nosh nook #71 - monday, june 22, 2009

obamas stop for custard, bringing custard shop to a stop (link)
06.20.09 - the ny times - by jeff zeleny

holy crap! president obama is out & about in d.c. eating again! stop the presses! since barack obama was sworn in as president back in january, he's been making the rounds, grabbing a bite at all the hip d.c. eateries--five guys, ben's chili bowl, ray's hell burgers...each time, the press has been in tow to document the sheer excitement of an actual president ordering an actual cheeseburger. after all, he's a celebrity & we americans love to know what our celebrities are eating.

this saturday, obama decided to take another break from saving the country, so he headed out to grab dessert with his daughters. as the times reports, obama & the first daughters took a drive to alexandria, va, where they made an unannounced father's day weekend visit to the dairy godmother, a shop that serves up "frozen custard & nostalgic treats." when they arrived, obama basically turned to his daughters & was all "check this shit out, girls...i'm the friggin' president"...& then they sauntered in & strolled right up to the front of the line. booyah.

for the past few months, i've been wondering "what sort of custard & toppings does our president prefer?" never in a million years did i dream that one day, i'd actually find out...small vanilla custard with hot fudge & almonds! i should have known that our first black president would have no problem ordering a vanilla custard. by the time that times reporter jeff zeleny finally made it to the dairy godmother, the president & his daughters had already finished their custards & were long gone. since he hadn't been able to witness the president eating custard firsthand, he did what any good reporter looking to get closer to his story would do. he stepped right up to the counter...& ordered a butter pecan custard.

#104 - meet my day.

wah wah wah! it's rainy! wah wah wah! my feet are wet! wah wah wah! my umbrella broke! wah wah wah! not again, mother nature! wah! let me update my facebook and/or twitter status to reflect my displeasure! wah!...etc. the city has been rainy rainy rainy lately lately lately. forecasts are for rain from now until the end of the first bobby jindal administration, so people need to be start being more accepting of the fact that we had big hair in the eighties & as a result, weather is going to be a disaster, natural or otherwise, for the unforeseeable future...that is, unless scientists figure out a way to alter it. until than happens, quit whining & go bend some wood for the ark...as the bible states in genesis 6:14, please make sure that it is gopher wood.  get thee to minnesota!

...so thursday night's post work entertainment was a nyc/brooklyn blogger's meetup at the bell house, a bar/venue located a few blocks from my apartment here in brooklyn. since i'm all about the networking, i reached out to one of my partners in crime, mike weber, and requested his presence at 8ish at said house of bells. it had basically stopped raining (reverse wah!) by the time i left my apt to head over, but five minutes into my walk, it started on up again. luckily, i'd just taken a shower (yes, for bloggers, an often unshowered bunch, i showered), so my hair was already slightly wet & nobody (but me) was the wiser.

since eat!drink!snack! has been a real thing for over a year now, it's high time i got into blatant marketing mode. i was going to buy a bag of assorted chocolates at the store & affix stickers with my logo, name & email to the back of each for handing out purposes (icebreaker!), but got as far as printing the stickers. it worked out ok though, as the rain kept a lot of people away, so i wouldn't have had much opportunity to give candy to strangers anyhow. regardless, i did get to finally meet the peeps from nachos ny, both lee & rachel (the girl who finally brought nachos to this blog by writing the most-read post in the history of eat!drink!snack!). they like nachos. it was another opportunity to see erica, from fuckedinparkslope, home to my weekly column for the last four plus months. i even got to have a short conversation with the guy who runs this bar sucks. he didn't seem to think that bell house sucks, so that was good. it turns out that kristin hersh (throwing muses) was playing in the back room. she pretty much rules, but i wasn't in the mood for a random show, so i passed.

after leaving the meetup, i headed home & put on music for men, the new (& fourth) album from the gossip. you can too! beth ditto (their singer) pretty much rules...way more than kristen hersh. i loved the last album. booty-shaking rock fo sho. this performance on letterman says it all. this is their first album with columbia records & it's produced by the famous/infamous rick rubin, so i'm assuming they're going to be responsible for one of your/our summer jams...especially since they now have a branding agency behind them (two or so page scrolls down). anyway, the new album definitely made my day.

#104 - meet my day.
snack: crunch 'n munch chocolate 'n caramel
drink: foster's



since i'd skipped dinner before heading over to bell house, when i got home, i was quantifiably ravenous. for those tallying the ravenousness at home, that quantity is 4.  please update your score cards accordingly. with dinner still some cooking away, i broke open a box of crunch 'n munch chocolate 'n caramel that was hanging out in my cabinet.  recently, it's been a snacktime fixture here in the abode, as a box of this delicacy goes for only $1.69 down at my fave bodega.  the only drawback...i'm freaked out about the health of my teeth & copious amounts of heftily-sugared corn syrup caramel & chocolate don't help my conscience.

