Gluten Free Chex Oatmeal --- yummo! {review}

I recently found Gluten Free Chex Oatmeal at a local family owned grocery store and was actually rather surprised to find it there.  I'd recently been to a few grocery stores (on vacation and after) and hadn't seen this product there at all. So finding it on the shelf in podunk, Virginia was a bit of a shock. 

I like oatmeal and always wished Quaker would be able to make their oatmeal packets gluten free.  I mean, it's an oat company and their only labeled gluten free item is rice cakes.

You see, I ate Quaker instant oatmeal every day at work, for years!  I would trudge into work and make my oatmeal and eat it while my computer booted up.  Back then, it took a good 5 minutes for the tower to fire up.  I've tried other gluten free oatmeal and hated them.  I won't name names, but let's just say they are well-known in the gluten free circle.  There were some products that I tried that I just ended up throwing away because they were so unpalatable that I didn't want to offer them to a friend whose family eats gluten free too.  Friends don't make friends gag.

Many varieties of Chex are gluten free (except Wheat Chex, of course) and they clearly label their gluten free-ness right on the front of the box.  When I saw Chex had a gluten free oatmeal, I wondered if it would have, you know, pieces of Chex in it?  Silly, I know.  But my husband said that maybe the Chex brand is known for being gluten free and that's what they were trying to convey with this new oatmeal product --- that it was gluten free.  It was enough to get me to stop and look closer at the label, so perhaps there's something to it.

I bought the variety pack, mainly because it was $4 at the store and I figured I would at least be able to try both the Gluten Free Chex Oatmeal Apples and Cinnamon and also the Maple and Brown Sugar, vs. just trying Maple and Brown Sugar, the only other variety that the store carried.

Analysis:

Apples and Cinnamon:  The apples were not the dried fruit I was expecting.  They were juicy bits once rehydrated and I liked the taste a lot.  Not quite like the Quaker I remembered, but still very good.

Maple and Brown Sugar:  This was OK.  I liked it well enough, but it was very sugary.  It was almost too sweet.  Still good for a quick snack or breakfast, though.

The pouch can act like a measuring cup so you know how much water/milk to use.  That's nice for on-the-go or camping trips, though it's for cold measure only.  Don't pour hot liquid into the pouch to measure.

Tip:  I found the oat meal tastes better if you mix the water in hot and don't try to mix it all together and then microwave it.