Sir Snack-a-lot

by Kaya

Let’s not kid ourselves. Snacking is an art. You can’t just grab few salty treats and have a satisfying snacking experience. There is a delicate balance of flavors and textures that must be negotiated. How do I know this? I have a gift...the gift of snack.

The gift of snack wasn’t something I learned. Like most true talents, it was simply thrust upon me by the benevolent snacking Gods. I realized I had this gift when my friends would wait to see what I’d buy at the movie theater concession stand, saying that I always seemed to pick just the right treat. Trust me, you don’t want to buy a king size box of Sweetarts. You’ll be ready for a non-tart taste before the previews are over not to mention the inevitable shredding of the roof of your mouth. Tonguing the raw skin in your mouth is no way to spend your valuable snack time at the movies.

I’ve tried to use this power for good and bring my message to the people (although my Learning Annex courses are surprisingly sparsely attended).

I believe it is important to eat foods, in particular snacks, at their peak time. Often this means delaying gratification until just the right moment. This helps the food reach their ultimate destiny. Just as there is the Super Bowl for football, there is also the Super Bowl for snacks. And, actually, they’re the same Super Bowl.

A chip enjoyed while watching the biggest football game of the year is as good as it gets for chips. If you were a potato chip, would you want to be eaten by someone driving in their ’83 Toyota Corolla, rushing to get home in time to catch “Wheel of Fortune” or by someone lounging in front of their TV on the biggest snack day of the year? The kind of appreciation given to a chip on Super Bowl Sunday is snack nirvana.

To better illustrate these peak situations, here are a few more example:

-Eating goldfish crackers mid-day while reading the Sunday comics.
-Having a Snickers bar after a post-lunch hike on the second day of a camping trip.
-Watching a Simpson’s rerun with a tub of fresh, red licorice.

My fiancé Jen was off to an all day yoga retreat where she was told to bring some snacks. Knowing my expertise she had me look over her snack collection. I saw an apple, tangerine, lemon protein bar, chocolate/nut trail mix, dried apricots and chocolate covered raisins. It was an impressive collection of snack foods and she clearly meant well. However, she was missing a major and generally obvious ingredient to ideal snacking: Salt.

Without salt, monitoring the ‘fruit sweet’ vs. ‘chocolate sweet’ ratio is pointless.

I bagged some peanut butter filled pretzels for her and she was good to go. Things could have gotten ugly without a salt to balance out the sweet in the salty/sweet yin-yang of snack enlightenment. She’s lucky to have me.

And I’m lucky to have this gift...and a partner that tolerates the occasional tirade about snacks.