nosh nook #16 - monday, april 6, 2009

a culinary adventure on beijing’s snack street (link)
04.05.09 - the jakarta post - by lia lenggogeni

in beijing, there's one of those must-see tourists spots known as wangfujing snack street. it's an outdoor market where they shut down a stretch of the road for four hours every night so that rows of street vendors can hawk their various foods & snacks & dishes. visitors to snack street can expect to find an assortment of delicacies & weird-ass foods.

lia lenggogeni visited there & reported her findings back to the jarkata times. she opens with a story about being accosted by a pushy vendor offering dog meat on a stick. EW.  NO.  NO DOG MEAT ON A STICK. she agreed with me & made the right choice by turning him down.  as she traveled snack street, she noted that while it doesn't necessarily "represent the rich and diverse chinese cuisine," there are foods from various regions & cultures throughout china.  uighur grilled lamb kebobs!  wee grr!

things i would try if i ever made it to beijing's snack street...the starfish, the flatbread, the snake, the caramelized fruit kebabs...maybe the scorpion, although the story in the article that uses the words "rancid" & "centipede" sort of reduces my sense of adventure regarding insect eating.  it's a moot point though, since it's going to soon be demolished to make way for skyscrapers anyhow.  yay chinese progress!  just like here in brooklyn!

nosh nook #15 - friday, april 3, 2009

say no to pistachios: recall widens, includes frito-lay (link)
04.02.09 - st. petersburg times - via the a.p.

roaches, feces found at l.i. plant tied to salmonella (link)
04.02.09 - newsday - by delthia ricks

dean foods not impacted by pistachio scare (link)
04.02.09 - dallas business journal

let the non-stupid jam band widespread panic begin! now that we've got that peanut thing out of the way, it's time to move on to something else nutty that we can all come together as a nation to freak out over...pistachios! yep, that's right. your favorite nut that doesn't require much effort to get the shell open is just like michael jackson. d-a-n-g-dangerous. apparently they can both also carry salmonella & in many cases, need to be recalled. luckily, nobody will put michael jackson in their mouth.

the a.p. lays out the facts about the pistachio recall. a bunch of companies have already started. dallas/plano-based frito lay has pulled its 1.75 oz packages. the second biggest pistachio producer in the country, setton farms, has recalled its entire crop. even whole foods is recalling some & they're all healthy & godly and stuff, which makes me think things might be bad for the pistachio.

oh! another thing that is bad for the pistachio? having rodent feces & cockroaches in the plant where you process said nuts. as newsday reports, a setton foods plant here in new york (strong island represent!) was found to have both of those present, although, to be fair, there were only two cockroaches & various rodent droppings, which, in all likelihood, came from a single, poopy mouse...must have been all them pistachios!

luckily, dean foods is ok. thank you dallas business journal & whomever the p.r. person is for dean foods...i can sleep easy tonight. sure frito-lay is in the same greater metropolitan area, but you too can rest assured knowing that the salmonella did not run down from plano to the dean foods plant. if you enjoy dean foods' pistachios, enjoy away!  it's the weekend, people!

nosh nook #14 - thursday, april 2, 2009

fool-you foods: added nutrients give processed snacks unexpected perks (link)
04.01.09 - lawrence journal (ks) - by sarah henning

mmm.  processed foods.  we americans love em.  give us a candy bar fortified with all the nutrients we're not getting in our regular diet & we'll swear off fruits & vegetables & breads forever.  screw nature's gift.  since the human race is now super awesome at science, we love adding & taking things out of our foods in an effort to make them healthier.  science ho!

as sarah henning describes in her article, back in the nineties, companies started altering their food products, taking things out in an attempt to make everything low or no fat.  nowadays, the craze is fortifying foods with nutrients & ingredients such as fiber & calcium & omega-3s.  as examples, she notes that kids can now enjoy trix, which are chemically modified with calcium, or dora the explorer yogurt, which has omega-3 additives.

interestingly enough, she doesn't once address the fact that choosing chemically-altered foods in favor of natural ones might not be the right path for consumers.   during that lo fat/no fat time back in the nineties, i was living with a guy who had a degree in botany (meaning he bested me in science knowledge).  as he explained to me, the no fat chips made with olestra are sooooo not good for you.  it had something to do with some process where some science in the chip latches onto some science in your body & although i never quite understood what he was talking about i did understand this...olestra = anal leakage.  i'll take gaining a few pounds or having to search out a healthier, natural snack to eat over processed food-induced anal leakage any day of the week.

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.