nosh nook #103 - wednesday, august 5, 2009

a museum devoted to a national snack obsession (link)
08.04.09 - the ny times - by gisela williams

in germany, things are all backwards crazy & whatnot. they don't even have tacos on every corner there! their fast foods are wacky things like döner kebab (a turkish meat sandwich) & currywurst, which contains fried pork sausage & a sauce made of ketchup & curry powder. it's totally a national dish & it's believed that it was invented sixty years ago by a woman from berlin, although hamburg sometimes tries to lay claim to the snack.

as the times reports, on august 15th, martin löwer, a german marketing executive, loves the currywurst so much he's opening a museum in berlin dedicated to it, right next to the checkpoint charlie museum. foot traffic! for just seven euros, you get things like "a documentary called “best of the wurst,” a reproduction of a currywurst imbiss (snack shop), and a map of the world which shows where to buy currywurst." you don't get any currywurst though.

eventually, you'll be able to sample currywursts in "an attached but separate lounge" that features "sauces created especially for the museum by two of berlin’s top chefs."  until then, you can check out some of the city's favorite currywurst imbisses at places with wacky foreign names like "konnopkes imbiss," "curry 36" & "imbiss ku’damm 195." at the last one, you can even repair the past wounds of german-french relations by pairing currywurst with a glass of champagne...classy.

nosh nook #102 - tuesday, august 4, 2009

five snacks that are shaped like the universe (link)
08.03.09 - new scientist - by michael marshall

science! is there anything it can't do? if you say there is, then you're just a hater & there's only room for one hater on this blog & that's me. kindly step aside & act passive while i explain the universe to the good people. first off, the universe is big. second off, it's full of junk. third off, it was created by god as part of a revenue-sharing deal with disney. while scientists have spoke of the universe as being sphere-shaped in the past, there are now a bunch of alternative shapes that they're considering...tasty snacklike shapes.

i'm not really as up on crazy universe science as i initially led on, so i'm going to let new scientist take over from here. as they explain, since physicists don't know for sure exactly what shape the universe is, they've proposed five alternative, non-sphere shapes--a ring doughnut, a pringle, a peanut, a bugle & an apple. the pringle is obviously the tastiest option there & because of some science stuff, if the universe is pringle-shaped, "it could explain why time only moves forwards (sic), and possibly why the universe is expanding so fast." i'm going to take their word for that.

as for the other shape options, the peanut option sounds boring. the ring doughnut shape is a popular choice & some even suggest "that the doughnut has a single twist – like a möbius strip that has been inflated." the bugle shape somehow helps explain "some puzzling observations of the cosmic microwave background radiation: the relic radiation left over from the big bang." the apple shape somehow helps explain string theory. obviously. personally, i prefer to think that the universe is shaped like a combo.

the musical fruit: movement #1.

welcome to the inaugural edition of "the musical fruit." i love music almost as much as i love snacking, so to feed that love, i've created "the musical fruit," a column offering insight into fruits & songs, doled out (put not intended) in single fruit-song pairs. as a bonus, each song featured will include a link to hear/buy the song & if need be, figure out what the hell the writer's talking about...fruit tasting/buying links not provided.

the musical fruit: movement #1.
song: "gold soundz," pavement
fruit: golden raspberries



back in freshman year of college, there was a guy on our floor from chicago, a guy who listened to pavement & played guitar & had acne & slightly-weird hair. at the time, i had no idea who pavement was, but halfway through the year, they released crooked rain, crooked rain, an album that many consider their finest. this guy on our floor listened to it over & over again to the point where his roommate, a friend of mine, used to mockingly sing "stop breathin" on occasion, particularly the lyrics "stop breathin'. stop breathin'. breathing for me now."

now that i'm older & wiser & aware of who pavement is, for me, the money song on crooked rain is "gold soundz." it's perfect for this month, since the third verse begins with the words, "so drunk in the august sun and you're the kind of girl i like because you're empty and i'm empty and you can never quarantine the past." any girl that can appreciate that is the kind of girl i like...sweet short solo in the song too.

so...golden raspberries. hmm. they're basically the same thing as regular raspberries without all the usual tartness. as you can sort of tell from the picture, they have the typical raspberry hairs on them, but because the berries are so damn yellow, the hairs stand out like stubble on the surface of the berry...& they're made with REAL GOLD! the only drawback is the extremely short shelf life, which is around two days tops.

these particular ones come from driscoll's, a berry grower based out of cali. they have growers in various areas of the u.s., mexico & south america and according to their website, these berries were grown in either southern cali or mexico, meaning that they've probably had quite the adventurous cross-country journey on the way to my stomach! carbon footprint = oops.

nosh nook #101 - monday, august 3, 2009

candy or food? confusion grows as new tax looms (link)
08.02.09 - chicago tribune - by ameet sachdev & bob secter

so you think you know what "candy" is? is it food? is it a sugary treat? is it anything you can find in the candy aisle? if you think you know, you might want to slow down there & think again, fair consumer. for years, scientists have devoted hours upon hours of lab time to defining what exactly makes something "candy," with little to no success. luckily for them, the state of illinois has come up with a definition, allowing the scientists to finally put down their bunsen burners & pocket protectors & relax with a candy bar or two or three.

