The First Gluten-free Commercial

Posted on January 31, 2011 by customchoicecereal

“Can a little bowl of cereal change your life? I think it can.” And so do we at Custom Choice Cereal! That’s exactly the reason we created the only company that puts YOU in control and lets YOU design the perfect gluten-free cereal with only the ingredients YOU love!

General Mills has been at the forefront of bringing gluten-free food to the community, and if you haven’t already done so I highly recommend you check out their website dedicated to all of their gluten-free products. General Mills now created quite a buzz among those with celiac disease and everyone else following a gluten-free diet by producing the first commercial dedicated to a gluten-free product. They are exactly right when they say that “one of the challenges of being gluten-free is finding choices the whole family will love”.

One last comment before I share this awesome commercial with you: “Custom Choice Cereal. Over 2.5 billion combinations. Gluten Free.”

"Awesome Cereal Just The Way I Like It"

Posted on January 25, 2011 by customchoicecereal

This is a quote from Priscilla who designed and reviewed her personal gluten-free cereal on her blog Snack Bar Reviews. I am excited to hear those kind of comments because it’s always rewarding and motivating to hear this kind of feedback!

Priscilla also makes another great point: “Since the New Year, I am sure there’s a lot of “Get Healthy” resolutions out there.” She’s so right because in addition to reading at least one book a month and going for a run twice a week, I am watching my diet more carefully. And as Priscilla points out, “I was once told it started with your choice of breakfast. I have noticed if I eat a good breakfast, I do tend to make the healthier choice come lunch time. Custom Choice Cereal allows you to have a choice!”

Besides the quote in the heading, Priscilla sums up what she thinks about her custom gluten-free cereal with these words: “I have always wanted to have my raisins, chocolate chips, and almonds all in the same cereal! With every bite I had something new going on, some granola mix with raisin, some with chocolate and almond, etc. I love this cereal and the uniqueness of it! I also love the naming part!”

And we have something else you will love: comment on Priscilla’s review for a chance to win your gluten-free breakfast mix!

New year, more great gluten-free cereal names

Posted on January 7, 2011 by customchoicecereal

It’s a new year but that doesn’t stop you from continuing to apply your creativity to naming your custom cereals. We at Custom Choice Cereal love to read what you can come up with and are surprised again and again.

Here are the best/most creative/fun cereal names of this week (and year so far)…

5. Granola-Cran-Pumpkin (mix ID 806dff)
4. Sable’s Awesome Mix (mix ID db357e)
3. Nutty Banana (mix ID cf0cae)
2. Hu-ah! (mix ID 83803f)
1. Designed on 1/1/11 we had to add another 1 to Number 1 (mix ID 16dde8)

Custom gluten-free cereal in the Indy

Posted on January 6, 2011 by customchoicecereal

The cold and rainy weather here in good ol’ North Carolina combined with maybe not the smartest behavior during New Year’s put quite a few of us down with a cold these days. Besides letting you enjoy a great variety of tasty gluten-free breakfast cereal there is one thing that always gets me fired up: your feedback!

Joyce Clark Hicks, who recently designed a cereal for her daughter, just happens to be a food reporter for a local paper called the Independent Weekly. The Indy focuses on Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, so writing about Custom Choice Cereal as a local food start-up with a focus on the gluten-free niche market made perfect sense.

Joyce liked the great variety besides dried fruits, nuts and seeds (“chocolate chips, anyone?”), the simple ordering process, and that her mix “arrived within two days of ordering”. She also points out that as a local you “can pick up your order and save on shipping”. Read the entire article about our custom gluten-free cereal start enjoying a tasty gluten-free life!

By the way, Joyce’s son is allergic to nuts and her daughter can’t have wheat, dairy, casein, whey, eggs or nuts. She sharing her experience of feeding her children through a wonderful monthly column called Feed With Care. Look for it in the first Indy of each month!

2010's final gluten-free cereal names

Posted on December 31, 2010 by customchoicecereal

Can you believe it?? The year is rapidly drawing to an end, and we only have a few hours left of 2010! It’s been an exciting and fun year for us at Custom Choice Cereal, and we have to thank YOU for that. Without you, none of what we achieved this year would have been possible!

