Apparently, the grocery stores were extra-busy this past weekend, due to
people buying food/snacks for the Superbowl.  So I'm curious as to what are
some of your  favorite snack items?

62 responses total.

This may be a frivolous item but still, so many Americans do snack between
meals or in the evening while watching tv, doing stuff with friends, or
hanging out online.

My typical snacks in a workday are apples, pears, or peanuts.  I also enjoy
a few bottles of 710ml water throughout the day.

For the superbowl, I grilled some carne asada and chicken breasts then cut
them up with scissors into bowls.  I also chopped up some roma tomatoes and
mixed that with coriander, pepper, salt, and garlic then split that and put
made one hot with chopped salerno pepper and tobasco.  I grated some cheddar
and heated up some veggie no-fat refried beans, too.  Put out some sour cream.
Heated tortillas in a tortillas dish with a lil water in the microwave.
Everybody enjoyed it and got fat.

Tod, what's carne asada? I *think* carne is something with a bit of spiceness,
but I don't know what the asada is.

I wasn't too hungry for most of the day yesterday so I hadn't eaten anything
since about 2pm.  In the 2nd half of the game, I did get a bit hungry but not
enough for a meal--so I just made up one of those mini-bags of popcorn.

Popcorn has been one of my longtime favorite snacks [since I was a kid]. Back
in my late teens, someone gave me a popcorn cookbook that I still have.

Another somewhat frequent snack are pretzels.  I do like potato chips [the
plain ones are best], tortilla chips, and fritos but I rarely buy those
because I know they'll get eaten! So if/when I do get some, I buy the smaller
bags. Nachos are good, too [sometimes I use fritos as the base instead of the
tortilla chips].  I won't bother listing the sweets, other than ice cream
being the favorite. When I'm out somewhere, like with friends, I usually get
an appetizer [and split it if I can] or I just get a side dish from the menu.
To drink, these days I drink mostly water though occasionally I'll have tea,
milk, or once in awhile, a pop.

Carne is meat.

I am partial to Chex party mix, only I make my own, no prepackaged 
stuff.  Buy some wheat and corn chex boxes, mix in mini pretzels, 
peanuts, cashews, cheetos, cheeze-its, potato chips, whatever else is 
handy.  Add red pepper, shake and serve  :)

I also like fondue, although I no longer have a working electric fondue 
maker  :(

I like fritos and sometimes wonder why the frito-lay company doesnt 
market them as being "natural" since the ingredients are so simple (I 
think the ingredients are corn, corn oil, and salt. ) 

One time when I was in California around a bunch of hippy mothers (my 
friends mothers play group in fact), I was eating some fritos and 
offered some to the kids. One of the kids mothers gave me this whole 
lecture about how she doesnt give her kid "junk food" like fritos. Then 
she went into the car to get the organic corn chips for the kids. I was 
just going to let it go, of course, because who wants to make snippy 
comments about Fritos of all things? But then she looked at me and said 
in a loud snearing voice, "I dont eat anything I cant pronounce" 

I looked at the bag and said "corn, oil, salt" Then the other mothers 
didnt believe me and had to have a look and they were all surprised and 
one said she felt a little foolish paying more than twice as much for 
the other brand from Whole Foods. I quietly filed the incident away in 
my "Left wing millionare hippies - out of touch with reality" story 
file in my brain. 

Anyways, the really obnoxious thing is that I like the more expensive 
brand much better because they use less salt and less oil. The only 
reason I even had fritos was because we stopped at a gas station and I 
was *really* hungry so there werent a lot of choices. I mean I like 
fritos ok but generally think they use too much oil and salt so the 
chips are kind of heavy and they make a person very thirsty because of 
all the salt. And trust me, I LOVE salt so if I think something is too 
salty, it is very salty. 

Kroger currently has 1.3 lb organic non-GMO yellow or blue (or beet-red) corn
chips, very low salt, for $3.50.  Very tasty too.  We had a bag for supper
to celebrate having a new neighbor on Saturday.  

re #3
 Tod, what's carne asada? I *think* carne is something with a bit of
 spiciness but I don't know what the asada is.

Carne Asada=BBQ steak(usually thin cuts of skirt steak)
I used thin cuts of sirloin tip beef for ours then after it was cooked I cut
it into strips with scissors.

I usually have an afternoon snack of chips and salsa. A problem is that I 
want low-fat, baked, chips. For a while there were Tostito baked chips 
with 1 gm fat/oz. These disappeared so I'm using Meijer baked torilla 
chips with 2 gm fat/oz. If anyone knows of baked chips with 1 gm fat/oz, 
I'd appreciate knowing of them.

re #9
I don't have a quick answer on that but I can recommend alternatives: rice
cakes, unsalted lowfat saltine crackers, thick cucumber slices, and celery
sticks.

