The Peeled Snacks team made a junket out to New York state's fabulous Hamptons last week to get the word out about the glories of dried fruit, the wonders of dry-roasted nuts, and the evils of high fructose corn syrup (BOO! HISS!).  We rented a house in the woods and spent the days hopping from gourmet grocery to snack shop to farmer's market, talking with the Hamptonians (Hamptoners? Hamptonites? Hamptonizens?) and giving them a chance to try our treats.

It's not such a bad thing to sell Peeled Snacks in the Hamptons, right? I mean, it sure it beautiful out there at the far end of the southern fork of Long Island.  Water abounds in lakes, streams, bays, and, oh yeah, oceans; the towns are all picture perfect; the architecture consists of victorian classics and modern marvels; and the weather's absolutely lovely. 

I found a curious loveliness in the landscape out there- the Hampton isthmus roles out of the ocean just a bit, creates a hill or two, and then roles back into the ocean.  This makes for an odd horizonless experience- unless you're at the beach, you can't see any land features or rises to get a gauge of where you are in the world.  Thus, while out there, I constantly felt like I was on a smaller planet, one with only a small piece of land, little ocean, but a world full of sky.  I suppose I'm accustomed to seeing the horizon or things on it- I live in New York City, where you're never out of sight of a skyscraper or two.  But there are places, like the Hamptons where the world has a different shape and feel to it.

That lovely collection of towns is of course dangerously famous right now.  At the house we stayed in, some other boarders, just in from California, obsessed late into one night about which celebrities they hoped to see.  I guess living in New York City makes me rather immune to such anticipation, but I couldn't help smile widely when a certain hunky, Greek named, former advisor to president Clinton tried our snacks.

The biggest hit on our junket, though, wasn't our snacks- it was our T-shirts.  As announced in a recent newsletter, we're holding a competition to see who can come up with the snappiest T-shirt slogan for Peeled Snacks, but the current one turns plenty of heads.  We've had about 30 slogan submissions so far, and miraculously there've been no repeats yet.  Whoever comes up with the snappiest gets a free T-shirt, and we'll draw names of all contestants and send out a case of Bing Bing Cherry.

Anyway, "Peel Me" was a HUGE hit, so much so that we are now looking for a way to produce thousands of said T-shirts.  If anybody knows a good T-shirt company, drop me a line a let me know.  Flirty T-shirts are the voice of a generation of snackers, or at least will be when we get done with this next project...

 Poem for the day:

I live

on a hermit crab shell,

that my spiny host

borrowed from the sea's barnacled bottom.

When my hermit crab moves,

He drags us both with him-

Me and my world,

his shell.

We sway and bop

as he picks through the ocean's bounty,

and all the skies above

bobble too and fro.

I would think the world a tempest

of blasting winds and tides

were my hermit crab not inclined

to stop and rest

every so rare often.

Go eat a Peeled Snack in peace, and hope for some sanity to prevail in the Middle East.  Happy Monday,

 EN