Snacking away ay, snacking awayyy ay..

Yeah yeah.. For some reason Ian Anderson is doing the rounds in my head, but that is another story.

This weekend, the boss finally allowed me to go freak out at the local costco to buy healthy snacks. You see, a month without potatoes has left me with a big void to fill!

What can I eat as snack food if Pringles, baked lays, chips (bbq, sour cream and onion flavors), kettle chips, veggie chips (which are really potatoes with different veggie flavors), samosas, aloo parathas, puffs, etc. are all off the table?

Trying to give up potatoes and living in the USA is like living in a small island and giving up sea food!

The wife and MIL are begging me to break the self imposed "vrath" because of various reasons. The obvious one is that it seriously limits the stuff they can dish out. The not so obvious, devious reason is that a potato free man tends to take the remaining foods more seriously. His tastebuds have somehow become more sensitive..

What can I compare this to? Have you ever gone to an ENT doctor in your high school, early college years to get your ears cleaned with a syringe?! You walk out of that clinic and all of a sudden you feel like the world of sound is open to you. You come back home, switch the cassette player on and start hearing those odd chimes that Ilayaraja so strategically placed in the background, stuff you completely missed just before the cleaning session? Something like that.

Suddenly, I can detect the ratio of salt/chili/tamarind to the second decimals. Now that is really getting on the wife and MIL's nerves. They would rather have me stuff myself with bland potato filler than be more critical! Looks like it is harder on them than for me.

Well, the 34 size pants still fit and that means the aloovrath goes into its second straight month!

Only one problem. The brain still sends the hand to an imaginary cup on the couch when watching TV or working on the laptop at odd hours, well at any hour for that matter and when one goes to the kitchen and surveys all those potato thingys on the shelf one tends to get depressed and grabs chocolate instead. That problem has been corrected and the women of the house decided to give away all the candy stash or hide it from me. So the hunt for new healthy snacks began this week.

We have now purchased

1. Dry roasted Edamame (soy beans) - truly amazing (Sea point forms brand I believe). Low fat, high protein, as good as peanuts (which as you all know is a no no in this house).. loving it

2. Mrs. Mays almonds (they are back in costco) - delicious!

3. Pretzels (yes, they are high carbs, and we have to chip off the salt crystals before eating them).. but they are a better alternative to other junk foods

4. Mixed nuts (cashews, almonds, walnuts, pecans) - no peanuts, no peanut oil. What more can we ask?

5. Pistachio Crisps (by True North) - very yummy and supposedly healthy!

Add to this the usual Honey nut cheerios and we could make a new type of mixture (granted it wont be as good as grand sweets), but it will be a mixture that is high protein, medium carb and is potato/peanut/sesame seed free!

All these have been purchased on one condition. None of this shall go to waste!

Based on what is being crunched and munched right now as this post is being typed, we can be assured that it wont!

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