nosh nook #114 - thursday, august 20, 2009

popcorn a hidden source of antioxidants, study says (link)
08.19.09 - abc news - by joseph brownstein

apparently smartfood has been on to something for quite some time now. for almost twenty-five years now (twenty of them as a frito lay company), they've been churning out a white-cheddar popcorn that's both tasty & relatively healthy (free of trans fats, gluten, msg). as such, folks often tend to think of it as a "healthy snack alternative." popcorn's obviously better for you than a bag of cool ranch doritos or barbecue pork rinds, but it turns out that it's even healthier than we thought.

as abc news reports, this tuesday, researchers released a study that found that popcorn has "more of the dietary fiber and antioxidants than any other snack food." take that fictional pomegranate-blueberry-acai barley buckwheat blasted snack bars! joe vinson, a university of scranton chemistry professor who was the study's lead author, breaks it down. "in the case of popcorn, the antioxidants are protected from the sun in the drying process, and the corn loses only a little bit of them when it is popped. additionally, through the whole process, the fiber provided by the whole grain is not removed."

dr. david katz, from yale university's school of medicine, brings up a good point though. "the real issue with popcorn is what gets added to it, and frankly that's often an issue with foods in the modern food supply. if you add a lot of butter and salt to popcorn, it merely becomes the delivery vehicle for a lot of bad stuff." he also notes that "one of the nice things about popcorn is that it's a 'fun food,'" which essentially means that it's both "enjoyable" & "provide(s) nutrition." too bad that popcorn sans salt or butter or caramel is also sans fun. unless someone comes up with a plain popcorn that actually tastes good, i'm going to keep pouring on the butter because as the study shows, even popcorn coated in a pound of butter is popcorn high in antioxidants & fiber...& i can poop better knowing that.

the musical fruit: movement #6.

the musical fruit: movement #6.
song: "criminal," fiona apple
fruit: ginger gold apple



remember fiona apple? had that song "criminal" back in '97? was on mtv a bunch? looks like a calvin klein model? dated paul thomas anderson for a while? people always fixate on how depressed/heroin chic she is? yeah, that fiona apple. she hasn't released an album in almost four years, but back in '97, after releasing her first album (tidal) & making some noise with her first single ("shadowboxer"), she released a second single ("sleep to dream") & bam! out came "criminal." this was back when i still watched mtv. i remember seeing the video for "criminal" & being all "whoa. that chick's dark." the video's directed by mark romanek, who's directed a ton of videos, including ones for NIN's "closer" & johnny cash's cover of NIN's "hurt," so the dude totally knows dark.

once "criminal" started getting some heavy mtv airplay, apple's career really took off. the song became her first top 40 hit, the video took home an mtv award for best cinematography, tidal ended up going triple-platinum & eventually, she won a grammy for the song (best female rock vocal performance). all that from a song with lyrics like "i've been a bad bad girl" & "i've done wrong and i want to suffer for my sins" by a woman who blatantly bashed the music industry while accepting her '97 mtv award for "sleep to dream" (best new artist) by saying, "this world is bullshit & you shouldn't model your life on what you think that we think is cool & what we're wearing and what we're saying." the music industry eventually got their revenge, as they waited a full two years after her next album was finished to release it & she hasn't released anything since other than a comedy song with zack galfanakis & a cover of "why try to change me now?" by the late cy coleman. the lyrics to the latter are way too fitting.

this past afternoon at work, just before i was about to dial into an engrossing weekly conference call, i hurried off to the kitchen, grabbed a plate & the only sharp knife in the office & hurried back to my desk to pass the time on the call with slices of the lovely ginger gold apple you see above. the ginger gold's one of the first apples to be harvested (usually in august), so there are tons of them around right now. virginia friggin' loves them. back in 2007, the state legislature actually proposed a bill to make it the official state fruit. it was eventually tabled & therefore never even made it to a vote, but i suppose it's the thought that counts. valiant effort, kris & toddy!

i can see where they were headed with the whole state fruit thing. i mean, it's a damn tasty apple. i'd been sort of turned off from apples for a while because for the longest time, especially when i was growing up, other than an occasional granny smith, it was all red apple city for shawn. the problem with that? red apples have that slightly mealy consistency & it sort of skeeves me out. after years of enduring them, i finally realized that i just didn't like mealy red apples & decided to exercise my adult authority & forgo them indefinitely. in contrast, the ginger gold doesn't have that mealiness to it. plus, since it's a yellow apple, it's not as sweet as the red varieties, which is actually more appealing to me, believe it or not. anyway, the conference call definitely flew by thanks to the ginger gold. well...at least the five minutes it took me to wolf it down did.

nosh nook #113 - wednesday, august 19, 2009

where little chefs learn the art of slicing and dicing (link)
08.18.09 - the ny times - by ann farmer

kids do the darndest things! sometimes they're all chill & relaxed & reading a book or mesmerized by a dvd featuring thomas or dora or whoever kids are obsessed with these days and sometimes they're running around all batshit crazy, knocking things around while barking like a dog & declaring that they're king/queen of the lizards...at least that's what i assume kids would do if i ever interacted with any. the other thing about kids: you have to feed them or they die. it's true! they don't get their nutrients via photosynthesis, folks.

