nosh nook #75 - friday, june 26, 2009

social media will not get me to eat your gross pizza (link)
06.25.09 - cnet - by caroline mccarthy

social media rules! actual scientific fact: if you have a band/organization/corporation & want it to succeed, you've got to promote it. luckily, thanks to social media, it doesn't matter what you're promoting or what the quality of it is as long as you have a twitter account or a facebook page or whatever social media platform is all the rage at that particular moment in time. if you have a social media strategy as well, the popularity of your band/organization/corporation will instantly skyrocket & as a result, the big bucks will just start pouring in pretty much instantly.

the world's largest & hippest pizza chains are no stranger to the power of social media & have decided it's time for them to get their hands on some of that social media fat cash. yesterday, both dominos & pizza hut revealed their social media strategies. as cnet's caroline mccarthy reports, those strategies are geared towards getting the social networking generation psyched about their crappy pizza. on july 4th, pizza hut (or "the hut" if you're hip) will be giving away free orders of "stuffed pizza rolls" to its facebook fans & twitter followers. dominos announced that their online ordering system has become even better, as you'll now be able to track your order on facebook & twitter. thank god. it's about time that someone came up with another reason for me to go on facebook.

caroline mccarthy's not fooled though. she's a fellow new yorker & as such, has 24/7 access to quality pizza. if she wants gross pizza, a concept perfected by chains such as pizza hut & dominos, she'll head over to crocodile lounge, where any day of the year, she can get a free, crappy single-serving pizza with every drink she buys. she doesn't "give a hoot if the ordering process is spiced up with twitter coupons, facebook connect tracking updates, a ustream feed in the kitchen where it's made, or GPS chips to track it on google latitude."  crappy pizza is crappy pizza & no social media strategy can change that...although i bet she'd change her mind if she got a facebook friend request from the noid.  i would.

nosh nook #74 - thursday, june 25, 2009

pepsi inks deal to produce, sell snacks in japan (link)
06.24.09 - associated press

pepsico inc is big...billions & billions of dollars in yearly revenue big. they already have a handful of major brands in their family--frito-lay, tropicana, quaker oats, naked juice.  at one point, they even owned your neighborhood combination pizza hut & taco bell, until they spun off yum brands (owner of both franchises) into its own company back in 1997. yesterday, pepsico got even bigger.

it's still subject to approval from the japanese government, but as the associated press reports, on wednesday, pepsico struck a deal with calbee foods, japan's largest snack company. as part of the deal, calbee foods gets pepsico's frito-lay japan business & cash and pepsico gets newly issued stock that will give them 20% control of calbee. pepsico also gets a seat on calbee's board. get ready japan!  the two companies will produce and sell snacks there, snacks such as "potato chips, vegetable snacks, breakfast cereal and prawn crackers," which are a popular snack in japan, but which i find absolutely pukeworthy...which is odd, because i'll eat pretty much anything, especially if it's seafood flavored.

the two companies' CEOs are both excited about the deal. in fact, they're so excited that they've already become the same person. indra nooyi, pepsico chairman/CEO said "we believe we have a huge opportunity to diversify our portfolio by offering products that reflect both western and japanese dietary cultures." calbee CEO yasuo nakata agrees. "we believe we have a huge opportunity to diversify our portfolio by offering products that reflect both western and japanese dietary cultures."  after issuing their joint, identical statements, the two CEOs realized that despite their cultural differences, deep down, they have a lot in common...so they went to youtube & played group 1 crew's "a lot in common" over & over again, basking in its uplifting, positive message & super fly beats.  best youtube video with a slideshow of cutesy animals (who are obviously BFFs) ever!

#105 - on the fringe.

there once was a time when i was all "j.j. abrams? pfft. whatever. that guy can take his fancy one-word tv shows & cram em." that time's long gone though, so after ignoring it during its entire first season (whilst continuing to blindly follow the sub-par third season of heroes), i finally got around to watching the first season of fringe over the past few weeks. i'd initially stayed away because the two guys i shared an office with for the past six months or so both watched the first season, but they were also both excited about the new star trek & excited about/disappointed with the new terminator, so i figured it might be a little too sci-fi for my tastes. plus, until recently, when i finally got caught up with rescue me, i had a backlog of unwatched tv shows pushing fringe to the rear.

...but now my dance card's pretty free & i'm always up for some obsessive tv watching, so my recent free moments have been plugged with fringe & this sunday evening, i settled in for the last two episodes of the first season. the show revolves around olivia dunham (played by australian anna torv) & her federal team, which investigates occurrences tied to "fringe science." her team includes peter bishop (played by pacey) & his father, walter bishop (john noble, another australian). walter's just been freed from a mental hospital, so he needs his son nearby. it's a major plot point, but just one of many within the show. there are a few actors from the david simon stable--olivia's boss (lance reddick, from the wire) & another agent, played by chance kelly ("godfather" from generation kill). gbenga akinnagbe (the wire's chris partlow) even shows up for an episode. there's also this freaky bald character (played by the tony award winning michael cerveris) who's only referred to as "the observer."

my favorite things about the show? the openings often feature some sort of strange occurrence, a method often employed by the 4400, which i loved. it's set in boston, so 75% of the locales are in the greater boston area...love those sweeping flyovers of the hancock & the zakim bridge. walter is famous for saying he needs two things, one of which is usually a tasty treat. also, the most-uttered phrase on the show, usually in the opening, is "we've/i've/they've never seen anything like it." how fringy of them! to top it all off, the finale ends with two pretty badass revelations that have me eagerly awaiting next season.

so what's next? big love? battlestar galactica? deadwood? chuck? friday night lights? maybe i'll watch them all! other than mad men's return in mid-august, i figure i have at least until september until they start bringing back the series i enjoy. fringe will be back by then, as will dexter & dollhouse. tv-wise, it's going to be a long summer til then.

