In the second week of December 2022, I started to crave chin-chin. Like any other craving, I waited for it to pass. By the third week the craving was so strong that I considered making them myself. It was quite odd, as chin-chin was never my favourite snack growing up. Give me overripe plantain chips- soft, dark, and spicy. I decided to go hunting for the snack one day during my lunch break from my remote job. The easy way would have been to drive to the African stores I was familiar with and purchase a jar of chin chin (which I was guaranteed to find) but I’d just moved to a different quadrant of the city and I didn’t want to spend a huge portion of my work break time driving a long distance to search for, of all things, chin chin. After perusing Google maps, I found a couple of nearby african food stores to check. Hunching my shoulders against the bitter cold, I got into my preheated Hyundai and drove 4 minutes to one store, singing along with Sinatra as he crooned, ‘Love-ly,
"Writing is its own reward" - Henry Miller