les foodtrepreneurs #1: kumquat cupcakery.

people of the internet! let me introduce to you ms. natthelibrarian, the first in an exciting lineup of new writers who have heeded my call for eat!drink!snack! global domination. doff your cap or curtsey or some shit. it's the least you can do. also! let me introduce her new column, "les foodtrepreneurs," a column designed to provide you, the reader, with insight into different radical NYC food businesses & the folks behind them. anyway, i'm pretty psyched. you should be too.

i admit it. i like my snacks tiny. why tiny? then i can eat more of them!

i also like my snacks to be local and, if it's really my lucky day, to be independently produced by awesome people.

this brings me to kumquat cupcakery. two perfect bites. amazing flavor combinations. they're all baked in brooklyn in a kitchen on flatbush avenue by some very awesome ladies.

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#193 - mid-year hype.

is it really that time of year again? you bet your sweet ass it is...it's time for my mid-year top five list of albums, accompanied by some sort of snack-drink list! for the past two years (2009, 2010), i've paired my top five albums with five snack-drink pairings that i'd planned on writing about but never got around to. this year, since i'm feeling slightly nostalgic, i'm changing it up a bit & pairing the top albums with the top five posts of all time on eat!drink!snack! isn't change exciting?

has it been a good year for music so far? it's been aight i suppose. while the list of bands who've put out albums is impressive, the quality of those albums is much less so. over the last six months, we've had lackluster new efforts from a bunch of bands i expected more from--the decemberists, arctic monkeys, tv on the radio, the strokes, art brut, deerhoof, destroyer, okkervil river & the beastie boys.

even with all these letdowns, there have been a bunch of good albums released thus far. the dodos, pains of being pure at heart, yuck, man man, bon iver, the kills & radiohead have all put out albums that are worthy of being in my top five. in the end though, there were just too many albums to cram into a top five, so i sort of leaned toward my current faves.

as a predictor, last year only one of the songs from my mid-year albums list ended up on my end of year "top ten songs" list. in the previous year, four of my favorite mid-year albums had songs on the 2009 end-of-year list. how will this year's mid-year albums fare? more importantly, how drastically will my mood change by the end of december? you'll just have to stay tuned for another six months to find out!...or you can skip the next six months of amazing blog posts & check back here in january if you want to be a jerk about it. but for now, here are the top five...

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only in ny #10: dumplings & things.

snack: spicy beef & kimchi dumplings
drink: thai iced tea

last year, i was pretty much the king of dumplings. after moving within walking distance of a chinese supermarket in february, i began eating them at every opportunity. it didn't take long before i learned how to make my own fresh dumplings at home & by year's end, given the number of times i'd snacked on them during the year, i had no choice but to declare dumplings my #7 snack of 2010. since then, i've sort of burnt out on them, but i still occasionally pay my old snacking buddy a visit.

this past weekend, i was out & about in park slope looking for something to munch on & decided to grab something at dumplings & things, a smallish restaurant with minimal seating that opened up in the space next to bar reis back in mid-may.

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snackdown! - 7.11.11

happy 7/11 everyone! if you haven't visited your local 7-eleven today & picked up your government-mandated complimentary 7.11 oz slurpee, i honestly don't know what the hell you're doing sitting here reading my blog. you could have FREE ice & syrup coursing through your veins RIGHT NOW! if you've already gone & got your slurpee, congratulations on doing your duty as an american citizen. also, here's an eat!drink!snack! bonus tip: there's no free slurpee tracking system in place at 7-eleven, so if you don't care about honesty, you could get multiple free slurpees at multiple 7-eleven locations.

a second eat!drink!snack! bonus tip: if you're a breeder in need of respite, get each of your tiny breedlings a slurpee post haste...the earlier the better. once your spawn comes down from his and/or her sugar high, it's early bedtime for them & more free time for you...unless you ALSO get a slurpee, in which case there's a chance that you might pass out early too. anyway, good luck today, never forget & here's some stuff that happened in the world of edibles & drinkables this week...

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you should write. right?

hey you! do you enjoy snacking? do you enjoy drinking? do you enjoy rambling? if you're reading this blog, there's a good chance that you do. how about writing? you like doing that too? great! how about writing but not getting paid for it? yeah? well golly gee willikers do i have a proposal for you, sir and/or madam...

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