nosh nook #195 - sunday, december 13, 2009

baseball's war against hamburgers (link)
12.11.09 - wall street journal - by david biderman

batter up, bitchez! with only 67 days left until pitchers & catchers report to spring training & the baseball season officially gets under way, it's time for us to start getting excited so that by the time that the regular season starts on april 4th, we won't be able to contain ourselves. i'm an avid red sox fan & since last year didn't work out for us, i'm already intensely following baseball's winter meetings & off-season trade activity, hoping to see the red sox improve. so far, i have not been impressed. i guess they still have 67 days left to do something so i shouldn't rush them, but other teams are already busy improving themselves & i'm not just talking about big free agent signings & trades. i'm talking about MAJOR CLUBHOUSE FOOD OVERHAUL!

when many of the teams return for the 2010 season, they're going to notice some big changes in the clubhouse. according to the wall street journal, more so now than ever, teams are going nuts trying to fill their clubhouses with healthy food for the players & improve their diets. if you're a dodger, you get to go to arizona to attend a "six-day health-food boot camp." if you're on the phillies or rays, you may get to eat a lot of "quinona, teff and spelt" next season. good luck with that. overall, the drive for change is so strong that at the recent winter meetings, "major and minor league strength and conditioning coaches devoted 12 hours on saturday—about half of their total meeting time—to discussing matters such as including edamame and snow peas in the postgame buffet to whether teams should order 'fun size' candy bars rather than the odious regular-sized variety." that sounds like time well spent. they're probably sick of talking about steroids anyhow.

in the olden days, clubhouses would have "steak, french fries, omelettes, bacon, and at least one gigantic tub of ice cream." a few years back, you had rich garces & cecil fielder, but nowadays, baseball players are generally pretty phsyically fit, so i guess the clubhouse food overhaul is probably a side effect of the rampant steroid use. jim malone, the padres strength & conditioning coach, partially agrees. he told the journal that "more-stringent drug policies and potential problems with supplements...have forced players to be much smarter and more careful about what they put in their bodies. he also said that many younger trainers coming into baseball have been schooled in nutrition more than their older counterparts." no matter the motivation, at least teams are getting their players to eat healhy. i didn't see anything about the red sox in the article, but let's hope they're following the trend. based on their off-season action thus far, we may need all the help we can get.

nosh nook #194 - thursday, december 10, 2009

seeing green in the natural history museum's food court (link)
12.9.09 - the ny times - by sarah maslin nir

a few years back, my mom & youngest bro came down to the city & stayed with me for a few days & while they were here, we did a few touristy things, including visiting the american museum of natural history. at the time, they were running their baseball as america exhibit & when we reached the end of it, there was a strategically placed gift shop waiting for us. i'd been to a bunch of museums in the past, but it was then that it really hit me that while museums are culturally stimulating, they're also designed to make money off of that cultural stimulation. you enjoyed monet's water lilies? perhaps you'd also enjoy a set of note cards with the paintings printed on them?

i suppose the money making's not all bad. the ny times reports that the natural history museum food court--one of their main money makers--has done something no other nyc eatery has done. no. we're not talking about serving velociraptor eggs. we're talking about the fact that they've been granted three-star status by the green restaurant association, a non-profit who "specializes in consulting with restaurants" to make them greener & awards them points for their efforts. basically, what that means is that the museum has earned enough points by "increasing water efficiency," using "local and sustainable foods" and "cups and plates...made from sugar cane" & cutting out bottled water ("after the museum's 2007 exhibition 'water: h2o = life" pointed out the wastefulness") that they've earned a third star.

not all of the food court's changes have been a success though. when they started making all the green changes to the food court, they tried to update their "iconic dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets that have graced the museum's menu since roughly the paleozoic era" by making a "baked version with a whole-wheat crust." in response, "there was a 'near-riot,' prompting the original recipe's quick return." it makes sense. if you're in the natural history museum eating random bits of chicken that have been molded into t-rex or a stegosaurus shaped nuggets & then breaded, those nuggets had better be authentic. there's no such thing as a healthy chicken nugget & making one would be nothing short of historically unnatural. kudos to the near-rioting museum-goers for setting that nugget situation straight.

nosh nook #193 - wednesday, december 9, 2009

there's a 'cookie snob' in the kitchen (link)
12.9.09 - the washington post - by jane black

if i've learned one thing from cookie monster's lunatic ravings, it's that C is most definitely for cookie. that may be a public television-supported fact, but it's also a fact that C is for copious calories & chunky cellulite! am i right, cookie-loving ladies? i mean, i love cookies as much as the next guy, but i realize that man cannot live on cookies alone, so i try to keep my cookie consumption in check, lest i become known about town as "the tubby cookie boy." no amount of brownies or samoans are worth that nickname...unless you have a job in a traveling carnival...& you get to sleep with the sword-swallowing chick.

there's this "beer-themed restaurant" down in d.c. called birch & barley and according to the washington post, they have a "cookie snob" in the kitchen. her name is tiffany macisaac & she's been a cookie snob ever since her first job here in nyc at union square cafe, where she perfected the art of baking cookies. she made the move from nyc to d.c. earlier this year after birch & barley contacted her & her fiance (a chef) about an open chef position at their restaurant that they needed to fill PRONTO. it was a few days before their wedding but they jumped through hoops to get to d.c. & show off their skillz & in the end, both ended up getting hired, with macisaac becoming their new pastry chef. then they went to hawaii & got married...& macisaac baked cookies instead of having a wedding cake because she's obviously NUTS about cookies.

