nosh nook #169 - thursday, november 5, 2009

7-eleven is getting into the value wine business (link)
11.4.09 - msnbc - via a.p.

about a year back, they put a 7-eleven amongst all the locally-owned bodegas & delis in my neighborhood. since there are enough bodegas as it is in nyc, there aren't that many 7-elevens round these parts. i have to admit that since they're such a rare bird, when the one in my hood initially opened, i was pretty excited about the opportunity for late-night 72 oz mountain dew slurpies & questionable crispy tubes filled with meats & veggies & cheeses and heated on a wheel. if nothing, 7-eleven at least fills my needs for 3am scratch tickets, babe mags & run-of-the-mill beer.

now they're taking it to the next level by adding store brand value wine to the mix. they already have a few $10 wines for sale, but according to msnbc, 7-elevens in the u.s. & japan will soon start selling wines "under the yosemite road label...the california wines, a chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon, will retail for about $3.99." that's slightly higher than trader joe's wine, but trader joe's ain't 24-7, yo. i mean, it's no wine in a can, but i haven't been making enough post-midnight wine impulse buys these days, so it'll at least help up that practice a bit.

i'm sure the wines taste WICKED AWESOME. msnbc notes that "the chardonnay is described as zesty with notes of apricot, peach and honey, and the cab as full-bodied with 'juicy plum overtones.'" how fruity! the description of the cab makes it sound like something from the rolling hills of boone's farm! i haven't had that stuff since some of my more shameful nights in college! with my 35th birthday less than two weeks away, it's prolly bout time i relive my college days anyhow. i'm pretty sure that once i hit 35 & officially enter that solidly non-college 35-44 demographic, i won't be allowed to have such collegial no-pants shenanigans without feelings of shame. hopefully 7-eleven gets their bargain wine in stores before that happens.

the musical fruit: movement #24.

the musical fruit: movement #24.
song: "persimmon song," the reverend peyton's big damn band
fruit: persimmon

although i appreciate the history behind it & the influence it's had on musicians like zeppelin & hendrix & the white stripes, i've never been a huge fan of the blues. sure i love the old timey, but that love doesn't exactly extend to music. i recently came across this new timey old timey blues trio from indiana, the reverend peyton's big damn band & surprisingly, i enjoy what i've heard so far. they're pretty durn bluesy & when i say "bluesy," i'm talkin "we've got a washboard & a steel guitar" bluesy. they've put out four albums & their latest, the whole fam damnily, which came out a little over the year ago, has a number of barnyard rompers on it, songs like "your cousin's on COPS" & "mama's fried potatoes." ROMPERS i tell you.

the last song on the album, "persimmon song," is one of the other rompers. according to a story the reverend tells in this live clip on youtube, the song came into being when en route to a gig in canada, their drummer (his brother) was turned back at the border & banned from canada for five years. the reverend & his wife, "washboard" breezy peyton, still wanted to play the gig, so they continued on. that night, they stopped in a parking lot somewhere & he started thinking about back home in indiana, where every year, they have a persimmon festival & the peytons make a prize-winning persimmon pudding. as for the song, the only lyrics i can 100% make out are "persimmon, persimmon" & "take me back to indiana," but i like it. hell, i've always had trouble understanding what kurt cobain is saying & i never let that stop me from liking his stuff. anyway, you should at least check out this live performance of the "persimmon song" amongst the vegetation in a field in some small town somewhere. it's a hoedown good time.

i'm a persimmon newbie. until the other day, i'd never tried a persimmon & i'm fairly certain that this year's the first time i've ever seen them. i was only vaguely aware of their existence as it is, even though wikipedia claims that they're a prominent part of american culinary tradition. much of the world persimmon crop comes from asia & they come in a number of varieties & shapes. the kind that i got (the fuyu) totally looks like an orange tomato & when you cut it, you gut the stem just like you would with a tomato. lucky for me, i chose wisely because while many persimmons will make your lips pucker up with sourness, the fuyu is one of the non-astringent varieties. me & that sour stuff don't always mix.  

...so i cut one into slices & split it with a friend the other night & i think it's safe to say that neither one of us thought it was a pleasant experience. it's not quite a peach texture & it's not quite a citrus texture. it's not even a tomato texture. it's just plain weird. the taste was sweet & slightly pleasant, but i swear it came with a buttery aftertaste. it may have been that my taste buds were playing tricks on me or that i had one that wasn't perfectly ripe, but it was unsettling. each time i reached for another slice, my brain would ask me "are you really sure you want another one?" & i'd be all "i guess, brain. despite the rampant weirdness, i sort of enjoy the sweetness." then i'd take a bite & wonder why i don't listen to my brain more. he knows what he's talking about at least some of the time.