...but the crunch 'n munch chocolate 'n caramel rocks my face.  it's a ton of extremely large, stuck together popcorn chunks, with peanuts stuck to the caramel ones.  when i eat it, the parts of my brain that crave salt & sugar join hands in a super-sexy slow dance...& then they head home to my stomach where they become one...& are burned with acid...in true love.

on my way home from the meetup, with a couple of $3 blogger special brooklyn lagers in me, i decided to stop by a bodega on the corner of 4th ave & 17th to pick up a beer. when i walked in, something was obviously different about the place. after heading to the coolers, picking out a foster's & bringing it to the counter, i figured out what the difference was...bulletproof glass enclosing the counter...awesome.  also, i got carded for buying a foster's...awesome.  it's australian for beer!...yeah...& beck's is german.

i got about half way through the mighty australian beer before i got tired & decided to cash in my chips so i could be a functioning human at work the next day.  foster's is a good beer if you're looking to get in a bunch of light beer drinking all from a single can.  as long as you're opting for economy & mock-exoticism over quality & flavor, you'll be fine with a foster's. if you're a beer snob who made a snap judgment whilst on a lightly-raining walk, you'll regret your decision in the morning...but it'll be friday & it'll end up being a good friday at that, so you won't care in the least.

nosh nook #70 - friday, june 19, 2009

the worst airline food (link)
06.18.09 - chicago tribune - by phil vettel

a few years back, mostly during that pre-9/11 era, i used to fly all the time, as i travelled around the country for both work & play. i'm no longer a travelling salesman, so i no longer travel for work nor do i make the kind of scratch that allows me to travel as often for play. as a result, i've been sort of sheltered from all the craziness that the airlines have been experiencing over the last few years, most notably the addition of baggage fees & the subtraction of free in-flight meals.

as far as those in-flight meals go, phil vettel, a food critic for chicago tribune, well...he just ain't having em. as he notes, according to a survey from seatguru.com (not "duh! magazine"), if you want to get a good in-flight meal, you've got to go with international carriers--singapore airlines & air france--who have the best quality. the worst quality in-flight meals come from american airlines, united & us airways. since vettel's a food critic, i respect his opinion when he says, "your dog gets better snacks at a sidewalk-cafe brunch in chicago than you can expect flying economy on most u.s. carriers." oh snap! you just got served, u.s. air carriers!...except for continental. they're the only u.s. carrier included among the airlines with the best food.

i'll be flying united in july for the first time in as long as i can remember (not that i can even remember what i had for breakfast on monday, but still), so i'm looking forward to experiencing first hand just how crappy their in-flight food is, although it's only a three hour flight, so there's a good chance there won't even be an in-flight meal. lucky for me, the survey also honors united as one of the u.s. carriers that has "the least comfortable economy-class seats and the rudest flight attendants."  since that's the case, i probably won't even miss the in-flight meal, as i'll be too occupied with shifting in my seat every five minutes & trying to avoid getting yelled at by the flight attendants...friendly skies indeed.

snack away! #11 - my life as a rice cracker.

there is a specter haunting my life and its name is arare--a japanese rice cracker i’m sure you’ve all come in contact with without ever knowing its proper name.

arare are a little crispy snack made from glutinous rice and seasoned with soy sauce. often you see them wrapped in seaweed. they sell them at corner stores as “oriental mix” and they give them away like pretzels at some bars in chinatown.

my early life, as is the case with most people, is remembered in much the same way i remember dreams. little images stick around and others vanish with no real sense of rhyme or reason. much of modern psychology is based around what exactly it is we remember and what we forget. i wonder what a psychiatrist would make of how much of my memory is filled with rice crackers.

one of my first memories was the bulk isle in the local supermarket of my childhood home, boulder creek, CA. my mother would pacify me during grocery store trips by letting me get arare from the bins. the store called them “bar mix” for some reason. i called them chinese snacks--a mistake i wouldn’t really correct until i’d actually been to japan.

years later I’m in 5th grade at a hippie public school in santa cruz. my mother’s boyfriend brings me a big bag of chinese snacks. even at that age i wonder if there’s something wrong with their relationship. is he trying to win me to his side?

a little bit farther down the line and i’m in the tokyo airport with my dad, my stepmother, and my grandmother. the woman behind us is very happy to see a little white boy eating such a japanese snack. "much better than potato chips" she says. the ones i was eating were made in kyoto at the world’s best arare shop. when i get back home, i don’t call them chinese snacks anymore.

