I just had the most luxurious flying experience from LAX to Melbourne: fourteen and a half hours in the air on a points-upgraded flight to business class, complete with pajamas, turn-down service for my seat that changed into a bed, and endless food and drink served on real ceramic and glassware. I spent ten of those hours sleeping without even realizing it since I was feeling under the weather, but when I woke up, all I could do was think about the cereal milk custard dessert I had before going to sleep and how funny it is now that “cereal milk” flavored anything is so popular now thanks to David Chang and his Momofuku empire.

When Ed and I were kids, we ate a lot of cold cereal, both sugary and plain, and we always drank our milk in the end. No food could go to waste in our house, and in fact, the mere concept of throwing out the sugary flavored milk in the end had never even occurred to me until I saw kids at school on the free lunch program eating their cereal and then dumping their leftover sugary milk into a massive bin. At that point in life, that was one of the most disgusting sights I had ever seen.

To think that today, people are profiting off of “cereal milk” being sold at Momofuku Milk Bar is so mind-boggling and makes me feel sad and a little angry for all those kids who threw out all that good milk in elementary school — first world problems to have access to nutritious cow’s milk but to throw it out without realizing how fortunate they are. And it’s so odd to think that now, the same cereal milk is being sold for five bucks for a small amount, AND the term itself is even trademarked by Momofuku Milk Bar!