Rane, you can buy raw frozen corn tortillas and bake them briefly in a toaster
oven.  (don't overdo it or they will catch on fire, which happened to Jim).
Or buy the masa harina and make your own tortillas.  Or pick your own corn
and scrape it off the cob when it is dry (flour corn not sweet corn) then soak
it overnight in a lye solution (to nixtamalize it and increase vitamin
content) and then boil it an hour and rinse it repeatedly and grind it on a
metate and cook on a griddle.  This latter method produces very sweet tasting
tortillas but is rather time consuming.  You can also grow the corn.  We have
seed for Mexican green cord (dent variety).  Corn contains oil.

(Thanks folks...but all I really seek is just lower fat chips. Also, the
ground is currently too hard for planting corn.)

It is very very easy to stick a couple of raw corn tortillas in a medium oven
and bake them for a few minutes without adding oil or salt.  If you want
smaller pieces use a scissors to cut them up first into triangles (or if you
can find square tortillas cut them into squares).  

I second the first part of what Sindi said.  As in the first 
sentence in 11. 

I'm not sure I would gain much. Tortillas have about 0.8 gm fat/oz, but are
ca 50% water, so drying them will make tht 1.6 gm fat/oz. In fact, that be
why the Meijer tortilla chips are 2 gm fat/oz. 
(Data from http://www.recipezaar.com/library/getentry.zsp?id=657)

So are you looking for tortilla chips made from defatted corn?  If so, why?

[This is now item 236 in the cooking/food conference as well as item 107 Agora
conference-winter addition, 2007.]

When I'm in the mood for an easy 'good-for-you' snack, I like easy things like
grapes, or strawberries when I want something a bit on the sweeter side or
some easy veggies with ranch dressing as a dip. [baby carrots, grape tomatoes,
celery, green/red/or-yellow peppers are all good.

I like celery with peanut butter. I also like toast as a snack. And
cheese and crackers. Sometimes I skip dinner and just have a snack
instead but then perhaps, it isnt a snack and is actually my dinner!

One time a friend of mine was talking to me about her husband. She said
that before they got married, he would sometimes come home and have
cheese and crackers FOR DINNER! Imagine *that*? I just had to laugh
because it seems like a perfectly good dinner to me especially if one
adds some fruit or a veggie to it. 

I miss the baked Tostito chips, too.  I've seen some with a "touch of lime,"
but I want them plain.

Since I try (not always successfully) to limit my fat intake, I generally
avoid chips.  Cheese and crackers are my preferred between-meal (or instead-of
meal) nosh.

better scrub those crackers off your list.

Re #16: as I wrote, I am looking for baked "unflavored" chips with 1 gm
fat/oz, or less. 

 re #20, 21:  the cheese, too, for that matter.   :-(

As I said, "not always successfully." :(

The 'lime' is not a fruit but limestone, which is reacted with the corn to
increase the amount of an amino acid in it.  

On the corn chips, the touch of lime is the fruit.  A current fade is corn
chips with lime juice flavoring.  They're ok on occasion, but I generally
prefer my corn chips plain.

We often do corn chips and homemade salsa and/or guacamole.  STeve makes a
kick-ass salsa and my guacamole gets rav reviews.  We also keep popcorn around
for spur of the moment snacks.  I try to keep things like fruit and veggies
around as well.  Green grapes are great frozen.  We also like to buy cans of
fruit when they are on sale and pop them in the freezer until they are just
barely frozen.  As good or better than ice cream.

Re #25: in this case, it really is the fruit lime, but the expression is 
"hint of lime". See http://www.neckofwoods.com/wp/archives/date/2004/01/

How much vitamin C comes from the 'lime'?  Can you taste lime fruit?

I can.  I love those chips.  And I don't eat them for servings of 
Vitamin C.

My favorite snack is gardettos. It's a mix of pretzels and rye chips and
french bread sticks. It's been a favorite of mine for years and i don't think
i'll ever loose interest in it.

I'm also big on shrimp cocktail, especially if one knows how to make 
really good cocktail sauce.  

 > make really good cocktail sauce.  

I do...

1. Take Heinz cocktail sauce bottle.
2. Tip upside down.

My choice of snacks varies with what's at home - from cake rusks to "mathries"
(i'm not even sure how to describe tehm - deep fried something made with wheat
flour is closest I can come to)

Isnt cocktail sauce just ketchup and horse radish?

re 31:  I have a great recipie (not sure if I posted in kitchen or not, 
I think I did in an appetizer item) for a fiesta shrimp coctail which 
is my favorite way to do it now.  It's not the cocktail sauce, that's 
the same, but you marinate the shrimp in stuff.

Jeanne, I bet it is fabulous!

For a sweet and salty snack: melt a bag of chocolate chips in the microwave
and then stir in a bag of small pretzels. Stir til pretzels are coated. Spread
them on a wax-papered cookie sheet and place in freezer for about a half an
hour to harden the chocolate. Break into pieces as some of the pretzels will
be 'stuck' together, place in a ziplock bag for easy storage.

resp:37 that sounds yummy!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N2mlViucKY

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