nosh nook #152 - tuesday, october 13, 2009

obesity concerns spur calls to limit new convenience stores in south l.a. (link)
10.12.09 - l.a. times - by jerry hirsch

you live in south central? what's that? you've just been shot in the leg? oh wow. that's bleeding pretty bad. here. let me put a band aid on it...run along now. you'll be fine. band aid for a gunshot wound...that's essentially the approach to all the issues that plague south central, which is chock full of crime, poverty & drugs. the bloods & the crips started up there. the sweet gang filcks boyz n the hood & colors took place there. n.w.a., history's pioneering gangsta rappers, are from compton, a hood that's often considered part of south central.

you're not supposed to call the area south central any more though, because that name's synonymous with all that crime & whatnot. you're supposed to call it "south los angeles." anyway, south central's messed up & the city hasn't done much to tackle the core issue--that poor education & job opportunities for minorities have created a nasty environment to live in & that environment has spawned more of the same--but they are trying to tackle the TRUE evil...obesity.

as the l.a. times reports, as part of an expansion on last year's restrictions on fast-food restaurants, "the los angeles city council is set to consider a proposal that would limit the density of" convenient stores in south central. the rand corp. recently published a study that surmised that the high concentration of convenient stores selling junk food in the hood has led to a high obesity rate in south central ("26% of the residents of south los angeles are considered obese").

"the proposal...would prohibit such small neighborhood markets from being closer than one-half mile from one another unless they sold fresh fruit and vegetables." obviously, the convenient store industry's against the proposal, especially 7-11, which "has 50 stores within the los angeles city limits." there are "58 small food stores" in south central alone, compared to 14 in west l.a., but there are only three supermarkets in south central, compared to the ten in west l.a. no wonder gangs are always shooting each other up...they can't get a good basket of strawberries in their hood & that shit has to boil over somehow.

nosh nook #151 - monday, october 12, 2009

where they grow our junk food (link)
10.11.09 - toronto star - by margaret webb

if there's one thing that canadians like, it's saying "ay," ay? if there's another thing that they like, it's hockey, ay? if i were to name a third thing that canadians enjoy, it's socialized medicine, ay? if there's something beyond that that's a favorite of canadians (in addition to the aforementioned first three things), it's nickelback, ay? if i was asked to name an additional thing that canadians can get behind, it's cheap junk food, ay? apparently, they can't get enough of it.

since canadians love cheap junk food so much, the toronto star's margaret webb went out in search of a junk food farm. as she notes, "such farms are not so easy to spot. no fields of dorito bags waving in the breeze, no orchards blooming with soda pop, no soil bursting with 99-cent burgers." the canadians are hiding their junk food farms just like the iranians are with their nuclear weapons program. sanctions! basically, the canadians have disguised their junk food farms as soybean & corn farms & those two crops go into a ton of crappy food. soybeans make feed for livestock which makes burgers, soy oil makes lards & corn goes into syrups, sweeteners, starches & oil. who doesn't like burgers, lard & syrups?

as the article describes, canadian farmers are under a lot of pressure. canadians want cheap food (they put less of their income toward food than any country in the world) & with globalization, farmers face a ton of competition. as a result, they have to farm every available inch of land, a practice that has its environmental impacts. one such river, the sydenham, has "turned the colour of chocolate milk." farmers such as dave ferguson have little to no choice but to grow soybean & corn. he's trying to change that by educating other farmers, but as david jenkins (a top canadian nutritional researcher) notes, without a dramatic shift in public policy, "improving our diets through education and persuasion alone will take decades." decades? that's a heck of a long time, ay?...& i thought the u.s. farm system was messed up.

pumpktoberfest #6 - you smell like fish.

pumpktoberfest #6 - you smell like fish.
film: i know what you did last summer
beer: fisherman’s pumpkin stout



can we discuss jennifer love hewitt for a moment? she started out on disney's kids inc., but i was never a disney nut, so i was first introduced to her as younger sister sarah on party of five (which was all about neve as far as my hormones were concerned). midway through her run on the show, she starred in i know what you did last summer, the horror film that acted as her breakout role. then she was all cutesy hot in can't hardly wait, did an i know sequel (which i STILL haven't bothered to see) & launched a music career. i still have the first issue of maxim she was in, before they basically declared her "hottest hottie to ever be hot" & she started looking mad skinny & her boobs started to look abnormal & she went on a date with peter griffin. now she has some show where ghosts whisper to her & in her spare time, she plays liz in the garfield movies. seriously, her career arc's more abnormally curved than her boobs are.

...so the horror film that made her into hottie #1, i know what you did... she was 18 by that point, so i (at age 23) could legally feel less creepy in thinking she was cute hot. the film stars her & hottie sarah michelle geller, who'd just started doing buffy...oh & ryan phillippe & freddy prinze jr are in it. i guess they're hot, but not what i'm looking for, unfortunately. basically, they're out partying one night & they run over a drifter. since they're in the middle of nowhere, they dump him in the ocean & take off. a year goes by. jen-hew's home from college for the summer & receives a letter that reads "I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER." then a fisherman with a hook who kills people starts showing up & they run around trying to not get killed. OH THE HORROR! i saw it in the theatre & the best part is at the end, when j hew's showering & they totally set up the sequel. so yeah, the boobs + horror combo...once again victorious. 

