I was a bit excited when I saw that the dates I'd bought recently just happened to be from Tunisia. Because I don't think I've ever had anything from this nation. One of my goals is to sample at least one thing from every country in the world. Which, honestly may not be realized, but at least now I'm one nation closer. These dates were from Sunshine Snacks.
Alas, at this point I hit a huge snag. Normally, I like to include a little about the business that made the product(s) I'm discussing, but today that's not really going to happen much. Because Sunshine Snacks is a terrible, cliche, extremely common company or brand name. I found many Sunshine Snacks online, but none of them appeared to be the one for my dates. Moving up the chain, the dates were distributed by a company called National Harvest, out of Great Neck, NY. It's possible that Sunshine Snacks are actually a brand of theirs, and not just something they import. But who knows? The website for National Harvest was useless. A few sentences revealing nothing of detail about the company itself, and the product list was bizarre. Even the tersest of company websites usually include everything they market. Not this one. Just a mentioning and photos of the three types of food they distribute--dried fruit, nuts, and peas. From the pictures, and then later from non-company websites, I was able to figure out that they sell pistachio nuts, peanuts, hazelnuts, figs, raisins, apricots, sun dried tomatoes, dates, and peas. But that's it. A non-company website provided the information that the business has only 3 or 4 employees--John E. Yilmaz, Dodge Dogan, Ozlem Keceli, and Sushma Patel. Some, or all of these folks may be Tunisian, but I can't say for sure.
Sunshine Snacks dates: These were brown, wrinkled, and about 4 by 1.5 cm. (about 1.5 by .5 inches) in size. The pits had been removed. They were dry, of course, but some were shiny, soft, and juicy. (Others were drier, and harder, and therefore less tasty.) The good ones were delicious, as dates usually are. Chewy, and syrupy sweet. The bad ones were disappointing. In my post on June 30, 2013 I went into more detail about dates themselves, and how I love them. (Unless they're too hard and dry.) I buy dates weekly, but usually I buy from the Paramount company (see my August 12, 2023 post about other dried fruits), since their dates are typically more soft, sweet, and awesome. But if my grocery store is out of Paramount dates, as sometimes happens, these are an okay substitute.
Since this is my first post about a Tunisian product, I'll do my usual thing and give a brief overview of some of its features and famous people. Reportedly, Tunisia is a world leader in the production of phosphate, used in the production of fertilizers and detergents. Moving to entertainment, many scenes from the "Star Wars" movies have been shot in Tunisia, as it's a stand-in for the desert planet of Tatooine. In fact, that very name is derived from a real Tunisian community, which spells it Tataouine. Staying with movies, Tunisia has produced a couple of world famous actors. Claudia Cardinale was born there, although her parents were of Italian ancestry. She is probably best known for roles in "Rocco and his Brothers" (1960), "Girl With a Suitcase" (1961), "Cartouche" (1962), "8 1/2" (1963), "The Pink Panther" (1963), "The Professionals" (1966), "Once Upon a Time in the West" (1968), and "Claretta" (1984). Marwen Kenzari was born in The Netherlands, but has Tunisian heritage. He's been in films such as "Wolf" (2013), "Collide" (2016), "Ben-Hur" (2016), "The Promise" (2016), "Murder on the Orient Express" (2017), and "Black Adam" (2022). Switching to overall fame, surely the most famous person born in what's now Tunisia is the Carthaginian general and statesman Hannibal Barca (247-182? B.C.), noted especially for his battles with the Romans and military genius in general. Recently, in 2023, the world saw its first person with Tunisian heritage to win a Nobel Prize, as Moungi Bawendi shared the Prize for Chemistry for his work on discovering and synthesizing quantum dots. Bawendi was born in France, and spent much of his life in the U.S., but has a Tunisian father. In sports, one Tunisian was good enough to play in the NBA--Salah Mejri, who was a center with the Dallas Mavericks from 2015-19. He started 22 of 204 total games, and averaged 3.4 points, 4.0 rebounds, 0.5 assists, 0.4 steals, and 0.9 blocks, and accumulated 8.1 Win Shares. Four Tunisians have won Olympic gold medals, all in the Summer games. Mohammed Gammoudi was a long distance runner, and won 1 gold, 2 silver, and 1 bronze medal in the Men's 5000 meters and 10,000 meters in the 1964 and 1968 games. Oussama Melloudi was a great swimmer, earning 2 golds and 1 silver in the 1500 freestyle and 10 K marathon events in 2008 and 2012. Habiba Ghribi is the only Tunisian woman to win a gold medal, which she won in the 3000 meter steeplechase (running) in 2012 games. Finally, Ahmed Hafnaoui won gold in the men's 400 meter freestyle swimming event in the 2020 games.
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