nosh nook #4 - thursday, march 19, 2009

school snack program meets needs (link)
03.18.09 - ourvalley.org - by frances stebbins

eating it up (link)
03.18.09 - san diego union tribune - by caroline dipping

here in brooklyn, i see it all the time--kids on their way to school in the morning having a bag of cool ranch doritos & a tiny blue drink thingy for breakfast. of course, once they're done consuming this nutritious breakfast, the majority of them toss the containers wherever they feel, but that's ok, because the adults do it too. the point is, low-income kids often eat like absolute crap.

oh quaint feel-good news. the first piece, by frances stebbins, talks about $1,670 in donations in salem, va made to the "area churches together" project, who then bought snacks (things like fruit cups, whole grain bars, pretzels) at a discount store & distributed them to elementary schools. if other people want to get in on the free food, they need a referral from a service agency or church. it's a homey little piece of "journalism," pretty much just information on different donations & how to give them. how quaint.

the second piece, by caroline dipping (great name!), covers a san diego organization responsible for preparing 10,000 meals & snacks for 4,000 low-income kids. last year, the organization got a new director, who came on & noticed that everything was canned & frozen & processed, so over the last year, she's totally overhauled the program with increased culinary skills amongst workers, more prepared foods & less processed foods. now kids can get three meals & a snack for $7.98 a day...& they get bombtastic snacks like yogurt parfait with granola & berries and sweet potato yogurt with graham crackers. sweet potato yogurt! holy crap! you stay classy, san diego!

nosh nook #3 - wednesday, march 18, 2009

snack attack: new 'mac snack wrap' from mcdonald's — who needs the big mac bun? (link)
03.17.09 - the national post - by karen hawthorne

i consume a hell of a lot of snack wraps. the bright, flashy, multi-floor 42nd st times square mcdonalds is right at the base of my office building, so it's extremely easy to just hop in the elevator, take it down twenty-four floors, pop out into the chaos of time sq like a cute lil gopher, procure my snack wrap (grilled chipotle is the current fave) & head right back into the building & back upstairs, pausing only ever so slightly to admire the large ecko sign across the way, which features girls in bikinis making ecko jeans for the world.

starting next tuesday, canadian mcdonalds will start serving the new "mac snack wrap," which is basically a half big mac with all its important ingredients wrapped in a tortilla. i enjoy big macs, but as karen hawthorne notes, "the special sauce oozes into your mouth" & "the flavour is creamy comfort on your tongue." that just sounds plain pornographicly disgusting.

i suppose the mac snack wrap will be a lo-carb alternative to the three-bun big mac, so it's sort of half way in between the full-on big mac & what they tried to do a few years back when they devoted a whole portion of their menu to atkins-style versions of their burgers. that was just plain ridiculous. at least this has some semblance of reality to it. after all, everything tastes better when you wrap it in a tortilla.

#73 - patty boom-ba-latty.

aw yeah, suckas. st patty & his irish posse in the hizzouse! let's give it up for the people i have the highest percentage of ancestry with! sorry my lesser perecentage brethren from canada, france, belgium, germany & scotland. when you create a crazy-ass drinking holiday, i'll give it up for you too.

for now, one-two one-two. check it. i'm from the boston area, so i definitely know me some st pattys day. growing up, we had a green felt erin go brah pennant hanging in our house. whereas st pattys day was a good time as a kid & to some extent up until college, now the holiday makes me want to employ some whacking day tactics a la the simpsons a la st patrick on just about everyone.

that's one of the downfalls to living in a large city. all the sudden, mid-march comes & thousands of people start wearing green like it's halloween & other people from other cities come to your city & take to the streets, get wasted, puke & fight, all in the name of the irish. i wonder how many of them, other than those who are actually irish, have any clue about the recent political violence in northern ireland...or that there is a northern ireland...or what the color green actually represents...or that at one time, st patrick was represented by the color blue.

this year, since st pattys fell on a tuesday, the holiday started two days early for a lot of people...on saturday the 15th. didn't someone somewhere once say something about bewaring ides at some point during this particular month? i seem to remember something, so i tried to stay away from the city this weekend & stayed in brooklyn, where idiots in green cat-in-the-hat getups & drunken girls with green sparkles & beads & stumbly walks in impractical heels are kept to a bare minimum.

