(To my surprise, I saw these on sale still – possibly a leftover box from 1965!)
Our winter time breakfast menu had two notable additions – Hot oatmeal with raisins and Shredded Wheat. Fairly often, Nenna would cook up a pot of Quaker Oats with raisins mixed in. The pot would stay hot on the stove all morning and we could help ourselves at whatever time we were ready to eat, scooping out a bowlful and adding milk and sugar (lots of sugar) or maple syrup. If oatmeal wasn’t on the stove (or the occasional substitutes Cream Of Wheat or Maypo) and we wanted something hot, there was always a box of Shredded Wheat.
Decades before Frosted Mini-Wheats were invented, Shredded Wheat
came as what looked like a large steel wool pad made out of (as the name would indicate) shredded strands of stiff brittle wheat. We would put one of these “bricks” into a bowl and pour boiling water from the tea-pot over it. This softened the block into a limp wet pile of wheat strands. Then one would drain the hot water out of the bowl, trying not to let the mushy form of the pad fall apart (for some reason it seemed very important to maintain the resemblance of it’s original form), and would slowly pour about half a cup of milk around it. 
Our winter time breakfast menu had two notable additions – Hot oatmeal with raisins and Shredded Wheat. Fairly often, Nenna would cook up a pot of Quaker Oats with raisins mixed in. The pot would stay hot on the stove all morning and we could help ourselves at whatever time we were ready to eat, scooping out a bowlful and adding milk and sugar (lots of sugar) or maple syrup. If oatmeal wasn’t on the stove (or the occasional substitutes Cream Of Wheat or Maypo) and we wanted something hot, there was always a box of Shredded Wheat.
Decades before Frosted Mini-Wheats were invented, Shredded Wheat
came as what looked like a large steel wool pad made out of (as the name would indicate) shredded strands of stiff brittle wheat. We would put one of these “bricks” into a bowl and pour boiling water from the tea-pot over it. This softened the block into a limp wet pile of wheat strands. Then one would drain the hot water out of the bowl, trying not to let the mushy form of the pad fall apart (for some reason it seemed very important to maintain the resemblance of it’s original form), and would slowly pour about half a cup of milk around it. 
Topping it off with a generous supply of sugar completed the production.
We invented Frosted Mega-Wheats! (best served hot)
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