The Fork

The Fork's brother once famously posed the question "Could you live in a world without snacks?" The answer, obviously, was a resounding "No!" For you see, dear Forkefeans, we believe everyone is pretty into snacks. As such, let us lead you through a mini-tour of some of our favorites and some of the favorites of those we know and love.

-A recent semi-disastrous dinner at The Fork's house gave birth to an inquiry: How one might do quick and easy homemade tempura-esque snacks without making a horrible mess. First off, it's pretty easy to get fresh veggies and dip 'em in flour, egg and Panko bread crumbs then boil 'em in canola oil. But the main thing we learned is that you wanna slice those veggies pretty thin. Carrots came out excellently, while sweet potatoes and onions proved a little harder. Our best advice? Cook the stuff about halfway before boiling and you probably don't need as many eggs as you think.

-While you're frying things, think about picking up some fresh corn tortillas from Alicia's Tortilleria, slicing them into little bite-sized guys and making your own corn chips. The Fork has a secret guacamole recipe handed down through the annals of our family history, but let us just say the trick is garlic and garlic salt and that we think squeezing a lime in there is a drag. We're sorry, we just do. Homemade salsa is easy as well, provided you're using fresh tomatoes. We found a ton of recipes online that call for jalapeños, but this is New Mexico, so do it with chile.

-We've mentioned our no-fuss caprese snacker "recipe" before, but in case you forgot, you just wanna get some fresh mozzarella cheese and a baguette, then score some little cherry tomatoes, some fresh basil and a thing of balsamic glaze (it's in the salad dressing aisle). Slice up the baguette into bite-sized discs and throw some basil all up on it, slice up that cheese into similarly-sized discs and throw on there; slice your little cherry tomatoes in half and pop one on, then drizzle with the balsamic glaze. Swish. You're welcome.

-If you're a nut-snacker, here's a simple trick that really only requires a couple things: Cashew Bars! OK, so first you wanna get a bar mold (here's one) and then you wanna get some chopped cashews (salted or not, your call). Get the cashews in a mixing bowl and add almond meal (it's a real thing) a little honey, a dash of molasses and a little splash of vanilla extract. Mix it all together and cram it into that bar mold we told you about. Let it chill for a little while in the fridge and voila! Oh man, shaved coconut would probably be good in there—or, if you're really ambitious, you could melt down some chocolate to dip the bottoms in and drizzle on top. Oh dang, seriously this sounds pretty good.

-Doritos are pretty good, too. Just sayin'.

-One of our favorite dessert-snacks is to get a big fat pomegranate, pull the seeds out (there's a handy video here that should make the easier) and just spread them into a little bowl or ramekin of whipped cream. Whether you make the cream yourself or not is really your call. We'd also recommend slicing up some strawberries, sticking 'em in a bowl, dusting them lightly (lightly, dammit!) with sugar, squeezing a quarter of a fresh lemon in. Add a dash of vanilla extract (a dash, dammit!) and stir it on up. Serve with yogurt or more of that whipped cream or even a couple tablespoons of simple heavy cream. Now that's how you un-health-ify a perfectly good berry!

So what're you snacking on, Fork fans? We want your recipes so we can share them with other readers. We'd also love photos if you have them. Just send them to thefork@sfreporter.com and we can all snack better.

If you have a full-on 18 minutes, here's a cool vid about reverse-engineering Kit-Kats, one of the finest snacks on this earth.

More Tidbits

-Remember a world without that Talenti gelato? Yeah, it was cold and grim, but the folks at epicurious.com have put together a definitive breakdown of the gelato giants' 36 different flavors. As an added bonus, who among us hasn't crammed leftovers or stored grains and flours and stuff in those containers?

-There's a fantastic piece of sci-fi-esque material over on eater.com about the future and pizza wars and the like. It's most definitely worth a read if you've got the time.

-Maybe we're really late to the party, but The Fork has become wildly obsessed with the Gordon Ramsay-led television program Kitchen Nightmares. If you don't know it, it's about failing restaurants that call Ramsay in to help and then fight him every effing step of the way over the changes he's trying to make. We found a cavalcade of episodes on Hulu, there's a whole YouTube channel and we're here to tell you that it might be one of the celeb chef's best shows … y'know, because he has scads of them. Our main question? If Gordon Ramsay has proven he known how to run a restaurant since, like, a billion years ago, why do these people fight him? Aw, who cares—it's a blast to watch and long live Ramsay!

–Food & Wine continues to ask the tough questions, like: Do you really need a sous vide precision cooker? We have some questions about that, too. For example, what the effing eff is a sous vide precision cooker? The short answer is that it's a device that looks like a vibrator and somehow cooks stuff. Anyone have one of these? And DO we need one? Probably not.

-Apparently home economics classes are on the decline leading to further questions such as, "They still existed?" NPR has more on that topic.

-Finally, if you're looking to travel with a specific food itinerary, HuffPo scoured tripadvisor.com to find the best food cities in the world. Unsurprisingly, there's a whole mess of Europe on the list.

Finally

If you somehow missed it, Santa Fe eatery Bodega Prime has changed how they do business much to the chagrin of a Santa Fean who was just looking for eggs. Find out more here. Thanks to Fork reader Nat as well for reaching out with similar info. Nat also points out that the IHOP/IHOB thing is a temporary change. Either way, we have so many killer local restaurants, it's never really on our list, Ps or Bs notwithstanding.

Do you know about Squash Blossom, the Santa Fe company that aims to connect consumers with farms and make everyone happy? You should, especially since the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce just named it their 2018 Small Business of the Year. SB's founder Nina Yozell-Epstein is all about helping and teaching and eating and eating well. Visit the link above for more information.