nosh nook #168 - wednesday, november 4, 2009

irish minister's raw garlic habit (link)
11.3.09 - bbc news

i have to be straight with y'all. i enjoy some nefarious tasting snacks. i've downed my fair share of crab chips, have been known to down mass quantities of hostess sno balls & am totally cool with anchovies. you'd think it'd have a negative impact on my breath, but other than occasional cigarette breath, i feel that i'm generally pretty make out worthy & that's not even taking my skillz into account! take that odd, smelly snacks. you are no match for the power of breath enhancing technology!

apparently, i'm not the only irish guy who enjoys weird snacks though. according to bbc news, brian lenihan jr (the irish finance minister) has a predilection for tasty tasty garlic. dude snacks on the stuff like he's popping m&m's. in 2008, david mcwilliams (an economist/tv personality) met lenihan & after the minister "pulled a bulb of garlic out of his pocket and started to peel it," he explained to mcwilliams "that the garlic gave him strength and kept him healthy and alert." the minister of state confirmed that lenihan "constantly chews garlic." then he made a comment about wanting to suck the reporters blood. actually, i made that last part up, so let's just pretend that it was "off the record."

i guess lenihan's read up on the benefits of garlic. the bbc explains that garlic contains a number of vitamins & good junk, but before they get to that they go into a bunch of historical reasons why it's all cool if lenihan's munching on garlic 24/7. first off, we know he's not a vampire. second, roman soldiers, greek athletes & the schlubs building the pyramids loved the bulb. those dudes got shit done ancient style! then there's the vitamin stuff. it strikes me as an odd half-hearted attempt to show that lenihan's not completely bonkers, but i'm going to let it slide this time. as long as lenihan doesn't try to make out with me, i say let him be.

nosh nook #167 - tuesday, november 3, 2009

scientists: junk food just as addicting as heroin (link)
11.2.09 - air america - by verena von pfetten

...so heroin's a pretty sweet drug, right? from what i hear, it sucks the life out of you, puts a bunch of holes in your arms & totally turns you into some sort of wiiliam burroughs type, but without the cool suit or hat or anything. if you haven't been able to be loyal to anything else in your life, believe you me, you'll be loyal to the H. oh that rush you'll get!...again & again & again. you'll be all like, "mmm junk" & then you'll notice that you've accidentally ashed on yourself again. it'll be totally selbyan.

apparently junk food is exactly the same as that or, according to air america, at least as addicting as that. as they report, "a recent peer-reviewed study by the independent and not-for-profit scripps research group" determined that rats who are addicted to heroin behave the same as those addicted to junk food. as if all the smack-addled rodents on our streets weren't a big enough problem, now researchers are getting them hooked on ho hos & bacon. awesome.

basically, they gave a bunch of rats a bunch of junk food & the more they got, the more they were all "squeak squeak" (gimme gimme). the researchers noticed that the "pleasure centers in the brains of rats addicted to high-fat, high-calorie diets became less responsive" over time, like would happen with heroin users. in fact, it got so bad with the rats that they didn't even care when the researchers would shock them because they were eating. oh researchers...is there anything you won't give rats? cigarettes? lottery tickets? attention? a treadmill? i wonder how many of those would cause heroin-like reactions. anyway, scripps...can't wait to see the results!

nosh nook #166 - monday, november 2, 2009

a pizza eating feat for the ages (link)
11.1.09 - slice - by daniel zemans

pizza may have become a staple of many americans' diets, but i have a love-hate relationship with it. growing up, whether it was ellio's or a regular pie, i ate a ton of it. from evenings where my mom was working & my dad had to make dinner to pizza parties at school & birthday parties at chuck e cheese, i ate it at least once or twice a week. at some point in the last few years though, because i'd eaten so much of it over the years, i sort of became sick of it. i still have a slice or two every once in a while, but those times are few & far between & when i do eat pizza, it's usually at someone else's urging.

some people never grow sick of pizza though. take chicago's craig scharoff. as slice (serious eats' pizza blog) reports, back in september, scharoff made a claim that he loved pizza so much that he could eat it every day for the rest of his life. his business partner challenged his claim, offering up a "four-figure sum" if he ate nothing but sausage pizza for every single meal during the month of october. over the past month, the pizza-eating drama has been playing out on LTH forum, a "chicago-based culinary chat site" & as slice notes, it really was no challenge, as scharoff "made it clear by the middle of october that he was an unstoppable pizza-eating force."

this past saturday marked the final day of the sausage pizza-eating challenge & since he passed the test with flying colors, he's now a little bit richer. in addition, "he never felt sick the entire month and, as of october 29, he lost 6 pounds since the challenge began." what's even more nuts is that he claims that "he could do another 30 days if not for all the pictures and documenting he had to do." in fact, according to slice, "tonight, this great man, this pizza-eating machine, this hero to us all...tonight, he plans to eat pizza."