international snack reportage (post is in English, don't worry)

Nikki and I had a dozen delicious aloe soju-tinis at the new Korean restaurant near my place last week, which made us appreciate the FREE Korean snacks all the more.

Unfortunately I had already snacked pretty hard before I thought to have N photograph the spoils. (you can see the wreckage of my plate in the photo, there WERE dumplings...)

There was kimchee, spicy tofu, salty green beans, pickled cucumbers, soybeans and some other thing that we couldn't identify. The soybeans reminded N of those boston baked bean candies and me of boiled peanuts. I don't like either of those snacks. But I LOVED these Korean soybeans. They also allowed me to practice my abysmal chopstick skills. (which were further hindered by the 12 soju-tinis.)

cookies you want

I just sampled some delicious new varieties of Pepperidge Farm cookies and, naturally, wanted to share my findings with you.

Cookie number one is called the Tahiti and boy, let me tell you, this cookie is a VACATION! A crispy little sandwich made out of coconut cookies with chocolate in between. I believe that because the cookies are so coconutty they count as a FRUIT, so I was sure to eat 3-5 servings of the TAHITI and suggest you do the same.

Next up was the Rialto, a cosmopolitan little cookie that
would have one of those unplaceable European accents. If cookies talked. Which we ALL KNOW they don't. Also a sandwich cookie, the Rialto is chocolaty cookies with amaretto-chocolate icing in the middle.

Run out and get yourself some cookies.

All the president's snacks

So here in Washington this weekend was the White House Correspondent's Association festivities. The blogosphere is already jammed up with commentary on the main event, so I am going to stick to the snicky-snacks. Fueled largely by alcohol, there wasn't much breaking news on the snack front, but I did need to make sure you saw this adorable snack-swag from the Bloomberg after-party. You can buy these chocolate mice that are ALMOST too cute to snack on a Burdick's.

Readers: Please let me know if you have any pictures of the president eating CHOCOLATE MICE!

this snack was made for walkin'

this here is a snack for the ages.

On Nikki's birthday several months back, we devoured this dolly cake that one of Nikki's CREATIVE snack artiste co-workers made for her. There was a high stakes bet around whether there were (inedible) doll legs inside her confectionery couture. SnackManiac lost.

Everyone was a winner though when we started stuffing our faces with Barbie BAKED GOODS. The cake was nice and juicy and the frosting had high-sparkle glitter in it. We washed it down with some fancy bubbly and celebrated Nikki's birth. And continued to be grossed out by the dolly's unclothed extremities in the middle of a birthday cake.

snack PLUS princess = birthday TIME!!!

UPDATE: Nikki appears to keep the cake dolly by her side, check out this pic of her, apparently at work with N(?) sporting a new, non-cake outfit. That may or may not be made out of lab tape.

Nikki says: "I made dolly a dress. She's doing well but refuses to take off that damn tiara."

Please consider this the first installment of "SNACKS: WHERE ARE THEY NOW??"

liquid snack: no chewing required

okay, okay, so this isn't actually a snack. but check out how lovely these champagne cocktails Nikki and I had after work last Friday. they do have GARNISHES, which are like snacks, only smaller. PLUS, once you suck a few of these puppies down, you are going to go on a snack rampage.

snackmaniac BREAKING NEWS ALERT

Attention snack fiends everywhere, today is FREE CONE DAY at Ben & Jerry's!!

This means that you can have an ICE CREAM CONE for dinner because it is FISCALLY responsible. Ben Bernanke says, "I recommend the Chunky Monkey."

I have taken the liberty of mapping all of the Ben & Jerry's locations in Washington, DC, so you, like SnackManiac, can hit them all up TONIGHT by 8:00 pm.

KETTLE of (snack) fish indeed

A reader wrote in asking SnackManiac to conduct some research comparing regular Goldfish crackers with the new "Flavor Blasted" Goldfish crackers. I was ready to roll up my sleeves and get snackin' both because this was a worthy endeavor and because the names of those aquatic snacks just cracked me up. Xplosive Pizza. Why would you want to eat that? It is way to funny to be taken seriously.

Anyway, along those lines, while I was in the store looking to buy a bag of regular pizza guppies and XPLOSIVE ones to do a little Louis Pasteur style experimentation back in the lab (aka my sofa,) these other hilarious Goldfish caught my eye.

Now I don't know if this was just a coincidence or some convoluted stance on immigration that the Brookville market is taking, but the queso jalapeno flavor was the only package in Spanish, but it was awesome. I always prefer snacks with GRAN SABOR, so basically, YES PLEASE.

Onto the snack itself. First of all, the goldfish are NOT wearing sunglasses as advertised on the package, so don't get your hopes up. They are, however, SWIMMING in Dorito cheese dust topping. They are cheesy, spicy and chemically, but in a delightful way. And YES, the sabor was in fact EXPLOSIVO.