#73 - patty boom-ba-latty.
snack: tico's plantain chips
drink: mcsorleys ale

then tonight, on the actual holiday, i left work & fled the chaos of times sq for astoria/queens to have a power meeting at the abode of musical genius & society darling james call of the missing teens. post-power meeting (& a couple yuengling black & tans), we went around the corner to his local pub, sunswick, for the obligatory st pattys day beer. they have something like twenty beers on tap, but it's friggin st pattys so i wanted to go irish & a guinness is way too obvious, so i went with a mcsorleys ale...it sounded irish enough.

turns out that other than the name, it's not very irish at all. in fact, it's made by pabst. the irish have been tricked again! it tastes better than a pabst, but not much.

when i got home, after an hour train ride, i hadn't had dinner yet, so i cracked open a bag of tico's plantain chips to munch on. i know they're not irish, but they come in a bright, ehnaced-kermit green bag that features a cartoon parrot. the color isn't exactly an irish hue, unless you're wearing a long-sleeve shirt of this color under a short-sleeve shirt of typical irish color. then you're just fashionable, which is totally an irish quality.

as to the plantain chips, they're fairly tasty & have a simple list of ingredients, which i like...

- plantains
- vegetable oil
- salt

truth be told, plantain chips are boring though. wee lil crisps made from a bloody fruit. i'll take my hash over those wankers any day o' the week.

nosh nook #2 - tuesday, march 17, 2009

tasteful germans' tasty obama snack: frozen chicken fingers (link)
03.16.09 - the guardian - by daniel nasaw

people sure do love president obama. back in november, on the night of his election, i was in the fort greene area of brooklyn & people, as they did in various locales all over the country, basically took over the streets & did the happy dance, while the cops just stood by & watched. that same sense of happiness & hope from obama's election has apparently spread to other areas of the world.

in germany, as the guardian's daniel nasaw points out, they've transferred their love of obama to the world of snacking, with "obama fingers." these delights are made by sprehe, whose representative noted, in der spiegel, that the chicken fingers are "an homage to...the new president." hmm. fried chicken...first black president...homage?

i can't say that i fault the german company for associating chicken fingers with obama. first off, americans do love chicken fingers. my youngest brother sucks them down like it's his job. second, is the negative stereotype of fried chicken & black people that prevalent that it's made its way over to germany & now also applies to chicken fingers? third, those chicken fingers look friggin' good. you can call them anything short of "crusty dung treats" & i'd eat them.

nosh nook #1 - monday, march 16, 2009

at the rodeo, speared snacks are a hit (link)
03.15.09 - houston chronicle - by greg morago

every march, houston holds their almost three-week long livestock show and rodeo. held at houston's reliant park, it's both the world's largest livestock exhibition & largest rodeo. all the stars come out. the jo bros played yesterday. friggin' hootie is playing tonight & taylor swift is playing on friday. there's a bbq contest & an assload of cowboy boots & assorted cowboy attire.

at one point, according to men's fitness, houston was the fattest city in america three years running. they've since instituted a "snack tax" & fallen to #10. there are some trends that have definitely helped keep them on the list. as greg morago tells us in his article, the hot item at this year's houston livestock show and rodeo is anything speared on a stick--fried shrimp, fried gator, cheese & pepperoni pizza. in fact, the top three items, as judged by the event's first ever "gold buckle foodie awards," were all items on a stick.

i agree with houstonians--foods are infinitely better when placed on a stick. for instance, take popsicles. popsicles would suck without a stick...as would lollipops or sketchy street-vendor foods. take the greatness of a stick & combine that with the curiosity of gator meat & you have a recipe for success. if we're lucky, some of that success recipe will rub off on the jo bros. those boys could really use a break.