The question of snacks

I picked up Snacks (Miyuki Iida, 1972) because it seemed like something was off. I mean, look at the cover.

I adore seasoned rice and a big salad-- but I wouldn't really consider something like this to be a snack. The inside cover says this was printed in Japan, though, so maybe Japanese consider this a snack? I wouldn't think so-- I tend to think of Pocky when I think of Japanese snacking-- but I can claim absolutely no real knowledge of Japanese culture. Maybe I'm just relying on stereotypes?

And anyway, why would a Japanese cookbook be in English? The back cover offered up a bit more confounding information, as it included a conversion table to convert "English" measurements (in ounces) to "American" measurements (in cups). I wasn't 100% sure whether that meant about the intended audience for this book, so I perused the recipe for American Hamburger.

Since it called for ingredients in both ounces (minced beef and pork) and cups (breadcrumbs), that didn't really help me figure anything out. Just the fact that the title refers to hamburger as "American" is more helpful, as it suggests Americans are not the audience. (This meatloaf-leaning recipe that recommends "a beef and pork mixture" to avoid drying out the patties also bears little resemblance to the American burgers of my youth, when mom would fry 100% beef with no additions-- not even salt!-- until it was so dry I had trouble swallowing it.)

In any case, I'm not sure this looks much like a snack.

At least the pickles and onions should be easy to pick off! I'm not sure why anyone would serve hamburgers from a two-compartment plate like this, though. 

The little book of 20 recipes also lists such snack time favorites as paella. 

I can't tell you how many times I've felt a bit peckish and decided to whip up a big panful of rice with chicken, fish, shrimp, clams, veggies, and saffron. (Oh, wait. I totally can. It's zero.) Also, this is a pretty substantial "snack" considering this mass of three cups of rice (three cups before it's cooked, presumably, considering it's mixed with so much liquid and baked for half an hour) combined with all the chicken, seafood, and veggies makes two servings.

Some recipes provide full menus-- and I generally don't need a menu for a snack. For instance, the Sliced Pork Sauté has the recipe not only for the titular pork, but it also recommends starting with canned tomato soup and provides recipes for rice with green peas and fruit salad.

The fruit salad may be my favorite part just because of the picture.

I love that pear so green it nearly seems to be glowing (to warn diners that the cook laced it with peppermint extract), accented with a maraschino cherry to heighten the wtf-Christmas feel. 

The book does include a sushi recipe, though, and I guess I could see sushi as a snack in the right circumstances. (Well, I probably could if I were a proper adult who enjoyed sushi, which we will pretend for the sake of this post.) Ready?

Yes, this is a giant slab of rice with thin slices of ham in the center and on top-- like a demented layer cake-- with a pickled ginger "flower" in the middle for decoration. 

And this "snack" to serve two starts with FOUR cups of uncooked rice, so I guess the takeaway from this booklet is that something is not a snack unless it's got at least several-hundred-calories'-worth of rice in addition to everything else. (Well, unless it's an American hamburger, which is, oddly enough, the smallest snack in the collection.)

In short, I have not idea what is going on with this book, but apparently there were some communication issues and/or questions about who and what this thing was actually for. Whoever the audience was, they must have had enormous appetites and infinite patience for preparing snacks.