at birch & barley, she "turns out ginger molasses, chocolate shortbread and chocolate chip cookies, plus graham crackers." her future plans include "a late-night cookie bake" where "just before the restaurant kitchen closes, she will make about 60 cookies that servers will sell for $1 apiece in the upstairs bar, churchkey." then she'll dispense her tasty cookies to hungry & impressionable drinkers. it's an awesome idea, one that she describes this way. "think about it. you've been drinking and you're thinking, 'wow, i wish i had a snack,' "and then the smell of warm cookies wafts through the room. wouldn't that be awesome?" yes, tiffany. yes it would. wherever there are cookies wafting...that is where i want to be.

nosh nook #192 - tuesday, december 8, 2009

loved by all, bacon truly is the perfect junk food (link)
12.7.09 - charlottesville daily progress - by bryan mckenzie

wow. it's been a while since i last rapped at y'all about bacon, so let's just for today give the hip breakfast favorite a little bit of long-overdue face time. i figure it's the least we can do for bacon since its popularity has been waning a bit recently. ever since cupcake decided to storm the scene & steal all the hipster glory from my beloved bacony buddy, the hype surrounding it has sort of died down. bacon lovers have tried desperately to keep bacon's popularity strong and j&d's has been pumping out numerous bacon-flavored products, but it's been an uphill battle recently for the tasty, greasy strips of breakfast wonder. it's not easy being a hipster fad. just ask white belt & big sunglasses.

for what it's worth, the charlottesville daily progress' bryan mckenzie is trying to do his part to keep people excited about bacon. just yesterday, since he's a believer that "everything's better with bacon," he penned a punny, passionate ode to it and lo & behold, the newspaper went ahead & published it, much to the delight of the bacon-loving populace of charlottesville. why now? well, he recently had that "painful epiphany" that "everything's better with bacon" whilst chatting with the assistant manager at the blacksburg wendy's & he just had to share with everyone. after all, "bacon is a major part of american life," so it's important that he's kept the bacon dialogue going.

we LOVE bacon. as mckenzie says, "it's in our genes!" he even spoke with martha hester stafford, owner of the charlottesville cooking school & she said that "bacon has everything we're genetically programmed to love: fat, sugar & smoke." mmm. fat, sugar & smoke. it's the scientific reason why we make "bacon candy, bacon-fried bananas and bacon brioche." everything's better with bacon. it's so true. mckenzie provides this example: "wrap a chevy in bacon and you get a cadillac." i'm pretty sure that is also true, although the science to back up that claim might be unproven at this juncture. so yeah, don't give up on bacon, no matter how trendy it gets. put it on your sandwich. put it in your coffee. put in on your boobs. put it in your heart.

nosh nook #191 - monday, december 7, 2009

coming to a theater near you: the snack police (link)
12.7.09 - smartmoney - by kelli b grant

i have to be honest with you. pretty much every time i go to the movies, i'm at least sneaking in a soda. like most rational human beings, it kills me to pay $4.00 for a friggin fountain soda. it's just insane. are we living in japan or something? i mean, i get it. theaters make a huge portion of their money off of concession sales, so they need to keep that revenue stream pumping. unfortunately, we're living in a crap economy & money's down all around for theaters, concessions included. as a result, theaters are starting to crack down on people cutting into their precious concession revenue by bringing stuff in with them. just last week, the second biggest theater chain, amc theaters, announced that they're ending their policy of letting people bring snacks into the theater. they figure it's time for us cheapskates to start ponying up at the concession stands.

since the movie theaters are trying to milk us for all we're worth at concessions, smart money has a few tips to help us save money elsewhere when we're venturing out to the cineplex during these tough economic times. basically, their tips add up to a bunch of ways to take advantage of discounts. for starters, lots of theaters have loyalty clubs that "offer gratis and reduced-price snacks" at those lame times when nobody goes to the movies, which works out swimmingly because you're also trying to save money by going to a tuesday matinee. luckily, you & your three closest friends are unemployed, so you can easily work it into your schedule. even if you're still employed, you can buy packs of vouchers that offer discount prices on concessions.

their best suggestion is to "pick your movies carefully." i couldn't agree with this point more. there is no reason that you need to rush out & see madea goes to jail in the theater. trust me, you can wait until it comes out on dvd. if you're going to see crap, at least go see something like transformers, something that requires a big screen to really appreciate all the extraneous explosions. it's pretty self-explanatory. stop seeing so many crappy films & you'll save money.

as a service to my readers, i'm going to offer up a movie savings tip of my own: just keep sneaking snacks in. laws are meant to be broken, people. it's not like a theater's going to pat you down on the way in, so you can easily smuggle in a candy bar & a couple of nips no problem. it's no $10 jumbo popcorn/soda combo, but you don't need that crap anyway. from what i hear, that combo has as many calories as a small baby. nobody should eat an entire baby during a summer blockbuster. it's just not healthy.