nosh nook #145 - friday, october 2, 2009

web-emites take snack attack to new level (link)
10.01.09 - the age - by julian lee

wow. as far as snacking goes, australia's had a lot going on lately. just last month, four'n twenty, an australian meat pies company, announced that they were releasing snack-sized meat pies. i haven't had a chance to poll any australians, but i'm assuming the resulting effects on australian society have been nothing short of ace. now, after the introduction of another new snack product, australians, through their outrage, have banded together to enact democratic change.

back in june, kraft released an updated version of vegemite, one of australia's native foods. the update mixed vegemite with cream cheese to produce a milder flavor. when they released it, they announced a contest to name the product & according to melbourne's the age, when they announced the name of the new vegemite five days ago, people went batty. the new name--"isnack 2.0." as a result, kraft is all like, "oh, you don't like it? why don't you come up with a better one then?"

basically, you go to their website & take a survey where a series of questions asks you to pick what the new name should be by ranking "vegemite creamymate," "vegemite vegemild," "vegemite vegemate," "vegemite snackmate," "vegemite cheesybite," "vegemite smooth" & "i wouldn’t choose any of these names." i hope that last one wins. that'd look awesomely meta on a label. julian lee turned to james griffin, a director from SR7 (online risk & reputation consultants) to find out why the events around kraft's new snack product are so historic. griffin said "regardless of whether or not this is a marketing ploy by kraft, this is an example of social media determining the outcome of a marketing campaign." you hear that kraft marketing team? we know you've got aussies doing your job because you dropped the ball the first time. power to the people!

nosh nook #144 - thursday, october 1, 2009

"best of hawaii" 2009: our favorite hawaii snacks (link)
09.30.09 - hawaii magazine - by derek paiva

one of these days, i'm going to actually leave the continental united states. mark my words. until then, i'm going to continue to build my fantasy about what hawaii's actually like. here's what i've put together: aloha means both "Hello" & "goodbye." they have seventy words for snow. the waters are blue & the greens are green. there are coconut & macadamia trees everywhere. because of some sort of island sorcery, they can see into the future & had the foresight to print a birth announcement for president obama in the newspaper even though we all know that he's secretly a muslim who was actually born somewhere in deep africa. sorcery conspiracy! also, when you first arrive & get off the plane/boat, there are hot hawaiian chicks waiting on the runway to lei you. that's pretty much what the islands are all about. well, that & they like rainbows.

hawaii magazine recently came out with their "best of hawaii" issue (on newstands now!), so they've been putting sections of it up on their website. yesterday, they shared four of their "favorite hawaii snacks and our favorite places to get 'em." their first snack is poke, which was "traditionally bite-size raw fish...mixed with salt, seaweed and kukui nuts, but these days there’s no end to the delicious variations." in hawaii, you're not allowed to have a party or even a beer without poke. that's island law for ya! next up is "hawaii chips," which are "crisp, kettle-cooked slices of kalo (taro), ulu (breadfruit) and yellow and purple sweet potato." they're basically a better version of terra chips.

their third snack is musubi, which looks friggin crazy. it's often made with spam, a block of rice & some nori, but the one they mention--mana bu--makes thirty different kinds of the stuff. their last snack choice is shave ice, which is exactly what it sounds like. some ice, some flavor. some refreshment. hmm. they didn't even include crack seed in the list. must be because of the crack seed epidemic. anyway, there's a pic that accompanies the article of obama & the first daughters eating shaved ice. it's good to see that he's visiting there every once in a while to make the whole birth story look good. maybe if he goes there enough times, people will start believing that he actually was born there. i mean, i won't, but people believe some crazy things these days.

pumpktoberfest #1 - maine is HORRORible.

pumpktoberfest #1 - maine is HORRORible.
film: maximum overdrive
beer: shipyard pumpkinhead



the great state of maine has produced a lot of fine talent in its day, from judd nelson to patrick dempsey to dan fogelberg, but horror writer stephen king's arguably the most famous maniac. with a resume that includes way too many books for me to bother counting them up, he's basically become the most famous horror writer of at least this past century. dude hasn't had any of his stories turned into a worthy movie yet this millennium, but through the years, a good number of his books have been adapted into classic horror films.

maximum overdrive isn't exactly a classic, but it was the first film that he directed himself (as he's all too happy to tell you in the trailer) & it's one of his more hilarious films. as the plot goes, a comet goes shooting through the sky & the machines all become homicidal at some truck stop. once the trucks start acting up, people are screwed. it stars a young emilio estevez from back when being emilio estevez actually meant something. in short, if you're looking for the maximum amount of hilarious, machine-based horror this pumpktoberfest season, look no further than maximum overdrive. after all, it's also the last film stephen king ever directed.

