My Special Dinner

I've been looking forward to my special dinner tonight for at least a couple of days. I purchased the ingredients days ago, but I had already planned my weekend meals, and I wanted to be sure to eat it when I had time to really savor the experience. I described my special dinner to my friends Phyliss and J-Dobbs (I don't think anyone else calls her that, but I even have her listed that way in my phone) at lunch today, and their response (since they know me and expect these things) was amusement.

"Please tell me you're going to post about this," J-Dobbs laughed.

"Of course I am!"

What's so special about my special dinner?



It explodes in my mouth.

Sort of.

I saw these at the store the other day when I was picking up bananas (I've been eating a yogurt and a banana every morning for breakfast, and enjoying it a lot more than drinking a Slim Fast shake; same calorie count, but I feel full longer and I get to chew something) and was immediately intrigued. How did this work? Was it like a box of Fruity Pebbles with a bag of Pop Rocks mixed in? How bad could it be?

I'll be honest: Fruity Pebbles are almost the worst of the overly sugared breakfast cereals. They might be the worst, actually. I can't think of one more useless and consistently disappointing. I've thought this ever since I was very little because Fruity Pebbles are not special. They live in the shadow of their more glamorous sibling, Cocoa Pebbles. Cocoa Pebbles make the milk into chocolate milk. They are transformational. What do Fruity Pebbles do?

Nothing.

They go limp after about a minute in the milk, and then you have a bowl of fruity slop that doesn't even taste like fruit.

When you look at it like that, they have nowhere to go but up, and being the only exploding breakfast cereal on the cereal aisle might be their ticket to redemption. They have nothing to lose. Nothing.

I leaned over the bag, poised to inhale, as I tore it open. Poppin' Pebbles smell like artificial grape. The smell was pretty strong until I poured milk into the bowl, and then it vanished entirely.

Appearance-wise, the colors are definitely a different pallet from the Fruity Pebbles:



The smell I identified as "artificial grape" might actually be "artificial mixed berry", based on those colors.

The bright green blobs are the Poppin' Pebbles, in the... flesh? Is that an appropriate word to use for food this unnatural?

Whatever the word for them, they made no sound as I poured the milk over them. I stirred for a moment (like most normal people, I demand that every piece of cereal be wet with milk before I eat any), and then eagerly took my first bite, being sure to spoon up a few of the green pebbles as I lifted the cereal to my mouth. As I bit the green pebbles, I felt them crackling a little on my tongue.

The first bite was the only bite that did.

The milk dissolved all of the other crackers as the pebbles turned directly from cereal to mush, just like I thought it would.

My special dinner wasn't really all that special.