beverage self-actualization and gogurt/yogurt discontent

unsnackable vol. 73

My memories tied to food I've cooked are more emotional than empirical. I look back at archived insta stories and cross reference my camera roll with meandering menus cataloged in my notes app, half-used notebooks with substitutions made to recipes from blogs that ceased to exist half a decade ago. I seek guidance but discover little more than a ghost of an instinct guided by a recollection of how a meal made me feel.

When I look back at drinks I've made, I can pull a more tactile string. I recall the ratios and techniques as readily as the day surrounding the beverage I prepared and consumed. The shortest path to a moment of self-actualization is through a sip you crafted to meet your cravings and looking back at those moments is my favorite way to mark the passage of time.

Here are a few of my favorite ~fancy lil' beverages~ from 2024

In the late afternoon mental fog of the first day of the year I used leftover tonic, Campari, and fancy orange juice to make a low-abv spritz and captured it at golden hour.

A snow day and a sale on blood orange juice was an excuse to make a fluffy peach-blood orange garibaldi but I was humbled by how quickly it deflated when I also tried to incorporate the snow AND a pizza biscuit cheese pull into the shot.

I did not know how much of this year would be spent with the quiet hum of seafoam-green-tinted caffeine exceptionalism as a backing track but I might have summoned something when I topped my baja blast with matcha.

I bake with hojicha more often than I drink it but I made a rose petal pineberry jam and used it in this hojicha latte. The sweet floral notes lightened the rich hojicha.

It's not that purchasing a shaved ice attachment for my KitchenAid mixer was proven to be wasteful by my many failed experiments this summer, it is more that I refuse to accept that my approach to photographing and styling food does not work with ice (passion-orange-guava syrup, shaved ice and matcha)

Charli and BRAT Summer is a well-trod subject now, but I'm glad it is something I got to experience as her age mate and someone who has been a fan since the beginning of her career (true romance is STILL a perfect album). I rendered that feeling in drinkable technicolor with melon syrup oleo saccharum soda and passable dupe for the ice cream I was addicted to during our spring trip to Japan made with curuba elderflower red bull, coconut cream, and golden kiwis.

Love a daiquiri, love lingonberries, love fruit syrups that retain enough character from the original fruit to hold their own in a cocktail, hate the first few sunsets after the time change when you feel inescapably mortal (I called this a seasonal depression happy meal and the lingonberry daiquiri was a highlight)

I inherited some deeply cursed citrus cream liqueur but I cracked the code on cutting the artificial notes by using a combination of calamansi juice and orange concentrate (and a hearty pour of vodka into my Vitamix)

Melon was a common theme for summer because I also used that syrup alongside fresh watermelon juice for this double melon matcha situation.

I started batching homemade ginger shots this year and fell in love with the ritual of using my milk frother to heat them up to drink from an espresso cup as part of my bedtime routine.

Before I started to travel for the holidays, I became fixated on sugar plums both as a flavor and etymologically so I made a matcha latte with sugar plum syrup (and many sugar plum syrup sodas with the leftover syrup in the week afterward)

I brought a full luggage packed to the brim with bottles home from Japan( I'm writing about the trip in the new year, I promise), but the most enigmatic was this small-batch Creme de Cassis from Kagoshima. It is earthy and sweet and warm but drinks with a sensation I can only compare to eating a date straight from the fridge on a summer day. I used fancy tangerine juice to recreate the Japanese bar staple, orange cassis.

Maybe I'm working backward to assuage my guilt of owning too many espresso cups but I've discovered my ideal affogato is miniaturized, a babygatto if you will, and consists of a tablespoon of ice cream (this is Thai Tea Vanleeuwen) and a shot of espresso

Kool-Aid existed before me, and the crystalline composition of that flavor-packed powder will allow it to continue to exist long after I perish. I respect that by blending frozen fruit with Kool-Aid and far too much soju and sugar.

For me (and for this newsletter) the most fulfilling life is one led by whims and thirst because those two virtues also lead me to these unsnackables.

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the unsnackables

sweet

ZOTT SAHNEJOGHURT GEBRANNTE MANDEL (Germany)

Lurking in the shadows of my reliance on full-fat unflavored yogurt as an easily manipulated food group is the reality that my relationship with flavored yogurt is a chord of emotional discontent straddling gogurt and the low-calorie "dessert replacement" flavors of the early aughts. But I think that this rich cream yogurt flavored after the winter market staple of roasted/candied nuts would fix that. It would fix everything wrong with me (maybe)

savory

MAÏS AGUERMEL KABAB (Morocco)

I have taken enough long midwestern road trips for a crispy corn snack to be revolutionary for existing but a grilled crispy corn snack that carries the flavors of slow-roasted kebab? That is a revolution I would like to happen within my snacking routine.

thirsty

LEMONIADA ZIMOWA WYCISK (Poland)

It is a failure of imagination to categorize lemonade as a cold beverage to be sipped during warm months. Why not imbue it with wintery aromatics and create something that can be served hot? Also cold like normal, but the hot part is the draw here.

boozy

PIRCHER BOMBARDINO (Italy)

There are weather-activated synapses in my brain that must only stir from their slumber on a cold day when tempted by various members of the egg-based alcoholic beverage diaspora because wym I'm craving a glass of warm eggs stabilized in whisky and rum then topped with whipped cream.

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I’m still figuring this out, but hopefully, you enjoyed v.73 of unsnackable.

If you didn’t please don’t tell me, tell your friends to subscribe because they hopefully have better taste than you.

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