the first beer of the pumpktoberfest season is a shipyard pumpkinhead, brewed out of portland, ME. it's a wheat ale brewed with cinnamon & nutmeg & it's only available for two months out of the year, roughly equivalent to the amount of time non-pumpkin farmers care about pumpkins on a yearly basis. based on the front of the label, it probably would've gone perfect with pumpkinhead or sleepy hollow, but neither of them are in my top sixteen horror films, so they can suck it.

the pumpkinhead's nothing special. i enjoy shipyard's beers, but the pumpkinhead was a perfect example of your run-of-the-mill "toss some spices in a beer & call it a pumpkin beer" pumpkin beer. as i suspected, compared to that pumking (pictured behind it) that i killed the other night, it was B-O-R-I-N-G. not HORRORible, but i'm hoping there are some better ones amongst the pumpkin beers i've assembled in my fridge. if not, it's going to be a loooooooooong pumpktoberfest season.

nosh nook #143 - wednesday, september 30, 2009

hostess offers 'monsters vs. aliens' treats (link)
09.29.09 - brandweek - by elaine wong

you really can't beat solid movie tie-ins. without them, i wouldn't have been able to drink out of a sweet empire strikes back glass every day for most of my childhood. sure there are a lot of lame tie-ins & promotions out there, but for every crappy little disney toy there are more than enough awesome muppet movie glasses. i suppose my examples of cool movie tie-ins are a bit dated & glass-focused, but i'm hoping that you get the point regardless. if done right, movie tie-ins can lead to some promotions that kids will be thinking about twenty-five years down the road. i'm not sure this is one of them though...

as brandweek's elaine wong reports, hostess & dreamworks have teamed up to promote yesterday's release of the monsters vs aliens dvd & blu-ray. they launched an "instant-win match game" on the hostess website yesterday where you go to the website, enter a ton of personal information & play a game of memory. if you win & get randomly picked (you won't), you win ONE MILLION DOLLARS! you can buy a TON of snack cakes with that kind of scratch. as if a miniscule chance at a million dollars wasn't enough, "hostess is also selling two limited-edition monsters vs. aliens snack cakes. one, called monster cakes, are chocolate hostess cupcakes topped with blue icing and blue sprinkles. b.o.b. cakes, made with blue hostess sno balls, are made to resemble the movie’s gelatinous blue blob." it's perfect timing. with the halloween pumpktoberfest season upon us, monsters are en vogue. anyway, that sno ball one's genius. you can't go wrong with a sno ball or a blob.

david leavitt, the vp of snack marketing at interstate brands (hostess), is excited about the promotion & loves puns as much as he loves giving away a million dollars. wong refers to a statement leavitt issued, where he said "with hostess' 'monsters vs. aliens'-themed snack cakes and the chance to win $1 million sweepstakes, we know this will be a 'monstrous' promotion." well put, david. so yeah. million dollars. snack cakes. i guess there's a movie in there somewhere too. you should probably buy it now that it's available for home consumption...or maybe you can wait until you win A MILLION DOLLARS and buy 50,000 copies of the dvd. fyi, if you prefer, you can get it in a package with b.o.b.'s big break in monster 3D. that means 50,000 free copies of that too! it sounds like a gripping film. b.o.b.'s apparently the blob. i bet he gets into all sorts of animated mischief.

#131 - pumpktoberfest!

if you're proactive or confused & you've already gone & flipped ahead to october in your fictional eat!drink!snack! wall or desk calendar, you'll know that tomorrow is october 1st, which marks the beginning of pumpktoberfest, the happiest, pumpkiniest month of the year here at eat!drink!snack! since it's one of those brand new holidays (the hallmark deal is still pending), you may not be familiar with the inner workings of pumpktoberfest, so imma break it down for you. basically, halloween is the lamest holiday ever. pumpktoberfest is one of the best holidays of all time. thirty-one days, yo! thirty-one days!

as legend has it, pumpktoberfest developed one day in the mind of shawn parow, a mid-thirties blogger from brooklyn. for days, he had been wondering what stupid gimmick he could roll out next on his blog. after a string of post-work evenings standing in front of the coolers at bierkraft poring over microbrews, he realized that, with about a month until halloween, there were a shit ton of pumpkin beers coming out. he'd tried a pumpkin beer or two in his day, but had always taken the same stance with them as he did with christmas beers--they were too much of a spicy novelty item. maybe it was the presence of all that alcohol or maybe it was the five hours sleep the night before, but on that evening, he had a change of heart.

