full disclosure: i ♥ brooklyn. other than my childhood home in nh, i've lived here longer than in any other locale & although there's a good chance that i won't eventually settle down here, for now it's become what i refer to as my "home." since moving here almost a decade ago, i've lived in three different places & with each move, i've moved closer to manhattan. this past weekend, after a three-year run in my park slopish apartment, i reversed that trend & moved way south into a new place in dyker heights, a hood that many brooklynites would likely have difficulty pinpointing on a map.
sunday was moving day & for once, i was actually packed & ready to go a day ahead of time. the day started quite early, when my bro & i woke up at the ass-crack of dawn (7am) to make a 9am pickup time for a pickup truck he'd rented through zipcar. if there’s one thing i can say about choosing a vehicle for your move, it’s that if you choose to go the u-haul route, you’re a sucker. every single time i’ve rented from them, some sort of debacle has ensued--flat tires, u-haul locations that decided to close early on my moving day, missing hand carts, etc. this time, largely thanks to my bro's assistance, everything went absolutely swimmingly & by the early afternoon, i was already back at the new apartment & getting settled. best. move. ever.
...so the new place...it's officially my first ever apartment sans roommate, which at age 35 is a development that's long overdue. it's on the basement level of a rather large brick house that's located in a mostly residential area & (based on my non-existent real estate knowledge) has to be worth at least a million smackers. by default, i'm officially high class. i've been moved in for less than a week, but i’m already in love with the place. i’m in love with the free cable (free skinamax!). i’m in love with the radiant heating & jacuzzi tub. i’m in love with the the bedroom-sized pantry & the dishwasher & the fridge with an ice maker/water dispenser. it’s at least ten times bigger than my last place & the icing on the cake is that it comes sans loud, banging pipes or loud, drunken mexicans. at the end of the day, i can just go home & chill the fuck out.
since nothing's perfect, here's what i'm not in love with...the fact that i don't have internet yet (which makes maintaining a snack blog a bit difficult). the fact that when i tried to run the dishwasher for the first time, there's something wrong with the seal, so it started leaking soapy water onto the floor about fifteen minutes into the cycle. the fact that i had to move in rather quickly, so there's still work being done, which means a neverending supply of construction dust that keeps rearing its ugly head & lack of a shower curtain or place to hang said shower curtain. luckily, these are all things that can be corrected, so within the next few weeks, i'll hopefully have nothing to bitch about. either way, it's a whole new era in shawnland.
#146 - move on.
snack: pepperidge farm nantucket dark chocolate cookies
drink: mountain dew throwback
once my bro & i were done transferring all of my belongings fifty blocks south, we stopped by the mobil on the run in my now-former neighborhood & picked up some "sustenance." it had been a few days since i'd had chocolate, so for a snack i decided to go with a two-pack of pepperidge farm nantucket dark chocolate cookies. i've always been a big fan of pepperidge farm's cookies, with their milano & sausalito (milk chocolate macadamia) ones taking first prize. as a company, they're both old-timey & all-american, since they opened their first commercial bakery on july 4, 1947. on a related note, they're based in connecticut, which sort of makes them the devil.
their nantucket cookies are respectable, but when i opened up the package, i didn't have two cookies as much as i had twenty pieces of two cookies. i mean, the folks at pepperidge are kidding themselves if they think their packaging (a flimsy plastic tray in a flimsy package) is adequate to protect the integrity of their cookies. on the flip side, it made my job easier since i didn't have to waste time breaking the cookies up before consuming them. they're made with dark chocolate chunks, which is a definite plus, but ultimately, what makes pepperidge farm's chocolate chunk cookies appealing to me is their crunchy/crumbly texture & buttery flavor. if you're one of those types who needs your cookies to be all soft & chewy, these aren't the cookies for you.
for my beverage, i picked up a bottle of mountain dew throwback. it's pepsi's lame attempt to showcase their old soda formulas, formulas from a simpler time (the 60's & 70's) when they still used real sugar in their sodas instead of loading them up with HFCS. they first introduced the throwback concept as a limited time offer on 4/20 of last year & due to popular demand, they decided to bring it back. unfortunately, it's once again only available for a limited time, which means that come february 22nd, you’ll only be able to get the HFCS-laden version. for me, since i'm avoiding HFCS, that basically means "bye bye mountain dew." when it comes down to it, the whole "limited time" concept is ridiculous. there's obviously interest in a non-HFCS version, but HFCS is a cheaper, corn-lobby approved alternative to sugar & for pepsi, money apparently trumps interest.
i'm too young to know if the throwback formula is comparable to the version from back in the day, but i still prefer it to the regular formula. for the most part, it tastes exactly the same as the regular stuff but isn't as syrupy. that said, if you typically find mountain dew disgusting, the throwback version's not going to change your mind. by drinking it i avoided HFCS, but at the same time a 20oz bottle comes complete with 91g of caffeine, so i totally broke my two-month "no caffeine" streak. i felt slightly guilty about breaking the streak, but if given the opportunity, i'd definitely do it again. after all, it may be a new era in shawnland, but in shawnland, there's still no such thing as "will power."