, “How do they make Cheerios?”

“They mash up grain paste and shoot it into a mould,” he said, crushing my child-like wonder. (It was late. He was tired. He gets a free pass.)

But that couldn’t be it, could it? “But the sides of the Cheerio aren’t sharp edges, like you’d get with a mould,” I protested. We had no answer.

And then here I come onto the Tumblr to talk about something completely different and what do I see before me but a video explaining HOW THEY MAKE PUFFED BREAKFAST CEREAL.

Okay there is some serious juju going around in the atmosphere right now. And that juju is friends with my detox tea and also with historical food videos from the New Yorker. And it wants me to eat cereal and burdock-laden treats and I am pretty much okay with that.