#142 - tracks & snacks.

will you look at that! if you're reading this, that means that you've made it through 2009. congrats. i knew you could do it! well, not you, phil. frankly, your immortality is SHOCKING...but everyone else...i knew you could do it! since we're done with the living hell that was 2009 & already a week or so into 2010, i figured it was high time that i got on with putting together my year-end best of lists. at the end of 2008, i recapped my top ten albums, snacks & drinks of the year. this year, i'm going to keep in the same realm & offer up my top ten TRACKS & SNACKS OF 2009!

just like last year, since my main music obsession these days is mostly in the field of indie rock, all ten tracks on the list are by indie rockers. there are a ton of tracks that i could have included here, but we only have room for ten, folks. the first songs to get cut were those from other years, from miles benjamin anthony robinson's "buriedfed" to o.d.b.'s "got your money" to final fantasy's "this lamb sells condos."

from this year, there are a few honorable mentions. there's peaches' "serpentine" & morrissey's "something is squeezing my skull." in the hip hop world, there's the cool kids' "broadcasting live," vinnie scullo's "eyehearthiphop" & kid cudi's "pursuit of happiness" (with MGMT & ratatat). the last track to get cut from the list was animal collective's "my girls," which i listened to extensively for the first two months of the year before i just got plain sick of it & it fell out of favor. regardless, it still makes me happy when i hear it. so yeah...lots of good music this year. grab a snack & a drink, pull up a chair & let's get to my top ten tracks!

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nosh nook #202 - tuesday, december 22, 2009

the chocolate wars (link)
12.21.09 - the ny times

largely thanks to the existence of this here blog, chocolate's become a pretty regular part of my diet over the past year. most of the time, there's some sort of gourmet dark chocolate hanging out in my cabinets & i've recently sampled chocolates made with chiles & fruits & mushrooms & bacon & wasabi. it's basically got to the point where i've become a chocolate snob & tend to avoid the boring hershey's & cadbury types. just last night, i was out at this bar in the village & the bartender had a bucket of hershey's kisses that he kept dumping onto the bar. i was slightly tipsy so i partook in the kisses, but still, since 95% of my chocolate this year has been gourmet dark chocolate, i was done after only a couple.

the ny times points out that in 2009, we witnessed two major developments in the chocolate industry, both which speak to the importance of the quality of chocolate. the largest was the continuing battle for cadbury. ever since kraft launched a bid for control of the british company's luscious creme eggs back in september, there have been many other suitors for the world's second-largest confectioner. the most notable has been hershey, "who already has a license to sell an americanized version of the british chocolate in the united states," but as of now, nobody's been able to sufficiently woo cadbury into the fold.

if cadbury does eventually get taken over, it'll likely be an american company, a fact that appalls some brits. the times mentions how earlier this month, boris johnson (london's mayor) took to the telegraph to declare that they "face an appalling choice of succumbing either to kraft, makers of the plastic flaps of orange cheese, or to hershey, whose hershey bars have been likened in flavor--by independent experts--to a mixture of soap powder and baby vomit." wow. i mean, just...wow. he's pissed.

the other development is that the industry has seen change in the type of chocolates consumers are opting for. it's been a long time coming since godiva started selling gourmet chocolates "on fifth avenue in 1972," but folks have really embraced gourmet chocolates as of late. "shelves at places like whole foods are crowded with chocolate from smaller producers and specific countries, reflecting a growing desire for food that is less processed, less packaged and more authentic." high end chocolate's also seen a rise in popularity. for instance, "higher-end chocolate sold well at (sic) valentine's day as people traded down on big-ticket luxury items and traded up on affordable ones." it's like "sorry, honey. i didn't get you those earrings you've been hoping for. i bought you bon bons instead." keep that in mind this holiday season...girls love bon bons.