So it makes us happy that we can close out 2010 with what has become a good tradition on Fridays: recognizing you and your creativity in naming the custom gluten-free cereals that you created. That’s a lot of “you” in a single sentence but hey, you are the most important part of Custom Choice Cereal, and we are just doing what you tell us to.

This past two week’s best/most creative/fun and mostly quite seasonal cereal names are

8. The Best ChocolateNut Cereal Ever! (mix ID 8d7668)
7. Tallula (mix ID 363b1b)
6. Guatemalan Survival Mix (mix ID fb7cc5)
5. Aunt Jan’s Christmas Apple Cider (mix ID 34d030)
4. Tropical Goji Flakes (mix ID 306d76)
3. PoPo’s Christmas Blend (mix ID bf9fcb)
2. Reindeer Munch (They Like it GF 2) (mix ID 02aa71)
1. And due to the occasion our winner is 2011 New Years Mix (mix ID 0a0ee9)

WE WISH YOU A HAPPY, SUCCESSFUL, HEALTH AND FUN NEW YEAR! MAY ALL YOUR WISHES COME TRUE!

The magic of Organic Chia Seeds

Posted on December 17, 2010 by customchoicecereal

It’s pretty cold outside, and slowly but surely most people around me are catching the cold that’s been going around for a few weeks now. So far my immune system has held up well (knock on wood!), but I figured it would not do any harm to point out the truly amazing qualities of an almost magic ingredient that you can/should add to your custom gluten-free cereal.

A naturally gluten-free food, Chia Seeds taste great and sport some truly amazing characteristics! If you have ever clicked on the little “More info” link that you find underneath each of our ingredient picture learned that “Chia Seeds can absorb 12 times their weight in water, which makes them very useful for maintaining body hydration (important for athletes and warriors!). That’s why they were the third most important crop in Aztec culture where they were often used as currency. Chia Seeds are a cholesterol-free, sugar-free food, a good source of calcium (30 grams contain 19% of the daily recommended value), and an excellent source of dietary fiber (a whopping 45% of the DRV).”

And there is even more good stuff in these tiny seeds! They are packed with omega-3 (the richest plant source of these healthy fatty acids, containing more omega-3 by weight than salmon), which are associated with various potential health benefits including – here it comes – improvement in immune function maturation in children. If this doesn’t convince you, see for yourself why even Dr. Oz recommends Chia Seeds as one of the key supplements for your diet!

Great Gluten-free cereal names this week

Posted on December 10, 2010 by customchoicecereal

Happy Friday from New York City! That’s right, small town Durham based Custom Choice Cereal is on a gluten-free food adventure in the Big Apple. If you have recommendations for places we should try, please leave a comment or tell us on our facebook page. We’ll try to test it all and give you a recap next week!

Since another weekend is approaching, it means that the Custom Choice Cereal crew lives up to its tradition of recognizing the most creative names you gave your custom gluten-free cereals. Your creativity causes a lot of laughter here, so thank you!

This past week’s best/most creative/fun names are

5. Berries, nuts and chocolate! (Perfect treat in this kind of weather!)
4. Berry Delicious (What’s up with the berries?)
3. OMG it’s cold! (Can’t argue with that…)
2. This is MINE, HANDS OFF!! (Wow.)
1. And the winner is More Mama Yum Yum (mix ID aab29a)

Enjoy the weekend and stay healthy everyone!

Perfect solution for gluten-free breakfast or snacks

Posted on December 6, 2010 by customchoicecereal

While I agree with this title and absolutely love to hear this kind of feedback about our customizable gluten-free cereal, it is not something I would say myself. It’s true though

I actually borrowed this title from Jen from Gluten-Free Life with Jen – it’s what she concludes about her cerealizations. She continues by saying that“Custom Choice Cereal is an incredible company that has taken gluten free cereal and granola making to a new level”. Finally, Jen quite accurately describes the pain point that many of you are so familiar with and that inspired me to start Custom Choice Cereal for a gluten-intolerant friend:

“How many times do you buy a gluten-free cereal or bag of granola and it just isn’t quite right? The texture is wrong, they used a nut or fruit you don’t like or you just wanted one more extra treat in it to make it perfect. Now you are in control – you can create your own certified gluten free cereal and granola.”

