Snack Review: Sweetzels Spiced Wafers

OK, I promise not to make this into another rant about the Good Old Snacking Days. On one condition. You promise to buy some gingersnaps next time you find them.

I am not instructing you to buy Sweetzel’s Spiced Wafers in particular, but that’s not because they aren’t good. They are very, very good. However, they might not be available where you live, since they are a local speciality. As it says on their website:

Over 90 Years ago, we at Sweetzels® revived the colonial Spice and Molasses Cookie by developing a unique recipe for our Spiced Wafers. Fresh baked Spiced Wafers, warm apple cider and a glowing fire have become a favorite Philadelphia Tradition to the welcoming of fall.

They’re now available in other parts of the east and parts of the Midwest, but are apparently still only made in the fall and winter. So you want to go out right now and look for them.

I kind of have my doubts about the 90 year old recipe – the ingredients contain palm oil, which is not a very traditional American baking ingredient. But the important part of the recipe is no doubt the spice blend, and enough molasses to make a difference. These are wonderfully spicy, molasses-y, and not too sweet.

Read more

Snack Review: Ghana Cookie

Japanese cooking is my favorite cuisine in the world. And no one loves chocolate more than I do. Put the two together, and you’d think, how can it go wrong?

It is true that chocolate is not a native Japanese thing, but it’s not native to Belgium or any of those other places that are famous for it, either. And the Japanese have done a fantastic job of assimilating Western desserts – there is nothing I love more than a good green tea ice cream.

But when I buy a Japanese chocolate snack, it’s nearly always a disappointment. Unfortunately, this was no exception.

Read more

Snack Science: Bedtime Snacks Really Are More Fattening

Maybe the Japanese are ahead of us in snacking science… or maybe they’re just beating us in showing it on TV. But either way, after proving that there really is another stomach for dessert, NHK’s Kaitai Shin Show now shows that bedtime snacks really are fattening - and indirectly puts in a good word for afternoon tea.

A July episode of the show started by reporting on research in 1993 at Kyushu University: Seven women ate the exact same meal three times a day for ten days, at 7:30, 12:30, and 6:00. At the end of the period, all seven had lost weight. Then, they ate the same meals for another ten days, but now, dinnertime was changed from 6:00 to 10:00.

At the end of the second ten days, despite eating the exact same food, all seven women had gained weight.

The program then turned to Professor Shigeki Shimba of Nihon University. He explained the mechanism of this effect, which involves a protein in the body called BMAL 1. This protein facilitates the accumulation of fats in cells. And, crucially, the amount of BMAL 1 in the body varies according to the time of day. It is lowest at 3 PM, and four times higher at 11 PM.

So, it looks like there’s good news and bad news. If you eat late at night and you’re worried about your weight, you’d better stop. But! If you eat cookies at 3 PM, that is the best time to trick your body into storing the least possible fat from them.

Read more

Snack Review: Wye River Crabbers Crackers

They’re just crackers, you probably think. How could there be drama? But so many aspects of my personal history were at war when I encountered these crackers.

They are crab-shaped cheese crackers, flavored with the traditional kind of herb and spice seasoning mix that is used on crabs in the mid-Atlantic region. The animal nut in me cannot resist an unusual animal-shaped food, even a cookie shaped like maggots. Also, now that I’ve lived temporarily in Maryland for, um, fifteen years, I sometimes feel guilty that I don’t have more local spirit. Wye River is a local company based on that local culinary obsession, crabs. And since the crabs are unfortunately kind of going extinct, I figured the company would need support for products like these that don’t have any actual crab in them.

So I popped these crackers into the cart without any more thought. But when I got home and popped them in my mouth, that was when the battle started: the Italian in me came out.

Read more

Snack Review: Trader Joe’s Black Cherry Yogurt

After my experience with Rachel’s Wickedly Delicious Yogurt, which blew my mind about the whole concept of fruit-flavored yogurt, I thought, maybe it was not Rachel. Maybe I’ve changed. Maybe my tastes have changed. Or maybe yogurt’s tastes have changed: maybe it’s just that now yogurt comes in good fruit flavors.

After all, the choices used to be pretty lame: strawberry and raspberry were about as radical as it got, in the old days. So maybe I didn’t need Rachel’s with its fancy pretentious sleekly black modern graphics and wickedly postmodern marketing copy. Maybe all I needed was any old brand of interesting fruit flavor yogurt.

And where do you go for unpretentious? Why, Trader Joe’s, of course. No one pretends that Trader Joe is a real person. They don’t advertise Trader Joe’s products with sleek black graphics. They don’t have a website for their yogurt.

So, I got this Trader Joe’s Black Cherry yogurt, and, with my new positive attitude, dug in.

Read more