#105 - on the fringe.
snack: primal strips seitan thai peanut vegan jerky
drink: atwater block brewery vanilla java porter



as i settled in for the first season finale, i tore open a primal strips seitan thai peanut vegan jerky that i'd procured earlier in the day, after it'd caught my eye at the supermarket register. impulse buy! it's made by a company (primal spirit foods) founded by two vegetarian "walking buddies" from west virginia. i wonder if they ever ran into mark sanford out on the appalachian trail.

it's by far my top new snack of the year. i'm interested in purchasing a thai peanut sauce IV if one ever comes onto the market, so there's that. sorry gluten-avoiders, this mofo's made with seitan & that seitan is damn tasty. after eating this one on sunday night, i jonesed for another one all monday & finally, last night, returned to the supermarket, grabbed some veggies & made a beeline for the registers, where i picked up the last remaining two. by the end of the night, they were no more. screw jerky made with meat. this stuff is just plain awesome. in fact, it's so awesome that PETA honored primal strips with their 2004 "best new vegetarian snack award"...which is saying something because those PETAs hate pretty much everything!

i figured a sweet-tasting beer would work well with the peanut sauce flavor, so i grabbed a bottle of atwater block brewery vanilla java porter. it's brewed out of detroit, in a 1916 factory on the river, in the rivertown-warehouse district, where properties currently go for an average of $175K, a 45% decrease from five years ago. that's still much better than the average for detroit ($9K) and the square footage there goes for 1000% higher than the detroit average. it's sad that in detroit, you can now get a house for less than a car. as the ny times reported back in march, the real estate market is so crazy that artists are now moving there & buying houses for $100.

as for atwater block brewery, their vanilla java porter is pretty damn good & pretty damn sweet. it's not overpoweringly sweet, but the vanilla, coffee & chocolate flavors are definitely prevalent. my prediction that it'd be a stellar complement to the thai peanut jerky totally came true. while my prediction was no fringe science, believe me, it was some serious nostradamus shit...& that's close enough. btw, i also predict that you'll find this last line hilariously meta.

nosh nook #73 - wednesday, june 24, 2009

the new breed of NYC hot dogs: are they really better? (link)
06.23.09 - serious eats: new york - by ed levine

we're less than two weeks away from nathan's annual hot dog eating contest, held every july 4th down at coney island. last year, american joey chestnut (the reigning champion) successfully defended his title, but was only able to do so after an eat-off against japan's kobayashi (a former champion himself). as of right now, the record for most hot dogs eaten in the competition's ten-minute time frame is 66...by chestnut in 07. basically, he ate more hot dogs in ten minutes than i've eaten in the last ten years.

it looks like that could change though! here in nyc, the hot dog's been making a bit of a comeback recently...a deliciously trendy comeback! as ed levine reports, nyc chefs are starting to turn hot dogs into "haut dogs," as "fancypants chefs" have introduced a wide array of hot dog options to their menus. for starters, at PDT (please don't tell), a slightly secret locale in the village, there's the "david chang dog," a hot dog "bacon-wrapped and covered with very dark, very salty kimchi." they also have one that's a deep-fried hot dog with "a deep-fried mayo baton that's been breaded with hot-dog-bun crumbs."

as far as haut dogs go, those are relatively tame. the two crazier ones that levine mentions are from new york hot dog & coffee, who offers a korean hot dog topped with bulgogi & kimchi and from fatty crab, who has a hot dog "made from pork shoulder, fatback, thai chilies, pickled ginger and garlic, and belacan, or fermented shrimp paste." as if that wasn't enough, they also top it with "aioli, pickled thai chilies and radishes, cilantro leaves, and in a nod to chicago hot dogs, cucumber."

despite all these gourmet haut dog choices, levine knows where it's at when it comes to getting a nyc hot dog--papaya king or gray's papaya king.  here, you can always get their recession special--two dogs & a medium papaya juice for $4.45.  sure it's just your average hot dog with a topping or two, but as an eater of a few handfuls of their hot dogs over the years, sometimes a basic hot dog is the only kind you really need.

nosh nook #72 - tuesday, june 23, 2009

the cinema snack that gives you the snap, crackle and pop (link)
06.22.09 - the guardian - by ben child

ah, the cinema. for generations of horny teens & the like, it's represented an ideal place to simultaneously take in a flick & get in some serious make out time, often over a shared soda & tub of popcorn. the entire time, none of us realized the secret powers that lied within that tub of popcorn.

as the guardian's ben child explains, men's health (a bastion of scientific discovery only rivaled by maxim) has revealed an amazing discovery--popcorn also works as a sexual aid, improving blood flow & increasing sperm count.  it turns out that all along, popcorn has contained an amino acid called "arginine," which is apparently also a growth hormone.  looks like with the aid of popcorn, your wobbly bits won't be the only thing experiencing growth!

child's article also offers up some exciting teen-level information on popcorn--"popcorn was first discovered by native americans thousands of years ago, but became popular in the US as a moviegoing snack during the great depression." at this point, he really should've just tossed in the sentence "the native americans' word for corn is 'maize'" and called it a day, but he goes on to tie the history of popcorn to the current economic climate, all through the wonder of this men's health article. "it's somewhat fitting then," he writes, "that its status as a sexual supplement should be discovered during a new phase of financial travails."

...& he doesn't stop there.  oh no.  he has knowledge to share & a word count to hit.  did you know that "there are, in fact, a couple of other uses for popcorn: as a christmas decoration with string threaded through the middle?"  it's true.  another fun fact--"it has also been touted as a biodegradable alternative to polystyrene packing material."  all i can say is "thank you, ben...very good book report on native americans & popcorn. well researched."