During last week’s nut-filled episode, I made a BIG announcement. Do you remember that, in the beginning of the show? What was it? Anyone? Bueller?
Well, I announced that I’m embarking on a new quest, a new mission, so to speak. I’m going on a worldwide (well, nationwide really) search for something. Like Don Draper at the end of this week’s Mad Men. Driving across Wisconsin, picking up hitchhiking hippies. He’s on a quest too, he’s had it with advertising…he’s hitting the road to find himself. He even mentioned Kerouac to his hallucinated vision of Bert Cooper. That’s not what I’m doing, I don’t need to find me, I’m right here. I have a pretty, pretty, pretty (thanks, Larry David) good sense of myself.
No. What I’m setting off to find, isn’t me. It’s the thing that I hope will solve most of my problems, at least my nutritional ones. Actually I don’t really have nutritional problems, I eat extremely well; lots of leafy greens, lentils, oily fish, yogurt, lamb, apples, eggplant….what am I, Greek? Sounds like it. No, no nutritional issues for me, what I do have are snacking problems. Not that I snack too much, I do sometimes, I’m American, its my birthright, but more that I can’t find the right snack. The snack that will solve all my hunger issues, my blood sugar issues, my pre or post workout issues, to see if that snack product actually exists. I’m looking for…my perfect snack.
So I’m setting out on a journey of snacking, to see if there’s anything out there that passes my test. Anything I can keep in my backpack and take out after or before working out, or while hiking, or if I get stuck between meals and get hungry and don’t want to buy an $8 salad or whatever and use a fork. To find a snack that’s convenient, shelf-stable (meaning no refrigeration needed), isn’t sweet and therefore not full of sugar, has protein (not from effing soy) and is made of real food. It also should be reasonably priced.
A long shot? I think so. Wishful thinking, oh yes, for sure. But I’m going into this with an open mind, or at least as open of a mind as someone like me can muster up. I’m ready, I’ve got my plan set.
I’ve got my protective gear, I’ve got my phone charger and I’ve got a bag of almonds, just in case. I’m going virtually spelunking in the unexplored, subterranean caves of the foodiness™ world. Places no enlightened, real food eater has ever seen. Where the normally brightly-orange goldfish crackers are blind and albino because they’ve never seen the light of day, where nothing grows green and everything lasts forever.
I’m going deep, deep down the Foodiness™ rabbit hole to see that if maybe, just maybe in the past three years that I’ve done this show, maybe I missed something? Or maybe things have really changed? Have Foodiness™ Inc. and even Food Inc. finally caught on? Have they been listening to people like me, and our raging against their corn-slurry feed machines? Have they finally come up with something I can accept, nee even embrace? Something I can proudly hold up, triumphantly, right before I eat it and pronounce, deem, crown, the PERFECT snack?