Snack & Slay 6: Peruvian Cacao & Photos of my Kitten That No One Asked For

Happy anniversary to this!

Season’s Greetings!

Almost exactly one year ago, Snack & Slay was born. Since then, I have written 6 (six) of these, starting out strong, screeching to a halt in the middle, and then sputtering back to life at the end of 2023 as the SAD reemerges, along with a desperation to latch onto any and all small sources of joy. I can safely say that nothing particularly profound has come out of an S & S but that nothing catastrophic has happened either – the anxieties I’ve been boring you with since last December of annoying everyone with what I have to say, of embarrassing myself publicly, have remained just that: anxieties (as far as I know, at least… please keep it to yourselves). 

I’ve been thinking about what can really be deemed the right answers in food, whether there are any objective, absolute truths, and if so, who is really qualified to say them. I recently saw a video (full disclosure it was the 3 minute trailer for Neil Degrasse Tyson’s Masterclass) that got me thinking about all the content out there on this topic and whether any of it can really be deemed “true”. I probably need to take the Masterclass to confirm this, but it seems to me that the only absolute truths in food are those in the realm of ‘baking soda makes your cake rise’ and ‘adding sugar makes it sweeter’ (and ‘the peanut butter cookies I made this week were so f*cking horrible that they needed to be thrown out’). In other words, cooking truths. Other, eating truths, like Top lists from Bon Appetit or The New York Times, that people like me read and treat like scripture are written by mere mortals with mortal taste buds and subjective opinions. 

Of course, some voices are more qualified than others and frankly, when all is said and done, writing 6 (six) Substacks in one year gives me no right to critique food that anyone else puts into the world. My own slop is another story. This is all to say, 2024 will bring more criticism of homemade slop and praise of external snacks, and hopefully, the more of these I write the more reliable a narrator I’ll be and the closer I’ll come to earning the right to complain.

 

Snack

For our 1 year anniversary, I am trying a new Snack format today: a “recipe”! It will read like one of those unnecessarily long introductions you’re forced to scroll past telling the story of a food blogger’s home birth (I’m guessing here, I’ve literally never read one, this just seems like the vibe) as you try desperately to get to the bottom of the page to confirm the correct temperature for roasting broccoli. If you scroll past mine, you’ll also see why “recipe” is in quotes, as it will become clear that I’ve never written a recipe before and have no idea how to do it. I’ve also only tested this once, have no alternative suggestions, and use a pretty obscure ingredient that I’m sure few if any of you have on hand. Without further ado!!!!!!!!!!!

My habit of bringing foods home from faraway lands began when I brought a coconut back from Puerto Rico when I was in high school. Whether it was a particularly remarkable specimen I’m not sure, but I do know that after begging my parents and assuring them that I could be charged with transporting it all the way back to Boston, I ended up in the security line at the San Juan airport putting a whole coconut on the conveyor belt, nude and exposed, if my memory serves me, with not even a plastic tray to hold it. I’m no expert but I do know that fresh produce is not supposed to be brought between the US and Puerto Rico AND that a coconut contains what I have to imagine is more than the allotted 3.4 ounces of carry-on liquid in the form of coconut water, but the staff must’ve taken pity on me. 

I got the coconut through security, cradled it like a precious infant through the airport, held it on my lap for the entirety of the flight and, once home, intentionally dropped it off the porch of my house. Yes, I broke TSA regulations and transported an exotic fruit thousands of miles just so that I could drop it 30 feet onto my driveway, watch it crack and harvest what remained of the >3.4 ounces of lukewarm fluid inside and down it in one gulp. 

Could I have harvested this same bounty in Puerto Rico? Absolutely. Did bringing a small piece of my trip home mean, to me, bringing back what was essentially agricultural contraband instead of a novelty shot glass or keychain like most highschoolers? Also yes. Was it worth it? Not particularly. But this habit followed me into adulthood, as local delicacies abroad excited me beyond the point where I could simply enjoy them in their place of origin, and, instead of enjoying the memory of them like a normal person, I went to extreme lengths to take one sip of coconut water outside in the freezing Boston winter. 

