Living on Food Storage 2024: Last grocery shopping trip was November 2023. Today is January 26, 2024.
Important Notes:
We are not a 'cereal' eating family. It's for two reasons really. First, we aren't 'breakfast' people and second, we normally are a zero sugar family and have been for years.
When it came to stocking for 'just in case' days, I knew if it were truly a situation that were eating from our pantry and storage, we would be happy to have breakfast items, and wouldn't care if they had sugar in them. As a matter of fact, eating stored food items probably would mean we would be happy to have a 'special' item once in a while.
So while were not a breakfast family nor a sugar family, I was once-in-awhile picking up some cereals or other items I saw that looked new or fun or I thought we might use in the future.
Now, I KNEW and I KNOW most cereals DO NOT STORE WELL. Not in their original wrapping for sure, but even in other circumstances, the quality or taste might change (even if they are SAFE to eat... again, it's a taste or texture thing).
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Remember this one?
In 2020 (I think) The Elf on the Shelf Candy Cane Cookie Cereal was released. It looked fun and I thought The Little Ones might like it as a special Christmas time cereal so I bought it as well as the Sugar Cookie version.
Although we opened the Sugar Cooke Elf on a Shelf version, we never opened or used the Candy Cane Cookie version.
The best by date on this one was December 2021. That means it's only just 2 years past 'best buy' and I was hopeful that the sugar in the cereal might have helped the grains in the cereal pieces keep their flavor. It also has mini dried marshmallows, which I thought would still be firm and crunchy.
They weren't. And the sugar didn't help the grains in the cereal. Even though the cereal box was unopened and the inner bag was completely sealed tight, their bags and seals are not as air tight as say, a mylar bag with an oxygen absorber.
The grains had started to change flavor to that old going-off taste. The marshmallows were not crisp any longer and were squishy.
I actually liked this one on the rare occasion I would eat cereal, and one of our daughters absolutely LOVES this one. I think I originally had 4 of these in the 2-3 year pantry but within the first year had given 2 of them to that particular daughter as they got really hard to find in the stores (Do they still make these? I don't know since I don't buy or eat cereal).
Opening this one, I thought for sure it would be terrible because it's primarily large flakes that would have gone 'off'. But surprise... not bad! It wasn't 100% but the change in taste was so slight that it was hardly noticeable.
