Sweet and sturdy: Good Juju Energy Balls by distance runner Katie Visco

Katie Visco, who ran across Australia in 2019 and runs Hot Love Soup, sells home-made energy balls, too. Photo courtesy Katie Visco

I’m always looking for stuff to eat while I’m out adventuring.

It needs to taste good, but it’s got to be sturdy, too, it’s wearing a tiny suit of armor. Cheese melts, fruit gets mushy and white bread smushes – I need something that holds up.

Ever hopeful, I ordered a sample tub of Good Juju Energy Balls, from former Austin resident (and ultra-long-distance runner) Katie Visco.

The balls taste vaguely like raw cookie dough. Photo courtesy Katie Visco

I met Visco and her husband Henley Phillips a few months ago, when I wrote about their human-powered trek across Australia. (Read the story at https://www.austin360.com/news/20200225/why-austin-woman-and-her-husband-decided-to-traverse-australia-by-foot-and-bike).

The sample tub I got featured two peanut butter cocoa cinnamon balls, three almond snickerdoodle balls and two peanut butter ginger coconut balls, each slightly smaller than a ping-pong ball. They tasted, to me, a tad like cookie dough – too sweet to eat more than one at a time, but made with real ingredients like rolled oats, honey, spices, and peanut or almond butter. My fave was the ginger-spiked one, made with coconut flakes and currents.

These are sweet – I couldn’t eat more than one in a sitting – but they can survive my kind of punishment. I tucked some in a baggie and stuffed them in the back of my bike jersey for a five-hour ride and they didn’t even crumble. They’d work for paddling and hiking, too.

Visco has been making and selling the balls for about seven years, and recently announced a subscription option – and if you order before the end of April you get a free care package (“meant to bring some joy and love to people during COVID times,” she says) that includes eight balls and two Kate’s Real Food bars.

Katie Visco sells Good Juju Energy Balls. Photo courtesy Katie Visco

Subscriptions last six months, and the balls are shipped every two months (choose 32, 48 or 72 balls per shipment), and there are always three or four flavors to choose from. Subscriptions start at $120; a one-time order of 24 balls costs $30 plus shipping.

Sign up for a subscription at https://forms.gle/B4HHfAv1VH9fJCjCA or place a one-time order at https://forms.gle/mLeMqkgqQLimeHii7.