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My First Graze Box: The Rest of It

I am a Grazer. Having subscribed to my first official Graze box and having decided to continue that subscription, I not only believe myself to be initiated, I believe my stomach to be initiated as well. My dreams are full of wrapper adventures while my meals are left half finished in the spirit of portioning off grazeable amounts of food. Never will I sink into the gluttonous sin of a full stomach again.

That being said, my boyfriend and I shared three snacks at once a few days ago, and I plan to eat the remaining four over the course of the hour it will probably take me to write this experience, as sublime as it will be.

Thai Style Sweet Chili, Anytime Energizer, and Jelly Doughnut are the snacks we chose to sacrifice together, my boyfriend and I. The chili was full of nuts and beans, some of my least favorite ingredients in life. I savored every sweet and slightly spicy crunch, for nuts and dried beans would never taste so good again. Each bite was like a prayer to the gentle and nourishing sun, cradling my spiritual crops--as well as my taste buds--with a mother's warmth.

The Anytime Energizer was less profound and carried more practical and gym-time notes. The pear pieces had too little taste for the volume of chew that they packed. The cherry was too cherry. The walnut was just right. My inner blonde-braided child sufficed that it was good eating for someone else.

Then came the astoundingly addictive tartness of the Jelly Doughnut. The name describes the flavor perfectly, yet does the snack so much disservice as real jelly doughnuts are just bags of puffed up wheat with uneven patches of Snow White foundation and too much chemically flavored edible lipstick caked onto the teeth. The one true Grazer's version is a collection of raspberry flavored jelly strings, small crisp cookie drops that smell like vanilla cake and crumble in the mouth like tea biscuits, actual dried fruit and tiny chopped slivers of almond that add a hint of cherry to each whiff as well as a creamier texture akin to almond milk, only in solidified form. Did I mention how much I dislike nuts and cherry?

I loved this.

Did I also mention that I'm still on my period and therefore have to nap in the middle of the day at the height of Advil efficiency like some old lady with lifelong post-surgery back pain? Well, here we are about three hours later and a New York Everything Bagel in hand to keep my hunger busy while the roommate and I wait for my boyfriend to come home with some delicious steaks in tow.

The NYE Bagel certainly smells like a bagel, which is one of many delicious morning smells to wake up to. Naturally, because I love nuts so much, I go for the cheese cashews first, stained with orange dust as they are. I don't know what they do with their nuts, but they're always creamy. If nuts always had the taste and texture of milk, I wouldn't dislike them so much. The poppyseed onion sesame sticks really pack that "everything" flavor, along with that of a crunchy toasted crust. This is bagel heaven for me. There's nothing better than biting halfway into the ring of a freshly crisped bagel, the brim of it hard and brittle and the furthest part of your bite digging through a thin granite top just before cutting into the tootsie bread center. The sesame sticks are just that experience over and over again, and the satisfaction runs deep into the root canal. Admittedly, I thought the roasted pumpkin seeds were going to be my least favorite part, but they're soft and almost fluffy, making up the warmed and tender part of the bread. Get a pinchful of all three ingredients together, and you get a tiny bagel with a lot of punch. I almost want to spread cream cheese on it, but there's no reasonable amount of surface area to work with.

Next up is the Snickerdoodle Dip. My favorite part about Graze snacks so far is always the wrapper removal. I get hit with a cozy aroma, cinnamon logs roasting in a pretzel fireplace. I dislike pretzels, but these sticks give me the same feeling as when I light a scented candle--I know I'm going to sniffle from allergies for a couple days, but at least for now my nose gets well pampered. I'm not sure if I've ever had snickerdoodles before, so I'm not sure what they're supposed to taste like, but I imagine they taste just like the fuzzy cookie butter caramel residue I just licked off the wrapper. The pretzel stick by itself is, as with my allergies to perfumes, full of regret. My nose predicted sugar and spice, but there was nothing nice. They do taste wonderful though and my roommate is apologizing for taking more than one. Whatever snickerdoodles are, the dip tastes like caramel graham crackers, and coats the pretzel with the same kind of family Christmas spirit as a stocking full of common necessities (toothbrush, floss, chapstick, socks). It's both delicious and heartwarming and I never want it again.

The Sweet & Spicy Beet Crunch is the first Graze snack I legitimately dislike. The jalapeno chickpeas have an airy crunch, further elevated by a mild pepperish fever. The sunflower seeds do nothing but add more disgustingly soft texture to the beet chips that don't deserve to be called chips. They chew without being chewy. They twist and bend around the grinding of the teeth and slowly deform under large amounts of pressure like half-hardened glue. After smelling something similar to the blue BBQ potato chips sold on the Jet Blue airline, my expectations were depressingly let down.

The Fantastic Forest Fruits is like a snack you'd expect to find in a fairy tale hermit cave. I imagine an old herbalist crone, 129 going on 130, her home littered atop the entire low ceiling of the cavern with hooks and ropes tied up around bundles of sage, cinnamon sticks, yew twigs, berry pouches, and numerous other forest collectibles. A small cavity in the wall has a smoked out cold fire going, keeping that small space dry and dehumidifying the rack above it. That rack is covered in some kind of mesh, and on top of that is the pile of soft, dried fruits that this snack comes from. I can almost smell the crone in these fruits. These are easily one of my favorite Grazing nibbles, if only because it appeals to my fantasy fascination. That, or it appeals to my current period cravings.

I can't wait 'til the end of the month when I get my next Graze box. And also when my period ends.

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A low quality audio reading of my post with the same title. ;D

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First Graze Box & Pumpkin Spice Flapjacks

I am a starving artist.

