Who decided that having a rich inner life is a good thing. I think they should drop a pin so I can fight them for perpetuating such a terrible lie. The false superiority of emotional intelligence or wide and varied cultural tastes? I would trade it for a simple life of hunting down Rae Dunn coffee mugs. Even better, I'd love to be one of the beautiful empty-headed protagonists of a holiday movie.
Since November began, I've been on a steady drip of career women finding the meaning of life in hot cocoa/snowball fights/ neocolonialist policy. I’m usually drawn to those magical small towns that can solve all problems but they’ve lost a bit of their allure this year. I still want to find a town with enough black people to ensure someone will do my hair and a thriving local economy that guarantees a living wage as a cheesemonger/ Christmas wreath stylist/ artisan lip gloss creator. I've realized I have little to run from. I've spent years slowly extracting my identity from the work I do to earn a paycheck. And despite my inability to plan socially-distant hangs, friends & family that make my life meaningful.
The things I'm mourning make me feel so lucky because they aren't permanent. The only thing that feels permanent is daylight savings time because the sun has forsaken us all. It is dark 22 hours a day and the only solace outside of holiday movies is the warm embrace of roasted vegetable season. My well-worn sheet pans have been treating me well and I cannot stop thinking about these carrots
garlic butter lamb, roast carrots with sumac, couscous, mint yogurt & za’atar
Much like piping hot vegetables straight from the oven, I've pulled together a hearty and emotionally fulfilling set of unsnackables
the unsnackables
sweet
FUNNY-FRISCH DONUTS (Germany)
Puffed peanut snacks have slowly made it to the states over the last few years and categorically, they are texturally satisfying. George Washington Carver went off when he invented the peanut. If he was still around, I feel like he'd appreciate this caramel flavored puffed peanut snack. It might even make him forgive us for that character in the Proud Family Movie.
salty
TAOKAENOI CORN SOUP (Thailand)
Seaweed snacks are one of my pantry staples because they run on umami and vibes. I find them much more satisfying than chips because I am a sweet snacker and bags of chips go stale in my pantry. That punch of umami paired with the creamy sweetness of corn sounds incredible. I could easily eat four packs of these without realizing I had opened one.
thirsty
ゴンチャ「ホット スムージー (Japan)
When I was young enough to ride the bus to school, there was a string of brutal winters. Well, it was Minnesota so it was every winter. The worst mornings were when it was too cold and icy to run to the bus stop from the house. On those days we'd occasionally hide in a burrow underneath some bushes. Wild in retrospect. Why did we have to go to school on days cold enough to require us to cosplay as rabbits to avoid freezing while we waited for the bus? It was around that age when I also fell in love with heating Minute Maid Berry Punch and drinking it out of a mug. For that reason, I have a truly pavlovian thirst for this "hot smoothie". Strawberry, blueberry, raspberry, chokeberry, and pomegranate vinegar are paired with adzuki beans and amazake (a beverage made with sake lees, the brewing discards from sake brewing). It is such a cool combination and I wish those cowards would bring it to the Gong Cha locations in the states
boozy
FERNET CON COLA ESPUMA ( Argentina)
I deeply appreciate the Argentine tradition of Fernet and Cola. I also deeply appreciate an underdog. So this boozy Fernet and Cola foam featuring an Argentine Fernet instead of the well known Italian variety is something I'd like to try. I feel like I have been robbed of a life that includes being able to spray an entire container of boozy cocktail cream into my mouth like a rom-com trope.
unsnackableIRL
Someone asked me to add some information about American limited edition snacks to this newsletter but I am too lazy to make the format of this newsletter more complicated. Instead, here's a tip about how to hunt them down. These days most limited edition snacks are released, at least initially, as a partnership with a single retailer or family of retailers. Big box retailers like Target and Wal-mart have exclusives that differ from 7/11's exclusives. Even Dollar Tree has its own exclusives for candy. For products at grocery stores, these agreements cover a family of chains ( an Albertsons exclusive can be found at Safeway, Vons, Shaw's, and Jewel-Osco)
I’m still figuring this out, but hopefully, you enjoyed v.10 of unsnackable.
If you didn’t please don’t tell me, tell your friends to subscribe because they hopefully have better taste than you.
Think you’ll miss me before unsnackable v.11 comes to your inbox? follow me on other parts of the internet and tell me about what you’re snacking on or tell me what fruits you would put in a hot smoothie
I’ll try any snack at least once, so don’t be shy if there is something you want to send me to try.
If you’d like to support my snack related endeavors you can find me on venmo at thefolu or on ko-fi