This past week I had another fun gluten-free adventure with Custom Choice Cereal.
This is again timely, as blood tests have confirmed both Ella and Luke are gluten sensitive. They both tested positive for high levels of the Anti Gliadin IGG antibodies. Moving forward, we are now all following a Gluten-Free diet.
Custom Choice cereal enables you to create great tasting gluten-free cereal mixes on-line from a variety of high quality ingredients and delivers each mix conveniently and promptly to your doorstep.
The founders of Custom Choice Cereal, with backgrounds ranging from investment banking and consulting to game development, met in 2007 at UNC and were united by an entrepreneurial mindset and a passion for cereal. You can see founder, Hajo Engelke, in action here.
Their mission is to raise awareness of celiac disease (coeliac in the UK) and gluten intolerance and make cereal *safe* and available to everyone.
It's a REALLY fun and easy 3-step process in which you can create your own designer cereal mix.
1. Select your Base: Choose from the 3 different cereal bases. You simply select the *Choose Me!* tab.
2. Add Ingredients: In other words, you get to pick and choose all the yummy mix-ins. You have a wide variety of organic and non-organic fruits, nuts and seeds to choose from, ranging from dried berries, exotic fruits such as pineapple and goji berries to pistachio nuts. Select the fruits first and then click on the *Nuts and Seeds* tab, to add your remaining mix-ins.
I really like how all the nutrition facts are listed with each ingredient and easily accessible. Simply click on *more information*.
You will also notice your *View Cart Contents* update as you add each ingredient with both the price and the nutritional value. I thought that was REALLY COOL.
3. Place your Order: The first thing you do is name you cereal. Ella and I got a big kick out of this. As our cereal was a joint effort mixing both our preferences we went with EllaBoBanna.
Custom Choice Cereal must have liked it too as I have just noticed it made their top 5 cereal names on their blog for last week.
You can then complete your order by providing shipping details and payment. I also liked the fact that their system saves your mix and gives you a unique Mix ID for re-ordering purposes. They remember so you don't have to. This also appears on the cereal packaging along with the nutritional info of your designer cereal.
Delivery was very prompt and I had this cereal in hand in no time. I can only give positive feedback on the process. It was so easy and intuitive.
So what do we think of this cereal and how have we been eating it?
I went *off* cereal when I went gluten-free 3 years ago because I couldn't find anything I really liked.
I REALLY like the base cereal I chose, the *Good Morning Organic Flakes*. Not too sweet for my tastes, and the the fruits and nuts provided perfect balance of sweetness and crunch.
Ella, on the other hand loved the process of making the cereal, but I couldn't get her to try it. From a child perspective, the mix-ins could be expanded to include just a few extra special add-ins such as chocolate chips or a few GF Marshmallows to make the cereals a little more appealing to children.
Luke, also is not interested in trying it.
I have to say, I don't mind.
All the more for me!
It's been the pre-bedtime snack of choice this week.
A few of the different ways I've been eating EllaBoBanna Cereal:
- Munched on straight out of the bag.
- Mixed with some chunks of dark chocolate and eaten Trail Mix-style.
- Eaten with milk or plain yoghurt and topped with banana or fresh berries.
I also have ideas of mixing some of this into my next batch of protein bars which are an evolving variation on these.
This cereal is on the high-end in terms of price point. My total cost after check-out was over $10.00 which is high even for GF cereal. This cereal is definitely a case of *you get what you pay for* and worthy of a *special occasion* breakfast title.
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Big thanks to Custom Choice Cereal for allowing me to test-drive their system and sample the end product.
I really love your cereal!
