When I was in college, now forty years ago, my favorite breakfast was animal crackers and grapefruit juice.  I would get up most mornings around 5:15 so that I could be in the practice room by 6am, getting in almost two hours of practice before my eight o’clock class.  This college routine taught me much about the discipline needed as a musician, but maybe not so much about breakfast being the most important meal of the day.

As a college freshman, I didn’t drink coffee.  That habit didn’t come until a few years later when I was in graduate school.  Orange juice was never a viable morning beverage choice because it doesn’t sit well on my stomach; it reappears almost as quickly as it went down.  Ask the poor blood bank tech who made me drink orange juice after donating blood.  I warned her, but she didn’t believe me, lecturing me on the importance of hydrating after donating blood.  I then returned the lecturing favor by sharing the importance of listening to people.  She thanked me by bringing me a Coke.  So, since the two most common breakfast beverages were not options for me, I opted for grapefruit juice.  To my college freshman mind, this seemed like a healthy choice.

And animal crackers have always been a favorite anytime food.  I think that started when my mom would buy me the box of Barnum’s animal crackers with the shoestring handle every time we went to the Navy commissary to grocery shop.  I ate a lot of animal crackers in my youth because back in the 60’s, children who were under ten and not yet old enough to have their own military ID were required to ride in the shopping cart…and in the seat up front not in the back.  I remember my mother complaining about bruised shins every time we shopped because my legs got to be too long and I was forever kicking her as we made our way up and down the aisles.  Now, having been grocery shopping with my own girls, I can’t begin to imagine a nine year old riding in the grocery cart.  I knew no different when I was that age so I didn’t mind.  And, I never tired of the animal cracker treats.

Again, back to my college freshman brain…animal crackers didn’t seem that much different than cereal.  They weren’t too sweet; in fact, they contain way less sugar than doughnuts, which are considered to be an acceptable breakfast food.  The biggest benefit to my animal cracker breakfasts were that I could throw a package in my backpack and go.  I should add that I did progress from the animal crackers in the cute handled box to the more grown-up version that came in a bag.  Although, there were days that I missed that Barnum’s box because a backpack full of textbooks can do a quick number on a helpless bag of animal crackers, quickly turning it into a bag of animal crumbs!

My time as an undergraduate at East Carolina University was some of the best years of my life.  I got an amazing education. Even with all of the professors that I had while working on my graduate degrees after leaving ECU, it is those professors that I had in my undergraduate days that I credit with shaping me as the music theory professor that I am today.  And my college friends…they too are the best!  I am lucky to still keep in touch with, and occasionally even visit, some of them.  Several of these friends can confirm both my love of animal crackers and the orange juice issues mentioned above.  In this case though, the orange juice evidence came in the context of screwdrivers rather than blood donation.  I can hold my liquor, but I can’t hold my orange juice!

I believe it was one of my college friends who first introduced me to the Mothers Circus Animal cookies.  You know the ones.  The animal-shaped cookies covered with pink and white icing and topped with sprinkles.  I never got these as a kid in the shopping cart.  I suspect a layer of pink icing combined with bruised shins was more than my mom could handle on her weekly grocery trips.  Discovering these delicious cookies during college deepens the sweet memories of those awesome years in my life.

In graduate school, I tried to tone down my expressions of love of animal crackers for breakfast by hiding them behind my newly discovered adult beverage, coffee.  It took me awhile to warm up to coffee instead of grapefruit juice, but a coffee cup in hand seemed to be part of the scholarly persona that I needed to embrace.  Since I was drinking student union coffee, student union black coffee no less, the slight sweetness of the animal crackers was necessary to cut the bitterness of that not-so-good coffee.  The best part about graduate school was that I was a teaching fellow, which meant that I had an office and my own desk.  And having my own desk meant that I also had my own desk drawers where I could keep a big stash of animal crackers hidden!  I could buy them in bulk at the grocery store, where the clerk could assume that I had four kids under age five at home to consume them, rather than buying  them in the student union when I bought my coffee.  This arrangement allowed me to further develop my image as a respectable adult and an up and coming scholar.  No one needed to know that through many late nights of studying, exams, writing computer programs, and doing research, animal crackers, both the plain and the iced, were my constant companions.  For their role in my successes, I owe them much.

I hoped to share my love of the Barnum’s animal crackers with my girls when they were little, but preschool ruined this opportunity for them.  Animal crackers were a regular snack at their school, but not the Circus Animal crackers.  Understandably pink and white icing, sprinkles, and toddlers is not a combination that any preschool teacher deserves.  Unfortunately though, they didn’t even get Barnum’s.  School animal crackers come in great big plastic tubs from the warehouse stores and, in comparison, taste kind of like cardboard.  But,  to feed a bunch of preschoolers with undiscerning palettes, or in a moment of desperation, they will suffice.  Yes, that is experience speaking.

At age fifty-eight, animal crackers are still my go-to snack. Thankfully, I teach on a college campus with a bookstore that sells Barnum’s animal crackers!  At this point in my life, I don’t care what people think about my snack choices.  I proudly place my animal crackers on the counter and flash my ID to get my ten percent faculty discount.  The bookstore clerks are free to make any assumptions that they’d like.  Sadly though, the coffee on our campus is not any better than the coffee was back over thirty years ago when I was a grad student.

It’s funny how things that have been around for more than a hundred years become a “new” craze.  During the spring of 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, Dairy Queen released an iced animal cookie blizzard.  Surprisingly, I have not tried one.  I am not a big fan of ice cream.  Grapefruit juice or coffee still sound like better companions to my beloved animal crackers.

As the Circus Animal Cookies continued to surge in popularity, they made their way into a recipe for Muddy Buddies and Rice Krispie Treats.  Either of these sounded more promising to me than did the DQ Blizzard.  I finally broke down and sacrificed some Circus Animal Cookies to the Rice Krispie Treat recipe, trying to keep an open mind throughout the making process.

The Circus Animal Cookie recipe is the basic Rice Krispie Treat recipe with twelve ounces of crushed cookies and some sprinkles added.  The recipe did call for a white chocolate drizzle and cookie crumbs on the top, but I omitted that.  It all sounded way too sweet for me.   That said, I have to admit that the Circus Animal Rice Krispie Treats were pretty darn good the way I made them.  The flavor was not much different from regular Rice Krispie Treats, but the bits of Circus Cookies added a nice little extra crunch….and a touch of pink…oh, and a big dose of happy in my heart.

Since, in this recipe, the animal crackers are now hanging out with the cereal, this must mean that the Circus Animal Rice Krispie Treats officially qualify as a breakfast food!  And now, since I am working at home, I know where to get a fast, cheap, good cup of coffee, the quality of coffee that is worthy to be consumed alongside Circus Animal Rice Krispie Treats at breakfast!