Five Snacks To Get Through American Hell

by Patrick Miller

The world got a whole lot crazier over the last year, and if there’s one thing I’ll need to get through all this, it’ll be some good snacks.

My rules for comfort food:

Some people find indulgence to define comfort food; I just want stuff that is tasty, cheap, low-hassle, and won’t kill me.

Eggo Waffles With Peanut Butter, Honey, and Salt

Eggo Waffles With Peanut Butter, Honey, and Salt

Legend has it that in 1982, Glamour Magazine fashion editor Kim Bonnell gave coworker Kathy Suder a recipe for roast chicken. Suder made the chicken for her boyfriend, boyfriend proposed shortly thereafter; this process repeated with a few other Glamour employees and their respective partners, and thus we have a recipe called “Engagement Chicken”.

These are “Baby, I Don’t Just Want Something Casual Frozen Waffles”.

Take two Eggos, homestyle or buttermilk, and toast them right up until they’re just about to burn. (A little burning is okay.) Spread some peanut butter on them. I recommend unsalted, crunchy, organic stuff. If your intended recipient isn’t into peanut butter (it’s kinda heavy) go with the best butter you can find, add some honey, and grind a light scattering of sea salt to finish.

Best for late nights and lazy mornings.

Indian Food From A Bag With Rice And Scrambled Eggs

Instant Indian food.

Canned chili is excellent bachelor chow because it’s convenient, tasty, not horribly unhealthy, and pairs well with a lot of random stuff you might have lying around in your kitchen. If you want to step up your game, though, look around your grocery store for single-serving packaged premade Indian food. Stuff like spiced lentils, vegetable curries, palak paneer, usually for like $3 for a packet.

Heat it up and eat it over rice. If you want some protein, scramble some eggs and mix it in. Anyone who has spent a moderate amount of time and effort trying to build muscle learns a bunch of different ways to cram in more eggs into your daily meals without getting sick of them. This one’s my favorite.

This is definitely lazy enough that I might feel guilty about feeding it to someone else. I will say, though, that it’s not easy to whip out an instant dinner that is a) cheap b) vegetarian c) reasonably healthy and d) doesn’t look and taste like airplane food, so if you make it for a partner they best respect the craft.

Fage Greek Yogurt (Only When It’s On Sale)

Yogurt is fucking great. It’s cheap and healthy and creamy and refreshing, and if you have the munchies it might as well be ice cream.

Do yourself a favor: Get yourself The Good Ass Greek Yogurt. Get that Fage. It’s pronounced fa-yeh, and it even says that on the package so don’t get yourself decked because someone heard you say some problematic shit. But only buy it when it’s on sale, because otherwise it’s an expensive daily habit. I used to work at an office that stocked them, and I’d eat two of them, effectively increasing my compensation by $20/week.

The day after I wrote the above paragraph, I found Fage on sale at a nearby grocery store. It was entirely cleaned out except for Mango. HELL YEAH.

Flavor tiers:

LaCroix

LaCroix (pronounced “la-croy” according to their website?) is canned flavored sparkling water that doesn’t have a weird chemical sweetness to it. I used to drink a lot more beer before I found LaCroix.

I guess it’s mostly a midwest thing but for some reason they’re all over creative agencies and tech companies on the West Coast. I have gotten so many nods of respect from middle-aged moms when they see the flavors I got in my shopping cart.

Flavor tiers:

Kimchi

I make sure to eat my vegetables, but I’m never that enthusiastic about them. Kimchi is different.

I think that nurturing creativity on the Internet can be tricky because it’s so easy to see how shaping your work to fit easily identifiable trends, topics, or audiences gets your work more attention and visibility, which builds your reach and reputation. Problem is, if you do that, you end up attracting people who aren’t into the stuff you want to make, and all you got out of it was some practice making work that’s easy to like.

Kimchi isn’t easy to like. It’s slimy and crunchy and funky and there are all kinds of different ways to make it and all kinds of different things that you can make into kimchi. But it’s good for you, it lasts forever, and whenever you eat some kimchi, you can be confident that the reason that kimchi exists in front of you is because someone out there thought that this shit right here is the best way to kimchi. Maybe you like it, maybe you don’t, but try it and you’ll learn something about me, and maybe yourself, too.

If you work as a professional creative of any type, you learn how to rid your work of its funk. Screw that. Make kimchi.