nosh nook #127 - tuesday, september 8, 2009

will kraft swallow british chocolate-maker cadbury? (link)
09.07.09 - time/cnn - by adam smith

hey, remember when the british ruled? when i say that, i'm talking about when the british actually ruled. yeah, that time's over. not so great now, are we britain? u.s.a! u.s.a.! actually, somebody over in china's probably thinking the same thing right now about us americans. never mind. still, we're much more powerful than the u.k. both militarily & politically & as such, we should totally own as much of them as possible. i'm not just talking about owning lame stuff like sasha baren cohen or newcastle united f.c. either. we need to think bigger than that.

kraft has the right idea. as time/cnn reports, yesterday, kraft (the world's second-largest food & beverage company) revealed that "it had launched a $16.7 billion bid for british confectioner cadbury" in "a bold effort to create 'a global powerhouse in snacks.'" a powerhouse of snacks! ever since "mars picked up chewing gum maker wrigley for $23 billion in 2008—overtaking cadbury to become the world's biggest confectioner," analysts were figuring that somebody would eventually make a bid for cadbury. that's where kraft comes in, although they've reportedly undervalued cadbury with an offer that's "half that tabled by mars in its acquisition of wrigley."

the article's written by adam smith, who has pretty much the best name ever for a business journalist. free market, baby. smith notes that the possibility of a takeover puts cadbury in an interesting position. shareholders would make a lot of money if kraft takes over & kraft's promised to "preserve u.k. staff." if cadbury was to turn down the offer, they'd likely have to cut staff to create higher profits for shareholders, which would piss a lot of brits off. those signs point to cadbury selling & as a result, it's "left some analysts backing the americans." heck, if i can still get my cadbury creme eggs but the profits from my purchase now go to americans instead of brits, i'll back it too. viva la mega-merger! viva la u.s.a.!

#118 - bacon bacon bacon!

back at the beginning of june, upon the exciting announcement of an amazing new bacon jerky, i opined about how the popularity of bacon was seriously spiralling out of control. there were bacon tattoos & bacon donuts & bacon dresses & bacon salt & bacon bacon bacon! since then, peeps' bacon obsession has continued to get more & more insane. bakon (the bacon flavored beer) has hit the market. andy richter did not approve. brooklyn brewery is working on a bacon beer. they even have a bacon exhibit at the met (for three more days). it's everywhere! don't take my word for it though. take baconbaconbacon's word for it...or maybe bacon unwrapped's. they've both sort of got a thing for bacon.

seriously, what's the obsession with bacon? how did it get elevated to such a status, something that's gone way beyond an ironic hipster fad? i have three possible theories as to why:

theory #1 - after years of the national pork board's attempts to woo the average joe pork-eating crowd with their "the other white meat" ads, the national pork producers' council (whose website appears to be porked at the moment...oh, back up! unporked!) decided to go after the hip crowd by going all viral. bob in marketing decided it was time to think big & think big he did. he & his team slowly inserted bits of bacon into the culture & folks started to be all "oh yeah, bacon. let's grab hold of that bus for a while." economic downturn & all, they've since laid bob off & he's been laid off for some ten months now, but that ad campaign that was his bacon baby has already been born. in fact, that bacon baby is now all grown up & driving that bus himself, speeding around town & doing blow off the chests of hookers as he does. the law's helpless to do anything. some drunk guy on the corner in the village once told me that cops love bacon, so i guess that could have something to do with it too.

theory #2 - hipsters were desperate. the yeah yeah yeahs & strokes had become lame & heroin was so passe & moustaches itch! & bushwick was becoming "too yuppie" & hipsters tried to fill the void with skinny jeans & big sunglasses & keffiyehs & trips to IKEA, but it just wasn't enough. we were living in a post-9/11 world & they needed to turn their irony toward america in order to heal. american food felt like a funny target. hamburgers were too boring. tv dinners were too cold. apple pie was too cumbersome. coca-cola was too evil...so they went with bacon. now they're just keeping it up to slight the cupcake people.

theory #3 - it's a combination of the two.

win rosenfeld (who worked with nova sciencenow for a while) seems to think that the bacon craze is finally over...