there were enough pumpkin beers in those coolers to field a basketball team & our plucky blogger reasoned that there had to be more out there...& he was right. he started checking the coolers at assorted bodegas & delis. he went on the world wide web. he found that there were enough pumpkin beers out there to field a canadian football team. he got a bit obsessed...& from there, pumpktoberfest was born. initially, he thought BIG & planned to celebrate pumpktoberfest each day with a different pumpkin beer, reporting back to you in blog form. like most of his plans, after going out & collecting a number of pumpkin beers, he realized that he could only field a canadian football team with a few substitutes & scaled those plans back to a pumpkin beer report every odd-numbered day for the entire month of october, each paired with another of his recently rekindled loves...horror films.

he figured that halloween month is the only logical month to go nuts over horror films & then he came across a trailer for the michael bay-directed remake of nightmare on elm street & that sealed the deal. then he watched some footage of the shuttle disaster online & decided to do the columns in countdown form. as he envisioned it, every odd-numbered day for the month of october, he'd give the low down on pumpkin beers whilst providing a list of his favorite horror films, culminating with his top pick...ON HALLOWEEN NIGHT. as the legend goes, if you drink a pumpkin beer with a friend this october, you pass the spirit of pumpktoberfest on to them & when they drink a pumpkin beer with another friend & don't invite you along, they're passing on the spirit of pumpktoberfest...& so on & so forth. it's like herpes, but with less physical contact! happy pumpktoberfest! spread the pumpkin love!

#131 - pumpktoberfest!
snack: david pumpkin seeds
drink: southern tier pumking


in celebration of the impending pumpktoberfest, last night, i half-lazily put together a pumpkin snack-drink combo. for my snack, i picked up a 5 oz bag of david pumpkin seeds that i kept at my side during the evening. whenever i felt the need to run to the kitchen, grab every item in the refrigerator door & mold them into a masterpiece of pumpktoberfestian proportions, i just popped a few of the pumpkin seeds in my mouth & the urge faded for about 60-120 seconds. then i repeated as necessary. i have to be honest though. i'm not all that into pumpkin seeds. i'll take sunflower seeds any day of the week, but pumpkin seeds are just plain weird. with sunflower seeds, at least i know that i shouldn't eat the shell. with pumpkin seeds, sometimes it's a gray area. the bag's not even clear on the subject, but they do encourage you to "break out of your shell™."

these ones have the white, extremely salty outer shell & in typical pumpkin seed fashion, if you manage to crack open the shell, there's a tiny green seed awaiting you on the inside, a pumpkin that never reached its potential if you will. oh well. chomp chomp. since, like i mentioned, i'm not all that into pumpkin seeds, i got sick of them after a while & ultimately tossed them aside, wondering what else i could eat as i picked the pumpkin seed shells from my teeth. maybe i'll use the rest of the bag to stem off smoke cravings or something.

while my snack was lazily thought out, the drink portion of it definitely wasn't. when i first came across it, i knew that i had to ring in pumpktoberfest with the king of all pums, the southern tier pumking. it's a local beer, brewed in upstate ny & according to the bottle, it's "an ode to púca, a creature of celtic folklore." that means that this beer was made in the name of a mischievous shape-shifter who from what i gather, has november 1st (the day after harvest) as his day. since i don't believe a word of that crap, i also ignored the label's suggestion to "pour pumking into a goblet." what kind of person has a friggin goblet lying around? vampires & other blood-drinking types, that's who & i'm not one of those (yet), so i poured mine into a pint-sized mug like a real man & basked in my defiance of labels.

um, this stuff is amazing. when i first opened it, i gave it a good sniffing, since i'd read that it was really pumpkiny. of the pumpkin beers i've tried, i never really felt that any of them were all that pumpkiny. it was more like with them, "pumpkin" meant pumpkin spices--nutmegs & cinnamons & allspices & the like. when i first sniffed the pumking, i could already tell that it was something different. the bottle lists "puréed pumpkin" as an ingredient & since i don't have many opportunities to use this phrase, i'm going to use it here: "you can really taste the puréed pumpkin." you can also taste the caramel malt in it & it's not overly spiced like most pumpkin beers. it sets a pretty high bar for pumpkin beers & i'm skeptical that any of the other pumpktoberfest beers i have in the queue can beat it. i guess we'll just have to wait & see. surprise me imagined pumpkin beer canadian football team! surprise me with one of those grey cups or something!