Literally, my belly is constricting in pain from the vapid emptiness that has been the past 10 foodless hours of my wakeful life. My roommate knocks on the door and passes me a slightly battered green box. “Oh my god, is that my Grave box?” A light of awareness beams into my eyes. The hunger I hadn’t noticed since getting out of bed was finally going to be sated. I turn the box over and it says GRAZE. “Your original misreading somewhat concerns me.” The roommate accompanies his statement with a squinted stare.

Sadly, I decided to save the box for another day and continued to starve myself for awhile in favor of getting some commissions done.

Finally, a couple days later, the time has come. I am starving once again, and have no patience to make food. A plastic ribbon wrapping the box is in my way. No wait. There’s two. I have no patience to find scissors, so I fiddle with the ribbons for about twice the time it would take me to walk ten steps over to the kitchen drawer, pull out the scissors, then take the ten steps back. First obstacle traversed.

I appreciate the 2x2 grid with which my snacks are presented to me. It pleases my eyes. It would be more pleasing if I knew what they were so I could pick one. Sounds like a job for the pair of glasses sitting across from me. I opt instead to pick up the box and move it closer to my face where it gets in the way of writing notes exactly like this sentence.

Top Left: Pumpkin Spice Flapjack--rustic rolled oat flapjack with pumpkin spice Top Right: Snickerdoodle Dip--with cinnamon pretzel sticks Bottom Left: Fantastic Forest Fruits--blueberries, lingonberries, soft apple pieces & cherry raisins Bottom Right: Thai Style Sweet Chili--honey chili peanuts, lemon & black pepper fava beans, garlic sesame sticks & edamame beans

There’s a second 2x2 grid of snacks that the first one flips open to. The first time I try to open it up, the prequel to a snackslide happens. I press the cover down against the top grid before I try again, and this time successfully gain access to the bottom grid without spilling anything.

Top Left: New York Everything Bagel--cheese cashews, poppyseed onion sesame sticks & roasted pumpkin seeds Top Right: Cherry, Pear + Walnut Anytime Energizer--Get a kick-start with this good source of copper & manganese for energy Bottom Left: Sweet & Spicy Beet Crunch--beet chips, jalapeno chickpeas & sunflower seeds Bottom Right: Jelly Doughnut--raspberry strings, vanilla cookie drops, raspberry cranberries & almonds

I’ve been pretty tired the past couple of days, which makes me wonder if my period is coming on. I might try the “Anytime Energizer” then. But for now, reading and writing all these snack names and their respective ingredients has made me so hungry that I now have no patience to eat anything less than a meal. Time to go ask the roommate what he wants for lunch.

Fast forward to a few days later. I begin my journey as a Grazer with the “Pumpkin Spice Flapjack” and some leftover Dunkin Donuts blueberry iced coffee. (Extra extra cream, no sugar, please.)

Graze snacks come in these shiny transparent plastic containers, ideal for a single serving. Intimate for a shared nibble with friends or significant others. Peeling the wrapper off the top is a firm but smooth engagement of crisp plastic pulling away from tight clinging seal, all with dignified silence. Classy, and satisfying, like closure when the protagonist of a rom-com walks up to her 2/3-of-the-movie-obsession and says “I liked you because the idea of you fulfilled something in my life, but I don’t need you anymore.” That wrapper is now gone, continuing its own journey through life, apart from me, in a Dunkin Donuts paper bag being saved for trash.

Unsealing the snack slowly allows the senses to be hit with the fragrance of freshly baked pumpkin pie seeping out into the yard through a crack in the window. It lifts my lungs into a long inhale through the nose and holds the breath there hoping to absorb its essence entirely before releasing it back into the world. What a precious, fleeting moment as the scent quickly loses its impact the longer the snack is exposed.

The flapjack is a sharp rectangular block roughly the size of a bar of soap. A quick inspection reveals incisions made halfway deep into the bar which permit the snack to spread apart into even bite-sized thirds. Even if bite-sized bits aren’t the desired size with which one would like to consume the delectable, taking it apart with your bare fingers incurs a quiet, spongy texture of the separation, felt viscerally through the fingertips and transferred further into the bones of your grip so that your hands become jailors, and the newly severed pieces lose any hope of ever seeing freedom.

The first bite is always skeptical--delicate with caution, but brimming with curiosity. As the miniaturized bar comes close, the tip of the tongue comes to meet with it first, ensuring that neither the taste nor texture will cause great harm to the senses. With safety determined, the bar is immediately cleared to land on the lower lip which not only provides support, but serves as an automated crumb pan. The teeth come to grips with their strange new passenger, easy to sever from itself like densely sponged cake, but chewy from the excess in grains. 

There is confidence in the thick mash of oats that slim down between the molars, like butter conforming to the pressured space between two slats. It is a full and wholesome body that knows how to twist in front of the camera and say, “And I’m lean, too”. But a figure of celebrity is never complete without a personal sense of fashion, and this particular flapjack likes its satin luster, defined by the slip of dried dates within the layers of chewing. Chomp the oats, slide the dates, chomp the oats, slide the dates. Their consistency takes on a creamier version of a jelly bean’s innards, sometimes ending in a lightly familiar crunch of sugars.

Despite the all too familiar mouthful of a soft granola bar, I keep thinking back to the pie. Every second of consumption lends me to craft a more vivid recipe of a liberally spiced pumpkin pie, with classy, moderated measurements of sugar and vanilla extract, an oat-filled crust, and dried dates chopped in half then laid out in circles as topping decoration. I take a slice for myself and a slice for my boyfriend. A slice for myself and a slice for my roommate. A slice for myself, and a slice for myself. And then a slice for myself. And then I scrape the pan. And then I lick the pan.

The tray is empty and Graze beckons me to grade the snacks I’ve tested. I’m not a fan of oats, so I think I’ll mark it a dislike and avoid it in the future.