Georgian snickers.

Until two years ago I was a light weight race rower. Let me explain: if you're a racerower and happen to be smaller than 1,90m you're expected to starve yourself every second week to under 72,5kg. This cyclic starving leads to obvious misbehaviour, and cold turkey tends to be ransomed by binge eating after competition. Fast food is an option, and once I tried egg cakes with peanut butter once. Three years ago I was introduced to the art of snickers. 

Snickers was the secret survival mechanism of Njord's light weight eight, with whom I trained for a season. When we cycled to Milan the summer after, I was as dependent on snickers as they were. At the end of every light weight rowing season, things get out of hand. After half a year of dieting and no alcohol (and training 7-10 times a week obviously) you get very inventive to celebrate the newly won freedom. And so one of my team mates came with the following: a oven dish sized snickers (check this out: http://9gag.com/gag/2986717). Yes, I think I can be quite sure it were not Scotsmen, but light weight rowers who invented deep fried ice-cream and mars bars. 

So now you know where my fascination for snickers comes from. So when I visited Kyrgyzstan last year, I was amazed by the discovery of a snickers with hazelnuts instead of peanuts. Never seen in the West, but the sooner introduced, the better. Way better with real nuts!

 

In Georgia, I found the hazelnut variety again, but that not what this post is about. It's about churchkhela, which is suitably dubbed 'Georgian snickers'. This is not only because of it's ingredients, but also because of it's use: eat some churchkela when you're on the roll, and you can be sure you're on the road again. Now I do have to warn you, because the churchkela has a somewhat strange shape. Just saying, since you might not like sausage. I guess it's just basic gravity laws, but there's something odd for sure about this stalactite: 

Look at them hanging happily together, waiting to be sold by one of these numerous street-selling babushkas: 

Churchkhelas are made by dipping a string of nuts (most often walnuts) in condensed grape juice. As you might know, Georgia is the inventor of wine, and vineyards are literally everywhere. It's not a big surprise that somebody, one day - probably a light weight rower from the Argonauts - came with the ridiculous idea to dip walnut strings in boiled grape sauce. This is what they look like if you chop them up:

Well, that's it for now. I'm going for a football match, and I'm definitely taking a snickers with me. Georgian style.