nosh nook #36 - monday, may 4, 2009

machine dispenses snacks while bbc talks doom and gloom about the economy (link)
05.03.09 - slipperybrick.com - by conner flynn

how would you like it if every time you got bad news, you got a snack as well? swine flu has shuttered your country? here's a bag of doritos for you. your fiance is a murderer? crack open a cool, crisp nestea. eighty civilians died today in a bombing in your village market? have a clark bar. it's pretty obvious that if we had vending machines that took the edge off bad news with a free snack, life would be a lot sweeter. at the plymouth college of art, in the u.k., such a vending machine exists. in this case, it's just an art project, but that's technically still reality.

as flynn notes in the article, bbc headlines come up on a monitor attached to the vending machine. every time a headline speaks to bad economic news, the vending machine dispenses a packet of walker's crisps, which you can take. glasgow based ellie harrison, the current artist in residence at plymouth college of art, developed the piece, which speaks to both generosity & "a time in the future when our access to food may literally be determined by wider political or environmental events. we may not be able to access what we want, when we want, at the touch of a button."

vending machine from ellie harrison on vimeo.

i like it.  good concept.  good snacks.  good art.

nosh nook #35 - friday, may 1, 2009

snacks gain consumer clout (link)
04.30.09 - adweek - by convenience store news staff

what a time to be a snack!  snacks are totally popular!  i mean, they went from totally geek...to totally chic!  of course, people have always loved a little nosh & nibble here & there, but these days, people demand more from their snacks & in return, their snacks have not let them down.  in an effort to cater to our increasingly divergent needs, they've become healthier & fancier & definitely more EXTREME.

as adweek explains, a recent study by the center for culinary development (ccd) & packaged facts (convenience store news) showed that the importance of snacks has increased along with the go-go pace of the american lifestyle.  with less time to prepare foods & more need for sustenance to keep us go-go-going, snacks often step in to fill the between-meal void.  the study also found that while there's recently been an explosion of healthy snacks flooding the market, members of generation y go for "highly nutritious seaweed snacks," while their parents go for the less exotic whole grain snacks.

i definitely utilize snacks as a part of my a diet, as i prefer a bunch of snacks & small meals throughout the day rather than a couple huge meals that make me want to explode.  living in nyc, it's often hard or impossible to make it home & prepare a meal at "normal" meal hours, so rather than blow all my money eating out, i use snacks as a way to delay my meals until i can get home...the healthier, the better.  so yeah, i don't play by the rules, but i guess a lot of other people don't either.  usda recommended three balanced meals & food pyramid be damned!

nosh nook #34 - thursday, april 30, 2009

street vending as a way to ease joblessness (link)
04.29.09 - the ny times - by jennifer 8. lee

we sure do have a pretty impressive level of unemployment these days, huh? luckily, president obama is totally stimulating the economy. go economy go! with all that stimulus action going on, you figure that if you were unemployed & came up with a non-narcotic related plan to make some money & avoid homelessness & hunger & whatnot, surely the government wouldn't prevent you from putting that plan into action, especially if it resulted in the tingling of people's taste buds, right?

not so in the nyc, reports the interestingly-named jennifer 8. lee (who coined the term "man date"). here in new york, just like the limit on the number of taxi medallions given out, there's a cap on the number of permits given out to street vendors & that number maxed out years ago. as a result, even if somebody wants to set up a street cart & bring some money in by providing us with tasty fruits or hot nuts or kebabs or such snacks, they can't...there aren't any permits left for them.

luckily, there's talk of upping the cap from 4,000 permits to 25,000 but until then, there's the black market. lee spoke with michael wells, the co-director of the street vendor project & he said that a black market permits will run you $8-12K & then, of course, you're breaking the law. his organization estimates that "about two-thirds of permits are not even used by the original owner. in addition, thousands of people sell on the street without permits."

the way i see it, we repealed the draconian rockefeller drug laws here in new york recently.  that means there are going to be crazed marijuana users out on the streets & they're going to want snacks & want them in wide variety & if access to them means the difference between putting food on a prospective vendor's table or not, the guv'ment needs to chill out...as long as they keep the vendors from getting all out of control & blocking the sidewalk with their wares & totally fucking up my flow.

nosh nook #33 - wednesday, april 29, 2009

arson suspected after snack wagon destroyed in blaze (link)
04.28.09 - berrow's worcester journal (uk)

it's a sad day at a layby off the A38, near droitwich, a town just south of birmingham, in the u.k., where a mobile snack bar was apparently deliberately set on fire & left there, obviously by heathens. what man or woman has such a gaping hole in their heart that they are driven to the senseless destruction of snacks?  that man or woman is not a man or woman i'd like to meet...barbarian.

...so the berrow's worcester journal, who's responsible for this article, is the world's oldest newspaper, as they've been around since 1690, when they were still taxing americans over there & i'm pretty sure there were actual barbarians.  i bet they didn't even believe in truth, justice & the american way back then...that's how long ago it was.  now that is some old-timey newspaper business business.

as of press time, the mystery remained...whose mobile snack bar was it & why did somebody do that to the poor defenseless snacks? i figure it's one of three situations:

• it was owned by someone & they are likely crying into their pillow about its destruction & the possible loss of livelihood.
• it was an orphan cart & ran into some trouble & nobody loved it but the system.
• the owner is part of an elaborate scheme to defraud investors & insurers through a well-calculated arson/abandon snack annihilation scheme.

i have my fingers crossed for the third choice.

nosh nook #32 - tuesday, april 28, 2009

biz news: one snack for man and beast (link)
04.27.09 - loudon times - by jason jacks

down in virginia, they seem to do things a little bit different, whether it's the hippies in charlottesville, the yuppies outside of d.c. or the folks in the hills. i've never been able to put my finger on it, but when i'm there, although the state is cool & i enjoy myself, something just seems a bit off. in leesburg, a town of almost 30,000 about an hour west of d.c., a woman has embraced this slightly-off virginia spirit with a new snack invention.

as jason jacks explains, "marisol fernandini-gaffney has devised an organic cookie made from oats, honey, flour and several other simple ingredients. it's tasty enough to satisfy the snack-attack needs of most mammals."  after some local distribution, she is now selling the cookies online under the name "toats."  they're both organic & green manufactured, so yay for naturalness.  that's toats awesome.

i suppose it makes sense that we could share snack foods such as organic cookies with other mammals, but therein lies that virginia spirit i spoke of.  while it's pretty neat that you & your dog can enjoy the same treats, that doesn't necessarily mean that you should.  there's something slightly unsettling about it.  anyway, since the idea came from virginia, i'm not all that surprised.  i just shrug it off...those crazy, oddball virginians.