A-B-C-D...T-U-V-What? They have Alpha Bits again?

Slap me and tell me I'm not dreaming!

Of course I'm not - I actually found Alpha-Bits cereal in the grocery again!

One of my favorite cereals as a child, I didn't eat any for years and then inexplicably in 2006, Post cereals pulled Alpha-Bits from the market.  For me it was a case of I didn't know what I was missing until it was gone.

I lamented - I despaired - I listened to my teacher friends complain because they used Alpha-Bits to help teach preschoolers (imagine that - learning the alphabet AND eating your work!). 

So every time I was at the grocery and in a cereal mood I would check for that blue box - and never did I find them.  Until last year when a 'no-sugar' variety appeared on the shelves, which was basically alphabet shaped Cheerios.  NO!  That's not Alpha-Bits!

And then today while shopping with a friend I spotted a box on the bottom shelf, bright blue and calling to me - ORIGINAL ALPHA-BITS!  Re-introduced in late 2008 as the original formula, sugar intact.

Sure the box design has changed a little bit but the cereal itself is exactly as I remembered it - sweet, crunchy and holds up well to a bowl of milk (read, not soggy too soon).  I couldn't have been more surprised or happier to find a link to my childhood, right there on the shelf!

So naturally, as soon as I got home I poured myself a bowl (and found enough intact letters to create a new Smiley Eats! logo).  

Yakitori Jinbei

Yakitori Jinbei

2421 Cobb Parkway SE

Smyrna, GA 30080

770-818-9215

About four years ago a friend asked if he could take me to supper at "this wonderful Japanese restaurant [he knew] of" and, trusting his opinion as he's just as much a gourmand as yours truly, of course I said yes.

We drove.  And drove.  From his house in Decatur it seemed like we were driving to Tennessee but we stopped short - on Cobb Parkway just outside of the Perimeter at a strip mall.

There was an Olive Garden in the corner, a boat shop and a chain jewelry store ... typically not promising locale for good food.

But Mama taught me to not judge a book by its cover and man was she right!

Yakitori Jinbei is a VERY small resto in a strip mall, but the food that comes out of the partially open kitchen is anything but (small) ... 

Yakitori - small skewers cooked over special coals - became a favorite food of mine that night and I've been back several, several times since.  

The restaurant has traditional Japanese food as well as a fine sushi bar, but the star of the show are the skewers.  Ordered a la carte (or in several large group combos), you'll get chicken, pork, tiny little meatballs, green onions, asparagus, quail eggs (hardboiled then skewered and grilled), chicken skin (don't knock it until you've tried it) ... any number of tasty little treats served with just salt or with a special house made sauce.

Go for the salt - it enhances the flavor of anything grilled and works wonderfully with yakitori.

On a recent trip with two friends who were a bit skeptical (they're converts now, of course) we ate until our bellies plumped up and we waddled out.  I took several pictures with my phone - hence the less than stellar resolution - that I thought I would share.

ANYTIME - anyone - wants to go, let me know.  I could do it weekly.  :)