Winning Snack Combinations

In a few days, two of the best teams in the NFL will go head-to-head in Super Bowl 55. I predict that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, with the great ten-time Super Bowl starting quarterback, Tom Brady, will prevail over the Kansas City Chiefs. Whatever happens Sunday, we can all get a well-deserved win over the day’s hunger-pains with a few sure-fire snack combinations. As a veteran snacker and snacktivist, I have decided to share a few ideas that are sure to score at any part or event.

It is not that I’ve come up with most of these ideas myself, but amassing these simple recipes resulted from watching the snack-game be played on the actual field over the years. It all started when I was thirteen years old. I was content with being a novice snacker and with eating whatever my favorite snack branding company threw in the bag. My mom, to her credit, would not allow her children to remain so snack-complacent.

One day, as we were sitting down to watch the likes of Carl Lewis and Jackie Joyner-Kersee run track & field on NBC, my mom introduced us to something I like to call the triple threat. As opposed to choosing one flavor of potato chip on which to snack, she combined the barb-q, sour cream & onion and plain chips together in one big bowl. She then divided that bowl into individual portions. If you’re wondering why we didn’t eat directly from the bowl…well, there were eight of us, including my mom.

Anyway, not knowing which flavor would hit my mouth as I reached into the bag to grab another chip was an added dimension to an otherwise commonplace affair. Two years later, my parents divorced and we moved to an ungodly neighborhood in West Baltimore, the same neighborhood fictionalized in HBO’s “the Wire”. It was there that I learned about the second snack triple threat – caramel, cheddar cheese and butter popcorn. In fact, there is a company that sells this tasty trio under the name “Triple Threat”. If you buy a bag of their popcorn, be sure to shake it up. The caramel popcorn sinks to the bottom because it’s heavier.

I discovered the next flavor combination purely by accident. Action Bronson is a popular, underground rapper turned chef. It really surprised me to see a rapper so passionate about food. So, it caught my attention when I was flipping through the channels and saw him on one of those food shows. He was making a grape spread to put on sandwiches. And, while I was too lazy to press and ferment grapes for the delicious spread that he was recommending we make and try, I was all ears when he said that the lazy way to do it was to use grape jelly.

The idea is that the grape jelly adds just a little bit of sweet to the salty and tanginess of your sandwiches. It is from this concept that I developed the idea of combining raspberry preserves and Sweet Baby Ray’s barb-q sauce. Trust me! It’s an out-of-this world combination. It can be used as dipping sauce for chicken tenders, on sandwiches or as dip for chips. In Indian culture, they do a similar kind of thing with Mango chutney, which might also be a welcome addition to your dipping-sauce offerings.

I would be remiss if I failed to mention at least one hit beverage and dessert combination. No one knows who was the first to combine apple and grape juice or orange and pineapple juice, but aren’t we glad someone did? In the same way, we’d be hard-pressed to find the first person to combine lemonade and iced-tea. Here in Baltimore, we call it half-and-half. You can go into almost any restaurant in the city and order a half-and-half and they’ll know the drink to which you are referring.

It is a little challenging, however, to make a decent half-and-half at home. So, the best advice I can give is – start with a quality lemonade and a quality iced-tea. Of course, you can brew tea and prepare lemonade from scratch, but you’ll have a few added challenges. If you get it right though, your half-and-half is sure to be a hit with house-guests at parties and events. It’s well worth attempting to do, if for bragging rights alone.

By far, the most delicious flavor combination of them all is something I developed on my own. Little Debbie, a dessert-snack brand, used to make a most divine, apple streusel coffee cake. It’s cinnamon-sugary, crunchy crumb topping sat atop the softest, sticky little coffee cake. This elegant little thing could be crushed up and whipped into a quality, vanilla bean ice cream, which would then be drizzled with chocolate syrup to a most amazing effect.

Sadly, you’ll have to find a suitable replacement for that coffee cake perfection, because the product has been discontinued. However, if you do, you are certain to taste something that approaches heaven on earth. As humans, we like to graze from time to time. It gives us comfort, satisfaction and a sense that all is well in the world, even if just for a few moments. A few, delicious snack combinations might do the trick of turning those welcome moments into wonderful memories.