For years, my favorite party trick (other than showing up looking stunning with an assortment of handmade treats in my purse) was my uncanny grasp of color names. Despite a slightly boozy haze, you could point to a color, and with an impressive margin of success, I could name it. Of course, there is no objective value to knowing the difference between cobalt and cerulean, but it still feels great to watch incredulity shift to awe.
ex. some point in 2012 (?) when my boss doubted my skill and was proven wrong
While parties aren't illegal, the protective mechanisms of my brain go smooth when I try to remember the last one I attended, so I'm sure I've lost my grasp of this trick. However, it's probably for the best because nothing that I do will ever be as impressive as these color swatch matching videos.
It's okay. At least I can still play with color when I decorate cakes. This one from the pre-pandemic archives happens to be one of my favorites.
olive oil cake sweetened w/ homemade pomegranate molasses, peaches poached in vermouth, cinnamon& pomegranates, honeycomb mascarpone buttercream
I can't promise that I will stop using this newsletter to brag about beautiful things I've baked or cooked, but I can promise that I will keep scouring the earth for unique and unforgettable unsnackables
the unsnackables
sweet
７つの味わいをとじこめた、レインボージャム(Japan)
With much greater success than Sex and the City's second wind, New York icon Dean and Deluca lives on in Japan after its US outposts shuttered years ago. I'm sure the strawberries cost more than $5 each, but this layered spread is a showstopping nod to the luxurious indecision you felt wandering the original store. Each jar has seven layers comprised of strawberry/raspberry jam, raspberry curd, pumpkin cream, pistachio cream, milk cream, lemon/blueberry curd, and blueberry curd. If Sex and the City kept this same energy, they would have rebooted The Carrie Diaries instead. *Two DWP references in a single newsletter is self-indulgent, but this newsletter is nothing if not that.
savory
KURKURE MASALA MUNCH (India)
While classic potato chips have the most significant worldwide footprint as a canvas to showcase flavors, the puffed crunchie is an underrated taste-to-tastebud vehicle. One of my favorite crispy snacks is the mala spiced Calbee Grill-A-Corn, so I have plenty of reason to think these corn, dal, and rice crunchies with masala spice hold a bit of magic in each bite.
thirsty
RINGNES VØRTERØL (Norway)
For the second time in the short life of this newsletter, the Olympics are once again upon us. Again, I'm struggling to balance my moral disdain for the IOC with my motivation to find a way to engage in the erratic US coverage of the games. A more leisurely pastime is to look into niche Olympic-related snacks, like this Norwegian wort beer. Wort beer is the ancestral cousin of Nordic root beer and is made with wort, the brewing discards produced while brewing beer. It has been marketed as a beverage to help the restitution of athletes since the early 1900s, which is deeply terrifying, but a bit exciting. In the true spirit of the hyper-commercialized Olympics, Ringnes also uses the games to sneak around a nationwide ban on advertising alcohol to display the rings on each can.
boozy
PITÚ CAIPIRINHA LIMETTENSORBET (Germany)
My greatest weakness as a home pâtissier is my inability to grasp the correct ratios for making ice cream from scratch, and for this reason, I don't understand how this can freeze at 10% abv. What I can comprehend is that these caipirinha sorbets seem like a boozy analogue to my favorite ice cream truck treat- the lemon ice or lemonade sorbet cups. So I wouldn't mind if I was able to grab one of these at a 400% markup from the one ice cream truck on the beach that accepts Venmo or Apple Pay.
I’m still figuring this out, but hopefully, you enjoyed v.56 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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