as the chicago tribune reports, as part of revisions to the state sales tax, illinois has established a definition for candy, one that "demote(s) candy and soft drinks from the food group," allowing them to tax certain items at the higher, non-food rate. the revisions, which go into effect on september 1st, are designed "to help pay for a $31 billion public works program gov. pat quinn recently signed into law." with these changes, "sweets containing flour as an ingredient--and there are a lot of them--are not legally deemed to be candy, even if common sense and common taste say otherwise." oh arbitrary government regulation.

so what's considered candy? the tribune provides a few examples...hershey's bar? candy. hershey's cookies 'n' creme bar? nope. butterfinger? yep. butterfinger stixx? not candy. you put yogurt on fruit...you've got candy. you put it on a pretzel...not candy. for mom & pop stores, this causes a bit of a nightmare. whereas chain stores like wal-mart have a team of people who can easily determine which items to tax which way, the mom & pop stores have to have mom or pop do it. arthur paris, owner of lincoln park's carnival foods was quoted as saying "i anticipate having to make some arbitrary choices about what a high tax is and what a low tax [is]. it is virtually impossible for a one-horse shop like me to get this right." good luck, arthur! may the fair winds of chicago blow through your store!

#115 - all points afar.

friday was like the little day that could. through a hookup through a friend with ties to the jay-z camp, a group of us were planning on going to the first night of the all points west festival, headlined by jigga & held out in liberty state park, in jersey city, just across the river from manhattan. so i could leave work mid-afternoon, i upped my game & got to work a full hour early at 9:30am. i swear i saw the sunrise en route to the subway. at work, everything went relatively smoothly. in fact, i propose five hour days from here on out, because the amount of work i got done by having to cram it into five hours was truly monumental. employers, if you are monitoring my blog, please take note. less hours = increased productivity. salary intact, please.

...so i got out by 2:30 & made my way back to brooklyn to run a few errands & relax at home whilst everyone else finished their days. i had thoughts of going to see ra ra riot, but eventually set a goal of getting there in time to see flying lotus (not safe for work/not safe for strobe haters) in the dj tent at 7:15. during that time, the group plan split into two pre-festival meetup groups, with one including the friend responsible for the hookup & the other including me & one other dude. also during that time, the skies opened up with some pretty impressively awful downpours, to the point where i, hater of umbrella-carrying, carried an umbrella on my journey to meet the aforementioned other dude where he was hanging out, at the apartment of a friend of his in battery park city.

when i arrived, the three of us hung out for a while, conversatin' & bumping a whole lot of jay-z. since the apartment was in battery park city there was a ridiculous view of the harbor from the bedroom windows. to make it even better, there was a sweet terrace type thing a few floors up, complete with bullt in grills & patio areas. once the doppler radio informed us we were in the clear rainwise, we ventured up there & from there, we had a clear view across the harbor to liberty state park, where we posited that vampire weekend was finishing up their set. since i love my phone's camera, i took a few photos of the environs, none of which included a view of liberty state park.



upon returning downstairs, we soon discovered, through a few phone calls & much resignation, that our entry to the festival was in jeopardy. awesome. apparently things were messed up for those relying on our particular method of entry & it was close to 8:30 & in the end, we had already missed every band but jay-z & MSTRKRFT anyhow. the other two dudes had other possible angles to entry, but i'd already had a few fun hours in battery park city, so i headed back to brooklyn to end my evening. jigga what? jigga no.

#115 - all points afar.
snack: homemade beef jerky
drink: yuengling lager



but! while i was there & doing the getting to know of the friend's friend, a mention came of this here blog & its content & the friend's friend, quite hospitable as he was, offered me a piece of homemade beef jerky from a jar on the kitchen counter. there were a dozen or so pieces of jerky remaining out of a jar that probably held 100 or so pieces. apparently my friend had emptied most of the rest of it on a previous visit. it was that jerkilicious.

since it was homemade, i inquired about the story behind the jerky. according to our host, the best beef to get for jerky is from key food, as it's cheap & of acceptable quality. i'm pretty sure this jerky was made of beef from there. either that or he really wanted to drive the key food thing home for some reason. it was spiced with peppercorns, vanilla & something asian that i believe, in a tribute to wayne's world, was called "cream of sun yung guy." not really though. something asian, but definitely not that...so yeah, damn good jerky. from the jerky-induced conversations surrounding its consumption, i've learned that it's not that big of a challenge to make jerky, so i may give it a shot one of these days.

whilst prepping for what i thought was going to be all points west, i repeatedly revisited yuengling, a beer that i'd previously imbibed back in march during tv month. since i was eventually headed for liberty state park, it made sense that i'd be drinking a beer from the country's oldest brewery. go freedom! go freedom to drink many lagers in good company! anyway, our host had a fridge full of them, so once i exhausted the only guinness (erin go bragh!) in the fridge, i went american.

as far as cheap beers go, yuengling's wonderful. i still hold fast to my opinion that i'll pay a buck more for a yuengling if it means avoiding a bud. yuengling's headquartered in pottsville, pa, home of the crimson tide & the county seat of & largest city in schuylkill county. the beer has a friggin eagle on the label! OMG patriotism orgasm! anyway, it made me not care so much that i never made it to the festival. on the upside, i'll have more energy for ac/dc in albany tonight. second row! my heart and/or ears and/or brain may explode. stay tuned for results.