{"id":2300,"date":"2025-03-08T14:16:18","date_gmt":"2025-03-08T19:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/?p=2300"},"modified":"2025-03-08T14:16:18","modified_gmt":"2025-03-08T19:16:18","slug":"snacks-at-talks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/snacks-at-talks\/","title":{"rendered":"Snacks at talks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The following is how to put out a classy spread for your next talk; ignoring beverages and extras, everything listed should ring up at around $50.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The most important snack is cheese. Yes, some people are vegan or lactose-intolerant, but cheese is one of the most universally-beloved snacks world-wide. Most cheeses keep for a while with refrigeration, and some even keep at room temperature. Cheese is, as a dear friend says, one of the few products whose quality scales more or less linearly with its price, and I would recommend at least two mid-grade cheeses. I usually buy one soft one (Camembert, Brie, and Stilton are good choices) and one semi-hard one (Emmental or an aged Cheddar for example). The cheese should be laid out on a cutting board with some kind of metal knife for each. The cheese should not be pre-cut (that&#8217;s a little tacky). Cheeses should be paired with a box of Carr&#8217;s Water Crackers or similar. Estimated price: $15-20.<\/li>\n<li>Fresh finger vegetables are also universally liked. The easiest options are finger carrots and pre-cut celery sticks. If you can find pre-cut multi-color bell peppers or broccoli, those are good options too. You can pair this with some kind of creamy dip (it&#8217;s easy to make ranch or onion dip using a pint of sour cream and a dip packet, but you need a spoon or spatula to stir it up) but you certainly don&#8217;t have to. Estimated price: $10-20.<\/li>\n<li>Fruit is a great option. The simplest thing to do is to just buy berries, but this is not foolproof: blueberries are a little small for eating by hand; raspberries lack structural integrity, and where I live, strawberries are only in season in the mid-summer, and are expensive and low-quality otherwise. In Mid-Atlantic cities, there are often street vendors who sell containers of freshly-cut fruit (this usually includes slices of pineapples and mangos and bananas, and perhaps some berries) and if this is available this is a good idea too. Estimated price: $10-15.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This, plus some water, is basically all you need to put out. Here are some ways to potentially extend it.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Chips are a good option. I think ordinary salty potato chips are probably the best choice simply because they&#8217;re usually eaten by themselves. In contrast, if you put out tortilla chips, you need to pair them with some kind of salsa or dip, and you need to buy a brand with sufficient &#8220;structural integrity&#8221; to actually pick up the dip.<\/li>\n<li>Nuts are good too, obviously; maybe pick out a medley.<\/li>\n<li>Soda water is really popular and cheap. I recommend 12oz cans. It should always be served chilled.<\/li>\n<li>A few bottles or cans of beer may go over well. With rare exceptions, should be served chilled.<\/li>\n<li>A bottle of wine may be appropriate. Chill it if it&#8217;s a varietal that needs to be chilled.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If the talk is before noon, coffee (and possibly hot water and tea bags) is more or less expected.\u00a0There is something of a taboo in the States of consuming or serving alcohol before 4pm or so, and you may or may not want your event to have a happy hour atmosphere even if it&#8217;s in the evening.<\/p>\n<p>And here are a few things I cannot recommend:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In my milieu it is uncommon for people to drink actual soda.<\/li>\n<li>I wouldn&#8217;t recommend cured meats or charcuterie for a talk. The majority of people won&#8217;t touch the stuff these days, and it&#8217;s pretty expensive.<\/li>\n<li>I love hummus, but mass-produced hummus is almost universally terrible. Make it at home (it&#8217;s easy if you have a food processor) or forget about it.<\/li>\n<li>Store-bought guacamole tastes even worse, and it has a very short shelf life.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The following is how to put out a classy spread for your next talk; ignoring beverages and extras, everything listed should ring up at around $50. The most important snack is cheese. Yes, some people are vegan or lactose-intolerant, but cheese is one of the most universally-beloved snacks world-wide. Most cheeses keep for a while &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/snacks-at-talks\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Snacks at talks&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-presentation-of-self"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2300"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2312,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2300\/revisions\/2312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}