I'm Tired Of Getting PRIZES Like This

Back when I was a kid, it was fun to get prizes in my food. Like those records that came on the back of a cereal box. Or the dinosaur pencil-top erasers that came in the multi-pack box of individual Fritos bags for my black-and-red plaid metal lunchbox. Now that I'm an adult, I'm not such a fan of prizes in my food. They're not real prizes! They're SURprises!

I'm pretty sure I've told you about the time I bit down on a bone in a can of Swanson's white mean chicken. And more recently bit into a nut shell in a slice of cheesecake. I know there have been other unwanted objects in my foods, but I can't remember them all.

Well. Sunday for lunch, I had some leftover pizza, and a bowl of instant Raisin Spice oatmeal. Of course the first bite of oatmeal contained my prize.

Can you tell what that is? I put it in a fresh bowl for the picture, but my hands and camera blocked the light from my only working fluorescent in the ceiling of my dark basement lair. When I originally took it out of my mouth, it looked like a popcorn hull. It had a rounded shape. When I glanced back at it later (of course I ate the rest of the oatmeal! You don't think I'd waste it, now do you?) the foreign object had accordioned in on itself. I tried to spread it apart, but this is all I got.

I'm hoping it's a husk from the oats used to make the oatmeal. The only other possibility is that it's part of an insect's exoskeleton. I know there are allowable insect parts in processed foods. That doesn't mean I want to eat them.

I'm not averse to wasting insect protein from my cereal.