today's pumpktoberfest brew is the fisherman’s pumpkin stout. it's put out by cape ann brewing, out of gloucester, MA. since gloucester's on the coast, they apparently have a thing for fishermen (hopefully the non-murdering, non-hook having kind), because they've named their friggin beers after them. when i first picked up their pumpkin beer, i was in a frenzy, attempting to gather up as many pumpkin beers as humanly possible, so i hadn't really paid attention to the fact that unlike all the other pumpkin beers i've tried, this is a stout. that fact made a ton of difference.

since it's a stout, it has a dark complexion & it's largely because stouts typically have more flavor than ales do, but there was definitely more going on with this one than there was with my previously-sampled pumpkin beers. with this one, the spices were less subtle & it wasn't all about bombarding your mouth with pumpkin pie flavors. with that sort of subtleness, there was definitely room for the pumpkin flavor to come into play. i wouldn't say that it's as good as the pumking, but it was better than the southampton. let's put it this way. this is one blogger who could get HOOKED by this FISHERMAN. wocka wocka wocka.

pumpktoberfest #5 - i cast thee out.

pumpktoberfest #5 - i cast thee out.
film: the exorcist
beer: punk'n harvest pumpkin ale



the seventies was definitely a hay day for directors, as peeps like coppola, bogdanovich, scorcese, depalma & lucas essentially reinvented the film industry, clearing a path for the thousands of film schools & independent films that have come since. william friedkin was among this group of maverick directors, with efforts that included the french connection in 1971 & the exorcist two years later. in the next decade, he went on to direct cruising (1980) & to live & die in l.a. (1985), but he hasn't done much memorable in the last few decades, unless you count 2000's rules of engagement. if you do count it, you should probably rethink that stance.

so yeah...holy head-spinning horror, batman! he followed up the french connection with the exorcist, which has become an iconic horror film & his most famous film, making over $400 million at the box office & winning two academy awards. the main plot revolves around a little girl (linda blair) who's possessed by a demonic spirit. eventually, after the little girl starts levitating & shit, her mother (ellen burstyn) decides to call in two priests to perform an exorcism. long story short, whatever's possessing her claims to be good ol satan himself & one of the priests ends up dying whilst performing the exorcism. the other priest, in a last ditch effort, commands satan to leave the little girl & enter him. satan's all "enter a priest? hellz yeah!" & leaps into the priest, who then leaps out a window. it's ok though, because the little girl is cured.

our fifth beer of the pumpktoberfest season, the punk'n harvest pumpkin ale, is totally possessed by weakness. it's an orange-colored beer made by four+brewing company, which is based out of utah. i wrote about one of their other beers, the "rype orange tingled wheat beer" last december & it was just as weak tasting. within the punk'n, i guess that it's a pumpkin beer, but there's no more than a faint taste of both pumpkin & spice (nutmeg? cinnamon?) in there, so it's hard to tell. quite disappointing.

when i first wrote about four+brewing's beers, i noted the low alcohol content & assumed that it was because utah's possessed by mormons. it turns out that in the state, beers with a lower alcohol content are taxed less, so by keeping the alcohol content below 4%, you make more money. so yeah, it's not because mormons think that alcohol is satan's brew or something & have decided to exorcise those evil spirits. from what i can tell, mormons don't really perform exorcisms. if they think you've got the devil in you, they'll just come to your house week after week & have D's with you until you're cured enough that you can wear their special undergarments.

nosh nook #150 - friday, october 9, 2009

the office: snack episode (link)
10.08.09 - the ny times - by randy cohen

advice columnists sure have evolved. "advice columnist" used to mean dear abby giving homemakers advice on how to speak up to your nosy mother-in-law. these days, dear abby's still around, but there are also advice columnists like dan savage, who will give you advice on whether it's ok to sleep with your nosy mother-in-law. the ny times has randy cohen's syndicated weekly "the ethicist" column. dude's won four emmys (three for writing on letterman, one for writing on michael moore's tv nation), so he's clearly well qualified to give advice.

in yesterday's column, he answered three food-related questions--about how to avoid snack temptation around the office, what to do with unhealthy food donated to a homeless shelter & how to deal with a relative who should be eating better for health reasons but refuses to. the first question was from someone from somerville, MA who was trying to watch their weight but whose co-worker was hosting an "all-office dessert swap." they wanted to avoid it & were curious if it was ok to lie & say that their doctor told them to stay away from sweets. cohen suggested avoiding lying, saying that instead, they should simply skip the dessert swap & ask the boss to "make yours a cake-free workplace." i'm sorry, but it's one thing to ask your boss to curb sexual harassment in the workplace. it's a whole other thing to ask them to curb cake. how about suggesting that they use a little willpower?

the next question came from marc ross, an l.a. resident who works at a homeless center. one of the goals at the center is to help clients improve their diets, but the center often receives "unhealthy, highly processed food" in their donations. ross doesn't want to throw it out, but feels bad giving it to other centers, because it just means a different group of people will be eating unhealthy food. in this case, cohen suggested that if it means the difference "between bad food and no food," they should pass the food along. if they aren't able to do that, they should just stockpile the "mac’n’cheesefoodproductsynthi-goo" in case of natural disaster. good advice. from what i hear, mac’n’cheesefoodproductsynthi-goo will last through a nuclear holocaust.

the final question came from a man whose relative had been told by her doctor that she should eat healthy, but who still doesn't. when this relative comes to visit, they make healthy food, but it doesn't matter, because she still has breakfast, "followed by a second breakfast, elevenses and raids on the children’s halloween candy." that's not just unhealthy. that's wrong. you don't take candy from kids. cohen lets the man know that they're already doing all they can by serving healthy food, but they can "lock up the kids’ candy." maybe they should have the relative locked up as well.