...i respectfully disagree.

#118 - bacon bacon bacon!
snack: vosges mo's dark bacon bar
drink: black sheep riggwelter yorkshire ale



last month in chicago, ms allison introduced me to the wonder of vosges, a line of gourmet chocolates with retail locales in chicago (we visited lincoln park), nyc & vegas. while there, it was revealed to the extremely friendly girl working there that i dabble in snack blogging, so she offered me some badass, probably expensive truffle. it ruled my face. super chicago friendly customer service! since we were en route to the pitchfork festival & they had a no entry with drink/food policy (although allison managed to smuggle in an avocado like a ninja), i had to forgo getting one of their crazy-ass chocolate bars for the time being. luckily, much to my surprise, during her travels the next day, allison picked up one of their black pearl bars for me. yay good host! it ruled my face.

since returning to nyc, i hadn't found the time and/or energy to travel to a vosges, but the other night, at a random park slope fancy bodega, they had a rack of gourmet chocolates. among them was the vosges mo's dark bacon bar. i'd sampled it in chicago & was completely intrigued that bacon & chocolate could taste so good together. i suppose reese's peanut butter cups got started in a similar "should we?" sort of way. i couldn't resist, especially after that sample. it's so good. since the bar ran me six & change, i've been taking my time with it, treating myself to a square or two at a time. tonight, the bacon bar comes to an end...a chocolatey, salty, occasionally crispy end. don't hate, people. this is one of the few good things to come out of the bacon craze.

one night this weekend i took in a pint of black sheep riggwelter yorkshire ale with a few squares of the bacon bar. the black sheep comes to us from the u.k., an area where folks have historically been huge fans of sheep...meadows & whatnot. it sort of explains why they also brew a monty python's holy grail ale. those blokes loved sheep. according to the back of the bottle, riggwelter is "from the old norse; rygg - back and velte - to overturn. when a sheep is on its back and can not get up without help, local dales dialect says it's rigged or riggwelted." silly helpless sheep...just like the ones i see while i fall asleep...but with less blood.

the flavor apparently contains "hints of coffee, bananas and liquorice." i tasted the coffee. not so sure about the other two. since the beer's a brown ale, it had a fairly typical english brown ale flavor, sort of like a newcastle but not really. it made for a rich & filling pint of ale, a nice complement to the bacon & the chocolate...which makes me wonder about the combo possibilities. can you make bacon out of sheep? yep. apparently you can...& when you're done, you can coat it in chocolate. done & done. bacon...is there anything you can't do?

nosh nook #92 - tuesday, july 21, 2009

a literal death by chocolate has new york personal injury lawyers hungry for more details (link)
07.20.09 - prweb

recently, the snack making business has been getting pretty darn dangerous.  back in early june, an explosion at the slim jam plant in garner, nc killed three workers and injured dozens of others. then, on june 8th at a camden, nj plant, a twenty-nine year old worker was killed when he fell into a vat of chocolate destined for hershey's. it turns out that the plant was operating legally.  lucky for the worker's family, not only is OSHA on the case, but the personal injury lawyers at the perecman firm are as well.

over the past 25 years, the perecman firm "has recovered millions of dollars for (their) clients."  in fact, david perecman has been named one of ny magazine's "best lawyers in america." prestige! to announce their involvement in the case, the firm has put a press release on pr web that features an amazingly puntastic headline with phrases like "death by chocolate" & "hungry for more details." not only are they successful, but they're able to take death & turn it on its head in a totally hilarious way!

my favorite part about the press release is the beaming photo of david perecman next to it.  your relative was maimed or killed in a horrible workplace accident?  nothing to worry about.  the perecman firm is on the case & they apparently couldn't be happier. why wouldn't they be? there's probably a lot of money & recognition coming their way if they win the case. hopefully david perecman can use that money to invest in more puns & keep his smile bright & shiny.