luckily for peeps in brooklyn with kids, there's now a way to channel those kids' energy into an activity that ensures that they won't die of starvation. as the ny times' ann farmer explains, emily rios, a "licensed clinical social worker, educator and self-professed 'foodie'” started the creative cooks culinary center last year to teach kids about food & specifically how to prepare & cook different dishes. she "treats the culinary arts as an anthropological adventure." kids love anthropology!

rios teaches the kids how to make a wide range of dishes from around the world, dishes such trinidadian "doubles," "arroz con pollo," "pastelitos" & "a vegetarian dish called buddhist delight." exotic! she knows when to curb the etocism though. as the article mentions, she "could have done something with salted codfish this week, but (she) knew they wouldn't like it." well duh. it's salted codfish. in addition to teaching kids how to cook, she takes them on culinary outings around the city. they've visited chinatown's mahayana buddhist temple, a caribbean market & a tortilla factory. a tortilla factory? lucky kids. when i was a kid, we never got to visit a tortilla factory or make trinidadian dishes. hell, i didn't even know that sushi existed until some time around high school. kids these days are so advanced!

nosh nook #112 - tuesday, august 18, 2009

new mexico state introduces snack attack offense (link)
08.17.09 - fanhouse - by clay travis

there's no two ways about it. you have to feel bad for new mexico state football program. this decade, they've stumbled to a record of 34-73, with only one winning season (in 2002). they've had four winning seasons in the last forty years, haven't won a conference championship since the carter administration & haven't made a bowl appearance since the johnson administration, the longest such drought in division one college football. with a history like that, they're pretty much destined to play second fiddle to the university of new mexico. they're not even the most famous aggies in college football. that distinction belongs to texas a&m. you'd think that being in the land of enchantment would be good for something, but nope...& it gets worse.

as fanhouse's clay travis explains, the football program is currently struggling with a $1.5 million budget gap. as part of their efforts to close the gap, they recently sent an email out to fans asking them to donate snacks to the football team. folks have already donated peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, watermelons, and trail mix to help the cause, but in the words of travis, "they've made the program look ridiculous." well, yeah. i hope they have other ideas for fixing the budget, because $1.5 million is a lot of snacks. luckily, travis has a ten hilarious suggestions for how to close the gap.

the team could start with corporations. they could bring back their old "pistol pete" mascot & get the NRA or a gun manufacturer to sponsor him. they could change the fight song lyrics from "we'll buy a keg of booze" to "we'll buy a keg of <insert beer sponsor name here>." they could get rid of the "aggies" nickname & sell the naming rights to a corporation, because quite frankly, "aggies" is pretty lame, especially compared to UNM's "lobo" mascot. my favorite suggestion is to "bring back nazi POWs and have them work on farms growing snacks for the football team." apparently las cruces (home to new mexico state) "put nazi POWs to work on farms during world war II." travis wonders "why did they ever allow these people to leave?" i'm pretty sure a lot of those dudes are dead by now, but let's be honest...they're probably more alive than the new mexico state football program.

nosh nook #111 - monday, august 17, 2009

street chefs throughout new york city vie to cart off the 2009 vendy award (link)
08.16.09 - ny daily news - by ben chapman

as i mentioned a few weeks back, the vendy awards, nyc's awards ceremony for street vendors, are coming up near the end of september. every year, the vendys bring together five of the city's top street vendors & award one of them the coveted vendy cup. the other four vendors are executed via a rusty guillotine. JK! no french revolutionary style executions! in actuality, winning is obviously the ultimate goal, but even just being nominated can help the vendors stand out from the thousands in nyc. so yeah...the five finalists have been announced!

the ny daily news' ben chapman totes has jokes. well...one joke. he starts this article with "it's a street fight." get it? the five vendy nominees are street vendors & they're now in competition for the award! if i was him, i would have peppered my article with copious references to the rolling stones' "street fighting man" or maybe made some food/street fight puns, but i guess that's why he writes for the daily news & likely gets a paycheck for doing so, while i write a blog & get paid in satisfaction.

this year's finalists include astoria's falafel king, midtown's biryani cart & jamaican dutchy cart, red hook's country boys food truck & the flatiron district's rickshaw dumpling truck. freddy zeidaies, who runs the falafel king cart, is pretty damn confident. "i'm going to win," he says. he "plays belly-dancing music at his cart and does a few moves when the mood strikes him," but those moves will have to be pretty sweet if he wants to win. we're talking some reverse moonwalk type shizz.

his competition's fare includes the biryani cart's cati roll ("a thin indian flatbread wrapped around fillings such as spicy bombay chicken and vegetarian potatoes and cauliflower"), jamaican dutchy's grilled jerk chicken, the country boys truck's "huarache, an oversize open-faced burrito that's a specialty (in) puebla, mexico" & the rickshaw dumpling truck's, um...dumplings. that's some stiff competition for a dude selling falafel. good luck, freddy! you know what? just in case, i suggest taking the next month to learn the worm. judges love the worm, as long as it's not in your falafel.