snack away! #1 - when in deutschland.

so! hello! how are you? i am very well, thank you for asking...or, as the locals might say here, sehr gut, danke! if you are slightly looney, or just plain stupid, or maybe your school lacked the funding for a foreign language department, that’s german! yes, i am in germany and i have agreed to discuss some of the local eats and drinks for this here bloggy-blog.

as many of you surely know, shawn and i go way back. back to approximately october 31, 1998, when i was a mere three weeks past the age of consent. shawn is six years my senior, and as the good elder he is, he took it upon himself to educate me thoroughly in the vast and glorious ways of the snack.

my memories of our time together are filled to the brim with images of 4-C iced tea, endless varieties of chex mix snack mix, and flipz, the chocolate-covered pretzel snack. it should come as little surprise to you to learn that i gained nearly twenty pounds while we dated. good times. no really, they were quite fun, despite my ever-growing ass and chin.

snack away! #1 - when in deutschland.
guest blogger: megan jones, hamburg, germany

snack: ja! kartoffel-snacks mit paprika-würzung
drink: tuborg pilsener

anyhooters…i am now here, in germany, and i am doing some very efficient german snacking. those germans are wicked efficient, for reals. i’m drinking a tuborg pilsener (TUBORG!!!) and munching on some ja! kartoffel-snacks mit paprika-würzung.

the beer is pretty decent. nothing special actually, but I sure do love the name. tuborg! and the picture of the dude on the front is priceless. he’s all thirsty and shit and doesn’t know where his bier is or something. it’s great.

i can’t find a link for my ja! kartoffel-snacks, which frankly surprises me, since ja! is apparently a huge company here. you can find ja! cheese, chips, milk, yogurt, toilet paper, and so on. it’s like the generic brand, i think. the price is just right for me and the quality is always good. i’m definitely a fan of ja! yes!

anyway, these are potato-snacks, with paprika spices and they are kind of weird. i can’t stop eating them, but that clearly means shit, because they are simultaneously making me slightly sick to my stomach. they are weirdly styrofoamy. pop one in your mouth and it starts to dissolve instantly. i have a theory. i think they, the ja! overlords, make some sort of like, potato puree, and then they squeeze it through some sort of thingamajig, and it squirts out these weird, airy potato nuggets. they bake them? or perhaps they fry them? shit, i have no idea.

either way, they then sprinkle on the paprika goodness. paprika is freakishly popular here and frankly, i’m already tired of it. i’d pay some serious euros for some old-school salt and vinegar chips--the kind that take your breath away because they are so vinegary. yum.

so yeah, that’s what i’m eating. now, back to your regularly scheduled blog.

megan jones lives in hamburg, but her heart is really in indiana boston albuquerque boston. she makes badass cakes. you best recognize, son.
www.flickr.com/photos/jonesgirlcreations

nosh nook #13 - wednesday, april 1, 2009

cheetos goes big time with nationwide launch of giant cheetos snacks (link)
03.31.09 - via pr newswire

chester cheetah is quite possibly the hippest of all cartoon snack mascots. i mean, he doesn't smoke (on camera) like joe camel used to, but he has big sunglasses & a serious swagger & an insatiable hunger for cheetos brand cheese snacks. that's pretty cool in itself. plus, he's now the world's most recognizable cheetah & can do zero to sixty in under three seconds...it's just in the cheetah genetics. he's basically a comical celebrity porsche with fur.

this just in...hot off the pr newswire...chester cheetah now has big balls (of cheese) to munch on too! GIANT CHEETOS! according to the frito-lay created press release, chester himself had a hand in creating the giant cheetos:

"created by chester cheetah and the absurdly creative cheetos development team, giant cheetos provide the great cheesy taste consumers love, but are roughly the size of golf balls and stand as the perfect expression of the brand's playful personality. available nationwide in cheese and flamin' hot flavors, the brand anticipates the over-sized snack sensation to be a two-bite-per-cheesy-ball experience for the average consumer, while recognizing that more-evolved snackers, or 'big mouths,' will be able to enjoy them in a single chomp."

in the release, frito-lay also describes itself as "the most mischevious and playful snack brand." have you ever tried eating a golf ball? i have & it is not easy...but if mischievous ol frito lay is encouraging people to give their cheese snack the ol single chomp (as we big mouths call it), i estimate that the first giant cheetos-related choking death will occur before the year's end. maybe then chester cheetah will finally learn something from his "playful," reckless behavior.

side note: those frito-lay jerks totally have www.snacks.com.

nosh nook #12 - tuesday, march 31, 2009

prostitute paid with chicken snacks (link)
03.30.09 - the whitsunday times - by christine flatley

so as of this week, i've never gone out & got myself a prostitute.  for starters, from what i hear, it's just too damn expensive.  plus there's the whole v.d. risk & the whole human slavery aspect & the whole "need for reciprocally meaningful sex" thing & so i've kept my distance from prostitutes.  maybe once the price of a dollhouse engagement goes down, i'll reconsider.

