The best way to get through a busy day usually involves munching on a satisfying snack.
One forward-thinking 9-year-old from St. Louis, Missouri, recently came up with a pretty brilliant way to avoid hanger at all costs by creating a portable cheese snack — stuffed into a tube of lip balm.
On Tuesday, Valerie Hahn tweeted a picture of the new innovation and it's quickly gone viral.
“My 9-year-old daughter has taken an old lip balm tube and filled it with cheese so she can eat it in class," Hahn wrote with the picture.
The post has since been retweeted over 8,000 times and garnered over 67,000 likes.
The ambitious snack lover was apparently inspired by something she saw online. “She actually got the idea from YouTube, there are all kinds of weird crafty videos out there that revolve around the idea of sneaking food into class and hacking school supplies,” Hahn explained in an email to TODAY Food. (For privacy reasons, Hahn has decided not to share her daughter's name.)
“I think this one was from Troom Troom, and it involved using a glue stick tube for cheese,” Hahn continued. “So she didn’t come up with it entirely herself, though everyone’s tweeting that she’s a genius!”
This wasn't her daughter's first attempt at creating a tube snack, however. “At first, she tried making a popsicle in a lip balm tube with water, sugar and lemon juice!” said Hahn.
For the cheesy tube, Hahn explained that her daughter tried a few different varieties with varying levels of success. The final verdict? She went with a sharp cheddar. “You have to slice the cheese and use the balm tube as kind of a cookie cutter to cut discs of cheese," Hahn said, explaining the process. "Then you put the cheese in the tube."
Before any cheese is cut, however, one should start with a tube that has been totally cleaned of any lip balm residue. Hahn said her daughter washed out the old tubes with soap.
Related
So far, the reaction to the experiment has been overwhelmingly positive. Hahn says her daughter has received praise from kids in her class and even her teacher.
“The teacher thought it was hilarious," Hahn said. "I wrote her a note to share the story with her as it was going viral yesterday and saw her teacher after school at pickup. She said teachers were passing around the tweets and story links and dying laughing over it."
Of course, Hahn's daughter is also receiving a ton of praise online from cheese lovers everywhere.
The viral story is coming at a pretty stressful time for many at the school, so the laughs were much appreciated.
"It’s standardized testing week, so everyone’s just trying to power through," Hahn said. "The principal gave her a shoutout in the Thursday newsletter, so that’s some big-time publicity there!”
Hahn shared that her daughter showed her friends the lip balm cheese during their snack break and during another important meeting. "We had a Girl Scout meeting last night — and the national Girl Scout organization retweeted it during the meeting — and at the cafeteria table she (my daughter) was like, ‘Call me Cheese Stick Girl.’“
That’s a superhero name we can definitely get behind.
