Snap, Crackle

Not a week goes by without some food manufacturer claiming to have produced “the ultimate low-fat snack.” We’ve tasted cookies, we’ve tasted chips, we’ve tasted pretzels. Almost all of these low-fat and no-fat products taste exactly the same: like cardboard. Either salty cardboard or sugar-coated cardboard.

Last week, however, we finally tasted a low-fat snack worth snacking on. From Mother’s, the company that makes those cute pink- and white-frosted animal cookies, come Potato Snaps, oven-baked and with just 4.5 grams of fat per one-ounce serving--that’s 22 Snaps. (Most potato chips average about 10 grams of fat per one-ounce serving, usually 11 to 18 chips, depending on the brand.)

The box claims that the Snaps have “all the taste and goodness of regular potato chips.” Not quite. The secret of these snaps is that they aren’t trying to be potato chips; they’re more like a cross between a Ritz cracker and a Lays potato chip, which makes them very, uh, munchable, as the snack czars might say. We like to think of them as potato crackers. They’re not greasy, they have just enough salt to keep you interested and they have great crunch.

Still, one nibbler complained that he would have liked it better if Mother’s had sent a batch of pink animal cookies--with sprinkles--instead. As he put it, “Now that’s a snack.”

Platter Puss

San Francisco artist Kay Young hand-paints these glass platters with playful squiggles and zig-zags, inspired, she says, by Dr. Seuss storybooks. We’re not sure how a breakfast of green eggs and ham would look on Young’s plates, but should a cat in a hat appear for dinner, he should approve of the dinnerware.

Saucer Sauce

The dignified old pasta firm Agnesi (and we do mean old--it goes back to 1824) is not too dignified to make an ominous button-shaped pasta it calls dischi volanti. That’s right, earthling: flying saucers. Your plate looks like a whole nest of ‘em.

On the back of the package there’s a specific recipe for your dischi entitled sogno dell’astronauta. It would seem (very plausibly) that astronauts dream of pasta with asparagus and artichoke hearts in a garlicky white wine sauce.

Agnesi pastas are available in Southern California at specialty retail stores such as Bristol Farms, Chalet Gourmet and Santa Monica Seafood.