as christine flatley reports, last year in brisbane, australia, a 27-year old man & his 16-year old girlfriend pimped out a 16-year old runaway to middle-aged men.  although they made thousands of dollars from doing so, they kept all the money for themselves & used it to pay their rent, only paying the girl with "the occasional box of chicken nuggets."

now i know that there's nothing funny about a teenage girl being forced into having sex with middle-aged men, but the idea of thinking that you can get away with paying somebody off with chicken nuggets for any good or service is plain ludicrous, no matter how good those chicken nuggets taste.  what is even more ludicrous is that this guy got six years for a previous fraud charge but only two & a half for pimping out a teenager.  penal colony indeed.

nosh nook #11 - monday, march 30, 2009

when we used to eat real crack seed (link)
03.29.09 - the honolulu advertiser - by lee cataluna

aloha. it turns out that in hawaii, there's a crack epidemic...a crack seed epidemic! if you're like me & have absolutely no idea what crack seed is, let's go over it together.  as it is, i could probably use a refresher. as best as i can tell, crack seed is a type of snack popular in hawaii, made up of fruits that have been preserved/dehydrated & cracked, leaving the flavorful seeds exposed. hawaiians even have a place called the "crack seed center" & it's been in business for over 40 years!  here is a random video of two children trying some crack seed.

so what's happened to the crack seed? as lee cataluna's article explains, it was once a popular hawaiian snack but has since faded from glory. the crack seed center doesn't even have that much crack seed. as she explains, crack seed is "a snack that requires the deliberate action of separating out sharp little pit shards with your tongue and frequently spitting them out."  that just sounds dangerous.  like smoking, no wonder it's not as popular as it used to be.

since this month marks the 50th anniversary of eisenhower signing the hawaii admission act into law, i guess it's about time that they finally give up the traditions they'd inherited from chinese immigrants centuries earlier in favor of our crappy american traditions.  mainland traditions.  none of that crazy island crack seed stuff.  americans love quick & easy, cheap & fast, pre-packaged foods.  if it's more complicated than a sunflower seed, it's not worth our precious american time.  aloha.

#78 - moving & shaking.

FROM EATDRINKSNACK.BLOGSPOT.COM...
ATTENTION PEOPLE OF THE BLOGOSPHERE!
EAT!DRINK!SNACK! HAS MOVED!

monday, march 30, 2009
after a short love affair with the blogger.com blogging platform, eat!drink!snack! is moving on to greener pastures. this is something i had been planning for june 9th, on the one-year anniversary of my first entry, but this past friday, i finally had the url & the new blogging platform & i just couldn't wait. it's like if somebody gave you a birthday present & you were sooooo excited about it, but instead said "you know what? thank you for the gift, but i'm going to wait until two months from now to open it"...no way was i putting the gift up on my nightstand only to have to stare at it for the next 70 days.

70 days is a long time from now.

what does this mean exactly? well, it means that as of right now:

new web address!
http://eatdrinksnack.com

new rss feed!
http://eatdrinksnack.com/index/rss.xml

new logo (of sorts)!
i was chatting with my design-awesome brother via an instant messenger program on friday night, when i first started thinking about the new site & asked him if he wanted to make me a header for the site. he started just playing around with reverse type & whatnot and sent me a few "messing around" versions...i ended up liking one enough that i put it up on the site. thanks, bro.

new entries from this weekend!
there are two new entries waiting for you over at the new site--one focusing on the decemberists & one focusing on a weekend trip to chinatown with the aforementioned bro.

new content!
in addition to my periodic meditations/rants & the newly-added "nosh nook," which brings you the best snack news item from the previous day, this wednesday, i'm adding a new weekly column for the month of april...snack away! snack away! comes to you every wednesday from a different city across the globe, bringing you a snack & drink-themed rant from someone who is not me, but still awesome.

please redirect all applicable indicies...& thanks for following.

#78 - moving & shaking.
snack: wel-pac edamame
drink: chamomile ginkgo biloba tea

i woke up relatively early on sunday morning to put the finishing touches on the new site & sit down to write this goodbye to blogger. my chinatown purchases from the day before included a bag of wel-pac edamame & a box of chamomile ginkgo biloba tea, so i started my day with a bit of each.

edamame are so good & protein-filled. i can eat approximately 3,000 of them in one sitting. i am slightly infatuated with their pseudo fur-covered pods. if you are at a restaurant with me & we order some, you best be on your toes. if you don't like them, you're a communist. at the same time, these wel-pac edamame come from china, so if you do like them, there's good chance you're a communist anyhow. either way, this morning, i snacked on a bowl of edamame & loved every minute of it.

i also had a few cups of chamomile ginkgo biloba tea. ginkgo biloba is often used pharmaceutically, but for the life of me, i can't remember what for.

fyi...you could have read this entry on the new site. new site!