How to eat Cornflakes

I grew up in a blue-collar suburb flanked by factories. We were the only Asians within a two-mile radius. Our neighbours were men dressed in hi-vis vests, cargo pants, steel-capped boots and either hard hats or hair nets. They would pour out of their steaming boiler rooms at the sound of the smoko whistle, empty truck palettes becoming makeshift seats for them to perch on as they wolfed down their salami and cheese sandwiches in a few ravenous chomps. Their wives would pack them cool drinks in summer, and thermoses of hot tea during the bleak winter months, when daylight savings would cloak the world in longer stretches of darkness. Mind you, it didn’t make much difference to the workers in the windowless factories. At the end of each day, they would stream out of the factories like ants making their way back to their respective queens who were waiting dutifully at their single-storey fibro nests with their supper of meat and three veg. The asbestos poisoning and lawsuits by dying men and their soon-to-be-widows came later; though that is a different story. Ditto the chemical leaks into the local water supply.

The closest factory to my home was the Kellogs complex. It was mysterious, with its gated entrance. So gigantic it almost required a postcode of its own. If I was in my backyard or if I had the window open for the cool southerly, I could smell when they were in their different phases of cooking Cornflakes. My favourite was the popcorn phase. Even now, I still get cravings from having sniffed so much popcorn as a child. Less pleasant was when the air reeked like a science experiment gone wrong. My parents used my childish fear and curiosity to keep my behaviour in check. They told me tales of naughty missing children and giant cooking vats filled with boiling oil and let my overactive imagination fill in the blanks. As a result, I was an extraordinarily well-behaved child.

Decades later, there’s a housing crisis in Sydney. For a person on an average income, dreams of home ownership have dissipated like factory smoke. The Kellogs factory is still there. But my childhood suburb has been gentrified, with blue-collars pushed out to further suburbia whilst the white(collars) move in, knocking down the quaint old homes and forsaking gardens in favour of taking up as much legally-permittable land space as possible with their big, boxy, double-storey McMansions.

I cannot solve the bigger problems. But one thing I learned from growing up in these ’burbs was how to eat Cornflakes. Here’s a handy guide I put together.

How to eat Cornflakes: a rookie’s guide

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1. Choose your vessel

a. Select wisely: too big and your Cornflakes will go soggy.

b. Chef’s recommendation: choose one of those small bowls they serve rice in at Chinky Chow’s. You know the ones—they nestle into your left palm just right. (These days, fancy Asian fusion establishments use them as rice moulds, overturning perfectly formed white mounds onto over-sized white plates. It’s all about amplifying the white.)

c. Note: ‘Fusion’ is just another word for ‘mongrel’.

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2. Choose your Goldilocks of weapons

a. A standard tablespoon will be too cumbersome to counterbalance your dainty bowl.

b. A dessert spoon will be too small. You won’t get enough flake and milk onto each thimble-sized scoop.

c. Try a slotted spoon from Hot Dollar (you’ll be able to find one there ’cos they’re all run by Asians). You’ll find the ergonomics just right. And if there has been too much milk drainage, slurp a little extra straight from the bowl as though it were miso…just white.

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3. Decant Cornflakes

a. Direct from cardboard box.

b. Store remainder in tall Tupperware container salvaged from Salvos from someone’s nan—you know the one: it’s mustard-yellow with white stencilled flower prints—into your culturally-appropriated bowl.

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4. Pour in a dash* of milk

a. Refer to 1(a): a predicament one would arguably wish to avoid.

* Not a swimming pool, not a wading pool, but just enough to lubricate.

** As a child, I used to eat my Cornflakes dry. I couldn’t stomach the sogginess. My friends discovered this peccadillo at school camp. They called me a freak. Don’t be like me. Don’t be a freak. Add that dash of milk.

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5. Realise you haven’t been eating Cornflakes at all

a. Say, what? Yup, that’s right. You have been eating torn up confetti strips of the cardboard box the cereal came in.

b. They pretty much taste the same.

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6. F**k this sh*t

a. F**k the Cornflakes.

b. Go back to eating the fish head Congee from the not-written-down recipe passed down to you from your own Khun Yai, which you had been too ashamed to admit to liking.

c. If anyone has a problem with you eating your stinking, mushy fish head Congee, tell them to f**k off. It’s f**king delicious.

d. Throw this instruction manual away. Nobody should be telling you how you should be experiencing your oral pleasure.