More recently, this quirk of mine reared its ugly head when I became a transporter of Florida grapefruits (decidedly one of the heavier fruits, along with coconuts of course) after a trip to see my grandparents. My grandmother, probably the only other person on earth whose idea of a good time includes sorting through grapefruits at the local Publix in search of the heaviest ones with the smallest pores (Snack tip!), helped me stuff all 12 of my juicy little bowling balls into a sack, which I slung over my shoulder like a haggard old pack mule. I got them home just fine, with nothing to show for it but a shoulder that stayed sore for a week and breakfast for 6 days during which time I saw identical Florida grapefruits at Trader Joe’s.

This brings me to my most recent trip and to the source of today’s snack. This summer, I took a trip to Peru with Sam and some friends, where I experienced some of the best food I’ve ever eaten, including giant heirloom corn, alpaca meat and about 6,000 types of potatoes, all of which I would’ve given their own dedicated checked bag. Luckily, I did not attempt to do so, as the Peruvian airport did not even allow sealed bottles of water purchased in the terminal onboard the plane. I did, however, bring back discs of pure, unsweetened Peruvian cacao. 

The chocolate I tried in Peru was fruity and caramelly, at risk of sounding like a wine snob, and defended its reputation as a special and distinct version of itself with its unmistakable lushness. I had it in the form of bars and beverages, and learned about its terroir which, as with wine, lends different flavors and aromas to beans from different regions. Needless to say, I had to have some at home, and my local cacao discs from Cusco made it safely back to New York with me. Only this week, when the temperature and general vibes dropped significantly, was I ready to experiment with my little unsweet treasures, and thus was born this edition’s Snack. It’s a hot chocolate, nothing crazy, but I feel the need to tell you what I did because it was so damn good. I hate myself for specifying this cacao as an ingredient, but if you can somehow get your hands on some of the Peruvian stuff, I guarantee it’ll make all the difference. 

Hot Peruvian Chocolate 

For 2 :)

Ingredients

2 mugfulls milk (this is the best way to measure since it’ll be going back in there)

Approx ¾ mugfull Peruvian cacao discs (or any chocolate I am an asshole)

Splash of vanilla extract

Pinch of salt

A good dollop of ground cinnamon 

Maple syrup 

Add milk and chocolate to a little saucepan. By doing this twice I’ve learned that it’s a good idea to start with just these two ingredients so you can see that the color is sufficiently brown before you add vanilla and cinnamon. Whisk it up until nice and creamy. Once the chocolate is melted and you’ve achieved a yummy smooth color, add the vanilla, salt and cinnamon. I bet this would be really good if you used a whole cinnamon stick and left it in the whole time. Then add a few glugs of maple syrup. Remember that you can always add more, but it’s harder to make it less sweet, so go easy, but also remember that American tastebuds (especially mine) are accustomed to lots of sugar so I probably ended up adding like a quarter cup. 

You could obviously add marshmallows but this is so delish you don’t need them (plus I didn’t have any!) !!! 

I promise I’ll do better next time. 

Slay

In case you don’t have the pleasure of following me on Instagram, I got a kitten about a month ago. Her legal name is Daisy but I prefer to call her by her real names, Chichi or Mommy’s Baby (I refer to myself as Mommy’s Baby’s Mommy). She is a perfect Maine coon angel with a fluffy belly that she likes getting rubbed, huge paws with tufts of fur between warm pink toe beans, a tendency to fall asleep directly on top of me and her father and a raspy voice that she uses to consistently tell us how she’s feeling. I trained her to sit in one session (she’s brilliant) and she waits for us at the door when she hears us coming home (she’s a dog). She also has her mommy’s taste for human food and jumps up on the table every time we eat. She makes it difficult to get work done because she likes to have an arm wrapped around her most of the time, so I’ve had to type a good amount of this newsletter with one hand. She’s perfect. Since getting her, I have been living in a state of ecstasy. The word Slay doesn’t even begin to cover it. I mean, look at her: 

As I was writing this, she came by and typed this all by herself and asked me to include it: 

89bgh—--------------------------------------------------------------oi

Anyway, gotta go pet her. See you next year XP