Throwback festive snack Nuts and bolts a nostalgic nod to holiday seasons of yore By: David Sanderson Posted: 2:13 PM CDT Friday, Oct. 31, 2025

Party mix. TV mix. Bits and bites. Doo dads.

No matter what you’ve heard it called, you’re probably familiar with nuts and bolts, a savoury snack that combines goodies such as pretzel sticks, cheese-flavoured crackers and store-bought cereal with assorted seasonings.

Ethan Bungay isn’t sure how old he was when he first tried nuts and bolts, but he does know with great certainty that holiday gatherings at his childhood abode in Ottawa were never complete if they didn’t include bowlfuls of the treat, expertly prepared by his father.

“It was something my brother and I always looked forward to, maybe because it was a once-a-year thing in our household, in the build-up to the holidays,” Bungay says, seated in a coffee shop at The Forks, a five-minute stroll from his downtown apartment.

Bungay is the founder of Aunt Margaret’s Nuts + Bolts. Since launching in 2021, he has been privy to similar comments over and over again: “This reminds me of what my (choose one: mother, father, grandmother, grandfather) used to make.”

There definitely seems to be a nostalgia factor when it comes to nuts and bolts, Bungay reports, explaining the Aunt Margaret in his business moniker is a nod to Margaret Veinot (née Bronsdon), his great-great aunt on his dad’s side, and the person primarily responsible for the decades-old recipe he faithfully follows to this day.

“I’m not saying that younger people don’t know what it is, but I would venture that the older you are, the more probable it is that you’ve come across nuts and bolts. From what I’ve learned, if you grew up celebrating Christmas in Canada, it’s highly likely it or something close to it was a part of your family get-togethers.”

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Life magazine in June 1952 ran an ad for Original Chex Party Mix, which called for five cups of “your favourite Chex-brand Cereals” blended with spiced peanuts, pretzels, melted butter and Worcestershire sauce.

Practically overnight, the snack mix, quickly nicknamed nuts and bolts because of the shape of its key ingredients, became a cocktail-party staple across North America.

Bungay never met his great-great aunt — she died a decade or so before he was born in 1993 — but he guesses she must have kept that particular issue of Life, owing to oft-told stories about how her nuts and bolts were already held in high regard when his father came along in 1959.

“The way I understand it, she was very savvy in the kitchen and whenever she had friends or relatives over, the first thing out of their mouth was almost always, ‘Hey, Margaret, where are the nuts and bolts?’”

Following her death, Bungay’s dad became the family member responsible for carrying on the nuts-and-bolts tradition. Every December he would reach for his great aunt’s handwritten recipe card, then make as much as six kilograms of nuts and bolts, enough to hopefully last until the end of the month.

Bungay lost his maternal grandfather a few weeks before Christmas 2020. It was an emotional period, he recalls, and as a result, most of his family’s regular holiday customs were being put on hold, including his dad’s nuts and bolts.

“As funny as it may sound, nuts and bolts was one of the things that always got us in the spirit of the season, so I took it upon myself to make them that year,” says Bungay, who was still living in Ottawa at the time.

“My dad was like, ‘That’s nice of you, but you don’t have to,’ to which I said something like, ‘Yes, I do. Christmas isn’t Christmas without them.’”

Bungay was pleasantly surprised to learn readying the snack wasn’t as difficult a process as he’d imagined it to be. The trickiest part was dry-baking the lot for two hours — one of Aunt Margaret’s strict instructions — at a low-enough temperature that everything remained crispy.

That and aerating every 30 minutes or so, to ensure the pretzels, crackers and cereal — in his case, Shreddies and Cheerios — were getting evenly toasted. (Bungay swears by Lea & Perrin’s Worcestershire sauce, the same brand Margaret used, but won’t divulge what spiced-salt blend he copies from her.)

In the end, everybody was pleased he had gone to the trouble, after all. They jokingly told him the “job” might be his to keep, only by then he had another plan.

“Come the new year, I started brainstorming how to maybe turn it into a business of some sort,” says Bungay, then a customer-support specialist.

“I did all my research into the regulatory stuff, figuring out what I’d need in the way of things like licensing and food-handler permits. By February 2021, I was ready to go.”

Bungay mainly stuck to online sales when he was in Ottawa. After moving to Winnipeg in the fall of 2022 to accommodate his partner’s career, he began to investigate the local market scene. He became a regular vendor at the Downtown Winnipeg Farmer’s Market at Cityplace, where he’ll be present again Nov. 27 and Dec. 11.

There he has developed a loyal following of people who scoff at the “best before” date listed on the back of his retro-looking packaging.

“I’ll mention my nuts and bolts are shelf-stable for three months but they’ll be like, good luck if it even lasts through the lunch hour,” he says with a chuckle, noting he has shipped 150-gram and 600-gram tubs across the country, and as far south as El Paso, Texas.

Bungay, presently a commercial-flooring installer, has recently introduced a pumpkin-spice flavour to his arsenal, and is putting the finishing touches on a hot-and-spicy variety, as well.

Retail opportunities remain on his radar, plus he’d love to partner with Winnipeg watering holes looking to offer patrons something more flavourful than a bowl of peanuts when they’re seated at the bar. (A nice frosty beer or a glass of Chardonnay, take your pick, he suggests, when asked what pairs best with his product.)

All that said, because he has had the luxury of a full-time career, Bungay says Aunt Margaret’s Nuts + Bolts has always been more about continuing a legacy than “making a million bucks.”

“It’s something that’s always going to be with me, whether I’m selling it at markets or making it for my family back in Ottawa,” he says, mentioning he does dive into the odd bag of potato chips, even though, unlike nuts and bolts, every single bite tastes the same.

“Whether I grow it further or not, it’s something I’m proud of, something my parents are proud of and something I think good ol’ Aunt Margaret would be pretty proud of, too.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca