Kali: Food Goddess: Cute and Healthy Snacks

When I was a kid, my grandmother’s idea of a snack was often a piece of fruit. It was always something simple and unassuming. This was easy in the pre-school years because I accepted anything that was handed to me and was edible.

After a while, I would pick the tree, climb it and pick my poison! Not that Mami approved of my tomboy fruit picking ways. My choices were mango, guava, for a while we had a jobos tree, and later guineos niños (These pygmy bananas that grow in Puerto Rico and are super sweet). Through the years, depending on the intensity of storms and hurricanes, we also had papaya, soursop and tamarind.

The gent who owned the two-story home across the street was an SVP at Sultana, a Puerto Rican cookie and cracker company that eventually got gobbled up by Nabisco. He’d bring me tins of all sorts of goodies, and I’d enjoy these with cheese, in the afternoons, with a cup of chocolate.

There were no after-school cute sandwich cutouts or anything whimsy. I think she would have thought that was akin to playing with your food, and she did not approve of that.

The idea that you had to make food fun was alien to her. You ate what she put in front of you. There would be no discussion. She did not have patience for people who indulged children into believing they ran her kitchen. She’d have none of that!

Cute on a plate made no sense to her. She was a Great Depression baby and she’d known real hunger. Food, to her, was fuel for life not about cuteness. She did not understand food-related frivolities or junk food, for that matter. She did understand the pleasures of food, mind you. Her favorite delicacy was octopus salad, and she loved her turrón.

The idea of creative bento boxes would never compute, and the obsession the Japanese bring to it where they've created a competitive sport out of making lunch boxes would have thrown her for a loop. But she let me eat school lunches only halfway through first grade. I lost weight because I wouldn't touch half of it (it all smelled of dirty dish water, and tasted of salty dirty dish water to me). She took me home for a homemade meal every day after that.

The snacks she provided for my school day were mostly nutritious and utilitarian. Frankly, I don’t remember my own school snacks much, because I’m still obsessing over the fact that she wouldn’t buy me the lunchbox I wanted (Batman, of course).

I’m also not entirely sure that she would have thought making these snacks was time well-spent, unless she somehow managed to involve me in making them with her. She’d probably try almost anything to get me in the kitchen with her.

We don’t entertain kids around here, but I can guarantee you that I will be making at least two of these snacks for us. After all, being a kid at heart still counts!