Jen really enjoyed her Gluten-free Fall Flakes (mix ID d39d18) and says that it “is quite yummy”. She even suggests different ways to enjoy your mixes, stating that “granola is so good that you can either eat it on it’s own or add it to your favorite yogurt product”.

Because it is my goal to make gluten-free breakfast an enjoyable and fun experience, I really appreciate any feedback about Custom Choice Cereal. Above all, it helps me learn and improve. This being said, it definitely feels great to read that Jen writes that “Not only is the cereal and granola high quality – but Hajo offers flawless customer service”. Thanks Jen, we’re working on it every day, and reviews such as yours are the greatest possible motivator to continue what we’re doing!

Gluten-free cereal & creative names

Posted on December 3, 2010 by customchoicecereal

Happy first Friday in December! This means that there are only a few weeks left in this year. It also means that we at Custom Choice Cereal are recognizing the most creative names you gave your custom gluten-free cereals.

It’s definitely interesting to see how your ingredients change with the seasons. As the days got shorter and colder, most of you choose to add more Apples, Pecans, Walnuts, Chia Seeds, and Chocolate Chips to your cereal. A few of you want to keep the summer in their cereal bowl and create gluten-free breakfast blends with Pineapple, Organic Coconut, and Apricots. We can sympathize!

Here are what we subjectively considered the most creative names. What would you name your mix?

7. Morning Blue Coconut (Interesting.)
6. Hand Delivered (That’s right, we do anything for our customers!)
5. Pumpkin Raisin Bran (Oh so familiar…)
4. Hellana’s tropical blend (See? Told ya.)
3. Berry Good (Word.)
2. Sally’s Sunshine Sustenance (Beautiful!)
1. And our winner is Maddie’s Morning Brainpower (mix ID a58775)

Have a wonderful weekend!

Recipe for your gluten-free granola

Posted on December 2, 2010 by customchoicecereal

Over the past months, quite a few of you have encouraged us at Custom Choice Cereal to offer gluten-free granola bars. Since I don’t want to keep you waiting any longer and since Jules Gluten Free has been so encouraging, I went on a little adventure in the kitchen last night…

Quite honestly, I am pretty proud of myself. The last time I made cookies on a grand scale was more than 15 years ago and under the supervision of a cookie baking genius called mom. Back in those days I always thought that the unbaked dough was much tastier than the final product so our recipes accounted for that… This time I must say that both is pretty darn good!

What I’ve done this time is very different but the result is really awesome. These cookies/granola bars are perfect as a snack on the go, great for the Holiday season, and so easy to make that even I succeeded. You need

A gluten-free granola mix of your choice. I added Organic Banana Chips, Pineapple, Pears, and Organic Coconut Chips
1 cup of light corn syrup OR brown rice syrup
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1.5 tablespoons of butter or margarine
Cooking spray
A large non-plastic mixing bowl
One-piece spoon
Saucepan
8-inch square pan
Aluminum foil

Fortunately the whole process works in four super easy steps. I must admit that I had a great time doing this, and I am sure that you will as well! Here is how it works:

Line the bottom and sides of the pan with aluminum foil and spray with cooking spray. Pour your granola into a large (non-plastic bowl). Set the pan and bowl aside for later.
Heat butter, sugar and corn syrup over medium heat and stir constantly until the sugar is dissolved. Boil for about 2 minutes afterwards until the mixture becomes slightly thickened.
Pour over the granola in the bowl and stir until evenly coated. Using the one-piece spoon (see what happened to mine…), take the mixture and press into the prepared pan. Refrigerate for 1 hour or until it’s firm enough to cut.
Take a bread knife and cut how you like it: bite-size squares or bars.

Of course there are plenty of other combinations you can choose at Custom Choice Cereal without the hustle of having to buy all the individual ingredients. For my next batch, I will definitely mix it up a little bit – right now I am thinking about cranberries, apples, raisins, and pecans. It’s tough to decide with so many delicious options at hand… What would you choose?

Custom Choice Cereal

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