Snack Club with Jenny Owen Youngs

I have a lot in common with my friend Jenny Owen Youngs. We’re around the same age (she’s a couple years younger than me), and throughout my 20s, when I was first recording albums and touring nonstop, Jenny was doing the same thing. But we didn’t meet until five years ago, through another thing we had in common — we’d both started making podcasts about TV shows. She was making ‘Buffering the Vampire Slayer,’ and I was making ‘The West Wing Weekly.’ We went pretty quickly from acquaintances to songwriting collaborators to very close friends. (I wrote more about how we first started collaborating, and how life-changing it was for me, in a previous newsletter about the book Bird by Bird.) We also toured together a bunch last year.

Traveling with Jenny revealed yet another relationship we have: food twins. As we went from city to city and looked at menu after menu, we kept finding ourselves ordering the same things. The same sandwich, the same cookie, the same can of seltzer water. We were dressing identically on stage, and eating identically backstage. If I was tied up with something and couldn’t look at a menu, I could confidently ask Jenny to just get me whatever she was getting herself, and I knew I’d love it. Maybe you’ve experienced this; I never have before. Food twins!

Jenny has a brand new album out—her first proper studio album in ten years — and it’s beautiful. It’s called Avalanche, and you should listen immediately. Click on the link and play the music while you read the rest of this newsletter. 

Since Jenny and I live on opposite coasts, I couldn’t celebrate with her in person, but I thought I could partake in some food twindom and once again have whatever she’s having. So for this Snack Club installment, I asked Jenny about her favorite snack. She told me about this little concoction she makes: an almond butter, cinnamon-dusted rice cake with bananas and blueberries, which I have dubbed the ABCDRCBB. Please say those letters out loud, as quickly as you can, and enjoy how fun it is. ABCDRCBB. (I like imagining a comma before “BB,” like you’re telling your bb about the snack.)

Jenny makes it thusly: “with a Quaker Apple Cinnamon rice cake, spread with a layer of almond butter, topped with banana medallions, dusted with cinnamon, and finished with a scant sprinkling of blueberries.”

(In the photo below, though, you can see that Jenny has swapped out her usual blueberries for mini chocolate chips instead, in a blatant attempt to pander to this newsletter’s cookie demographic.)

look at those cinammon sprinkles, bb!

I asked her to give some more details over text messages. One of the things I love about Jenny is that her speaking voice and her texting voice are exactly the same. When she gets excited, she speaks in all caps (If you’ve ever listened to her podcast, you’ll know this is true).

“I first concocted this snack about a year ago, after dinner on one of those ‘it’s almost time to go grocery shopping again’ evenings. I scrounged around in the kitchen for raw materials, and sort of approached it like, ‘How do I snack on all the things I want to snack on at the same time?’ What I love about this snack is the RANGE: textures include the crispy sweet outer layer of the rice cake, with its somewhat springy interior, the creaminess of the almond butter, the soft moist flesh (sorry) of the banana. The various flavors come together into a delicate little tastebud symphony. It TASTES and FEELS like a treat, but has protein, potassium, whole grains, and fiber for you!”

Being a lazy snacker, I asked Jenny what would happen if I only got to the Quaker Apple Cinnamon rice cake and gave up on putting together the full snack assembly. Is it still good on its own? 

“I think it’s still tasty as heck — and texturally satisfying to the max! BUT some might find it a little dry on its own…so maybe compromise and at least slap a little almond (or peanut) butter on there!”

As always, Jenny is pushing me to reach for a better version of myself. 

The best version of yourself should check out Jenny’s new album Avalanche. And then have an ABCDRC, bb! 

Hrishikesh

PS: I was a guest on an episode of Jenny’s new TV podcast, ‘The eX-Files’ (a show about the X-Files that she co-hosts with her ex-wife!). You can listen here.

I was also on the podcast ‘The Art of Curation,’ talking about taste and creativity. You can listen to that one here.

In addition to coincidentally always ordering the same food at restaurants, turns out Jenny and I also have the same taste in sweaters. For ourselves and our dogs.