Merendine e Crackers
The generation that grew up on packaged cakes and saltines

The word merenda is difficult to translate precisely. It is the Italian afternoon snack, specifically the one eaten by children between lunch and dinner, usually between four and five in the afternoon, sometimes with a glass of cold milk. It is also, in Campania and much of the south, the brief break in the school morning around ten o'clock — not exactly a snack break, more of a pause in which you ate whatever you had brought from home. Both of these were merendine occasions. And both, in the 1980s, were dominated almost entirely by packaged industrial products: small cakes, rolls, chocolate-filled things, salty crackers. I grew up entirely within this system and did not think of it as unusual until I moved to the United States and realized that no exact equivalent existed here.

The crackers — which in the United States are called saltines and are a slightly different product — were the savory half of the merenda world. Packed in the little sealed sleeves inside a blue and white box, slightly salty, dry but not too dry, breakable into halves with a satisfying snap along the perforation. My mother bought them by the box. We ate them with milk in the afternoon, or sometimes with a thin slice of ham or a formaggino spread on top. They were the neutral option, the one that worked with almost anything. In Campania, the crackers were sometimes eaten dipped in cold milk the way you might dip a biscuit, which produced a texture that sounds unpleasant to anyone who has not tried it but which is, in fact, the only correct way to eat crackers at age eight.

The merendine — the sweet packaged cakes — were a different category entirely, and the variety available in Italy in the 1980s was remarkable. Writing this, I found myself remembering them one by one as if opening a pantry that had been closed for thirty years. The Girella: a small rolled cake, sponge and chocolate cream, individually wrapped in cellophane, perhaps the most recognized of the whole category. The Plumcake: a single-serve rectangular sponge cake, plain or with yogurt, soft and slightly dense. The Fiesta: a sponge roll with chocolate and hazelnuts, Ferrero, always slightly more elegant than the others. The Buondi Motta: a small soft bread roll with a slightly sweet crumb, filled with cream, in a yellow wrapper. The Kinder Brioss — or Kinder Brioche — a small brioche-style roll with a white milk cream filling, which came in packs of three and which was considered the premium option, the one you were happy to find in your school bag.

There were also the Pan di Stelle, technically a biscuit rather than a merendina but occupying the same afternoon drawer. Small round cookies with a pattern of stars on the surface, made by Mulino Bianco, which was the Barilla brand for sweet baked goods. Mulino Bianco products had a specific aesthetic — the old stone mill on the package, the suggestion of pastoral simplicity, the names that referred to nature and tradition — which was very effective advertising for an industrial product eaten by a generation that was simultaneously watching a great deal of television. I did not think about any of this at the time. I thought about whether there were any Pan di Stelle left in the box.

The merenda culture was not opposed to food culture. My mother cooked seriously — the Genovese, the ragù that started at five in the morning at my grandmother's, the seasonal vegetables done correctly. Crackers and Kinder Brioss at four in the afternoon were not in contradiction with any of this. They were a different register, a practical solution to a practical problem: children are hungry at four, school is over, dinner is at eight, something is needed. The something was a merendina and it was fine.