snack away! #11 - my life as a rice cracker.
guest blogger: damian lanahan-kalish, san francisco, ca

snack: arare japanese rice crackers
drink: nama sake

 
arare image from cansimage france / photo from shugtastic (via flickr) / nama image from ratebeer.com

next thing i know i’m in junior high. i spend my weekends in santa cruz, just looking for reasons to not be in boulder creek. every time i go to santa cruz, i make a special trip to a very specific longs drugs to buy my favorite brand of rice cracker--one that comes in a red and orange bag with a boat on it. later, i would find out it’s the best because it has the most MSG.

fast forward to the end of high school. i’d moved up to mill valley to live with my dad. everyday after the school i’d hang out downtown at the depot. i’d hang out with friends, drink coffee, try to get people to buy me cigarettes and i’d eat rice crackers. my friends teasingly called them "happy snacks" because the only brand mill valley market carried were called hapi. i never called them this. it was an inferior brand.

five years later, i’m living in new york city, in astoria, queens. i’m very exited about the variety of rice crackers at sunrise mart on 9th st., but even better, they have my favorite brand at the korean market just four blocks away. astoria truly is the happiest place on earth.

now i’ve been back in the bay area for about five years. two years ago i found out, after a long period of bad digestion, that i couldn’t eat wheat. no more bread, pasta or beer. but I could eat arare...they're rice crackers after all. i live just a mile or so from berkeley bowl, where you can buy my favorite rice crackers in large family size bags.

i think everything is going to be okay.

postscript
i got so carried away there writing about rice crackers that i forgot to mention a beverage in my post.

first off, i’ll start by telling you what i can’t drink. a wheat intolerance means that you can’t eat bread, pasta or burritos but it also means you can’t drink beer. this was a huge adjustment for me because i used to drink a lot of beer.

i can still drink wine and hard liquor but as any fan of beer knows, on a hot day or when you're tired that’s just not the same. sometimes i drink cider but all the sugar in that shit makes me almost as sick as the wheat.

a few months ago i made a surprising discovery. i was at the sake tasting room at the takara sake factory in berkeley. the sake expert there (who gives you all your tastes) pulled out a little green bottle of sake called nama, an unpasteurized draft style* sake he said was very much like drinking beer. i was skeptical. sake may be brewed in similar ways to beer but it tastes nothing like beer.

to my delight and surprise, my skepticism was quickly proven ill founded. there was something about this little sake in a green bottle that made it truly refreshing in the way only beer could be. the quality proved nearly impossible to pinpoint. it tasted nothing like beer. the alcohol content was nearly twice that of beer. still, it had something about it that just felt relaxing in the way only beer can.

*nama sake is an unpasteurized sake, so you need to drink it pretty soon after opening. that’s why it comes in little bottles.

20 years ago, high on a hilltop, a stray bolt of lightning from an unexplained source - there was not a cloud in the sky - struck a lone female physics professor and her boyfriend, a bongo playing weed merchant, and when the smoke cleared, one figure remained: cloaked in black, the master of all he purveys, damian lanahan-kalish, owner of over 100 thoroughbred ponies and pervert extraordinaire. he's also a founding member of sleepwalkers theatre, mishap productions & brandywinecooking and the writer of gotprojects.blogspot.com.

nosh nook #69 - thursday, june 18, 2009

nutrition advocate and pain in the ass MeMe roth profiled in times (link)
06.17.09 - village voice - by roy edroso

seriously, will somebody please tell MeMe roth to put a sock in it? for those not familiar with miss MeMe, she's a concerned parent & the head of national action against obesity (NAAO) & she's been all over the place recently enacting her crusade (& i use that word in the most literal sense possible) against junk food & snacks. it's not like i'm a proponent of childhood obesity or anything, but there's a difference between fighting for a cause & acting liking a complete psycho in defense of your cause & MeMe's definitely in the latter category.

it's no mistake that her name is "MeMe," because she's all "me me!" & loves making a scene.  gawker referred to her as "new york's worst food nazi mom" and as the village voice notes, MeMe "had the cops called on her 'when she absconded with the sprinkles and syrups on a table where members [of the YMCA] were being served ice cream.'" as if that's not nutty enough, she went & "compared marketers of high-fat foods to rapists."  obviously.  sure, healthier foods are better, but there's something quite unhealthy about her rib-exposing bikini shot in times sq that accompanies the gawker article.

wow. for once, i'm actually aligning myself with the village voice.  i used to read the grandaddy of america's dying alternative newspaper every week without fail, but through a perfect storm of working for ny press, their being bought by new times media & their firing of writers & accompanying declining quality, i haven't picked one up in years, which is weird because i'm totally alternative!...no so alternative that i'd protest against girl scout cookies though.