Almondina!

I don't know how they do it. These things are amazing-- thin, crisp biscotti, crawling with almonds and raisins. They call it "the delicious cookie without the guilt." Delicious they are. As far as the guilt is concerned, I got over food guilt years ago, but not everybody's so lucky, I know.

The ingredients are so simple: almonds, wheat flour, malted barley flour, sugar, egg whites, raisins, natural flavor. How does it work without any salt added? I know nothing about food science. According to the package I'm looking at, there's 8.9mg of sodium in a serving of 4, so something's coming from somewhere. The 8.9mg figure is totally meaningless to me, but I'm happy to report that it amounts to 0% of the recommended daily value. Zero is nothing.

There's no fat added either. As far as I can tell all the fat, which amounts to about 25% of the calories, comes from the almonds, which are extremely healthful. It's all too good to be true. Of course, you can get too much of a good thing. They may be less than 35 calories each, 133 for a serving of 4, but if, like me, you can't stop eating them the meter keeps running.

The entrepreneur behind Almondina is Yuval Zaliouk, a symphonic conductor. It is supposedly based on his grandmother Dina's secret recipe, which she supposedly guarded jealously until her final days. He named it in her honor: Almond-Dina. I have no reason to doubt the veracity of this tale. Even if it weren't true, I'd advise them to stick with it.

A number of flavors have been added since the introduction of "the original," but I've only tried one of them, sesame, and frankly I was sorely disappointed. I love most things sesame, yet this just didn't work for me. The slight bitterness of the sesame seemed to be fighting the Platonic balance of the basic version. If I had tasted this one first I might have never discovered the sublime original. The AlmonDuo, with pistachios, looks promising, yet I fear the subtraction of the raisins might spell trouble.

They really should never have made those other flavors--Grandma Dina should have made them swear they wouldn't. By doing so they defile her memory. I intend to honor Grandma Dina properly, by eating only the original from this point forward.

When I think back on that package of sesame I ate, that's when the guilt comes.