Masala Mama Simmer Sauce

Ahh, the paleo diet. It’s an admirable regimen incorporating the simple foods the cavemen and women who went before us decided to place between their ancient incisors: fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds, meat, eggs, and…crackers? Yep, peeps, you heard correctly – the cracker for the modern-day caveperson is finally here. The homo sapiens at Snackin Free have come up with Paleo Crackers for when you want your neolithic diet with the crunch and convenience of modern, packaged snack food. With only 16 grams of carbs, eight different varieties including Cinnamon Graham, Toasted Onion, and Cheddar N’ Chives, and tasty ingredients like tapioca flour, jalapeno powder, and Himalayan pink salt, there’s something for everyone to love – Neanderthal wannabes and otherwise.

We love cereal but, in all honesty, we’ve been out of the carb for b-fast game a while. The occasional cereal milk cone from Milk Bar and my once a year splurge on an oversize bowl of the Great Tony the Tigers’ Frosted Flakes are about all the Saturday morning, five-year-old-kid impersonations I allow myself. Imagine my zeal when I realized a few boxes of this more than playful, yet almost none of the guilt, quad pack of keto-friendly cereal showed up at my door. Magic Spoon is doing god’s work, if your god’s name is Kellogg. As the disruption and bettering of just about everything these days continues with a heavy foot on the pedal, Greg and Gabi disrupted an industry built on sugar-coated grains with free prizes inside. Taking the four most popular cereals; Frosted, Fruity, Cinnamon and Cocoa and turning down the crap but keeping all the flavor is no small feat. Any of their keto-friendly, gluten and grain-free flavors barely have carbs, 3g net if you’re counting, and are packed with 12grams of protein. Considering a comparable bowl of Fruit Loops has 21 grams of carbs and 2 grams of protein, they quite literally flip the nutrition on it’s head. I know, what about your love for Toucan Sam, Count Chocula and the gang? Magic Spoon has that covered too. The boxes come with their own mascots and ride on sidekicks like Frosted Wizard and Flying Bunny. The team hasn’t produced any catchy jingles or wacky cartoon commercials yet but we wouldn’t put it past these guys to have animated mascots in the works. After all, they broke themselves into food disruption developing cricket energy bars so, this is an obvious second act. Uhh, sort of. As we learned when we were 5, pretty boxes and dancing animals only get you so far. If Magic Spoon tasted like the knock off Sugar Smacks your mom tried to pass off as authentic after a secret run to Pathmark we wouldn’t even be writing this story. So, product flavor is critical. First let’s talk about the shape. They went with the classic “O” for all four flavors. It took me a second to get past my love of the “flake” but on taste that quickly was forgotten. Each of the flavors was a time machine back to the 80’s right down to the last slurp of bowl milk. Impressed, I went in for a second round and decided the $40 a month subscription is as critical as my Spotify and Netflix monthlies. Speaking of, a little pairing of the two seem in order this Saturday morning. Here I come Papa Smurf.

This is what happens when an Indian woman finds a conduit in frozen cream. Thankfully this happened so we can now indulge in Pooja’s Malai Ice Cream flavors. I always explain Indian cuisine as complex because of how much prep goes into building the depth of flavor many Indian dishes so successfully share with our palettes. Taking that same development process and using ice cream base as the delivery vehicle is a brilliant idea. Not to mention the beauty in her packaging design and flavor combinations. Apparently Pooja’s been like this about flavor since she was a kid. When we met, mom was by her side to prove this true. All that said, the flavor descriptions do all the selling themselves. Rose with cinnamon roasted almonds, golden turmeric, orange fennel, of course, masala chai. My personal fav was her lemon cardamom. Two incredibly distinct flavors mixed perfectly. The list is 14 flavors deep. Each one an incredible mashup of distinct flavors. So much for our attempt to ween ourselves off of our ice cream habit.

Achaar is Indian pickles. Besides the puntastic name of the company, Chitra Agrawal and Ben Garthus make a delicious version of this Indian staple. No joke my Indian mother-in-law raved the entire time she cleaned out the jar. We’ve been smearing it on everything from sandwiches to fish. Word is a new flavor is in the works. You can pick up a jar in Brooklyn, obviously, bt there distribution is expanding quickly. Non-Brooklynites rejoice at one of these locations.