snackdown! - 3.5.10

on tuesday, health affairs released a study that tracked children's snacking habits from 1977 to 2006, a study that found that children snack three times a day and take in an average of 600 snack calories per day, a 168-calorie increase over children in the late seventies. since everybody's got their panties in a bunch about snacking these days, as if the dietary habits of children is the biggest thing we have to worry about, every news outlet on the planet decided to report on the study. children are snacking too much! they're turning into tiny michelin men! won't somebody please think of the children! blah blah blah. get over it people.

• reason #1 that constant snacking & eating isn't a bad thing: olympians do it. on tuesday, the national post took a look at the dietary habits of olympic athletes to see if we could learn anything from them. it turns out that we can. the article notes that "if there is one good behaviour that unites many top athletes, it's their habit of eating frequent meals and snacks throughout the day." "eating a balanced snack every few hours can help regulate blood sugar, maintain energy throughout a busy day and reduce cravings and overeating at mealtimes." as long as you're not sitting on your ass all day snacking on doritos & cookie dough, constant snacking is just fine. suck on that, snack haters! (national post)


• it's girl scout cookie season & last sunday in southern cali, six chefs gathered together for the "smart cookie chefs' challenge fundraiser," an event where each chef created a dish using girl scout cookies. while two of the chefs went the obvious route & made tasty desserts, the other four created "savory recipes that included crab, pork, chicken and lamb." we're talking dishes like "carrot, apple and daisy-go-round stuffed pork tenderloin on creamy polenta with a pinot noir reduction" & "chicken breast stuffed with peanut butter patties, prosciutto and coachella valley dates." those both sound amazing, but ultimately, the people's choice award went to geoff bogorad, who used lemonade cookies to create lemon-crusted crab cakes. (the desert sun)


• today was the final day of snaxpo 2010, the annual snacking convention that this year was held down in dallas/fort-worth, home to such snack kings as frito lay. snaxpo, which is now in its 73rd year, was attended by over 2,000 "snack food professionals." with all the attention being given to unhealthy snacks these days, it's a crucial time for the convention, as more & more, snack manufacturers have had to come up with ways to appeal to concerned consumers while still producing tasty snacks. the most important takeaway from the event: snaxpo is "the world's biggest trade show," once again proving that snacks rule. (nbc dallas/fort-worth)


• in new zealand this week, weight watchers announced that they were teaming up with mcdonald's to offer three "weight watchers approved meals." it makes TOTAL sense, because when i think of dieting, the first thing i think of is fast food. the three meals--the filet-o-fish meal (with a side salad & drink), the six pack chicken mcnuggets (with a side salad & drink) and the sweet chilli seared chicken wrap (with a drink but no salad)--are each worth 6.5 points, about a quarter of the 28 daily points allowed as part of a weight watchers' diet. unfortunately, all three meals have enough sodium to choke an elephant. (seattle post-intelligencer)


• popcorn's pretty much our national snack, an air-popped treat that folks often rely on to make the cinematic crap that comes out of hollywood tolerable. not everyone loves popcorn though & on wednesday, just in time for this sunday's oscars, slate's rosecrans baldwin decided to pen "an admittedly irrational screed against popcorn." why? four reasons: he can't stand popcorn. he hates the smell. he thinks it "looks like sheep shit." as studies have pointed out, a tub of movie-theatre popcorn is entirely unhealthy. if americans stopped eating so much of it, we could divert those kernels to ethanol production & reduce our dependence on foreign oil. while he admits that his hatred of popcorn may be irrational, at least he's passionate about it & in his mind, that's all that matters. (slate)

#146 - move on.

full disclosure: i ♥ brooklyn. other than my childhood home in nh, i've lived here longer than in any other locale & although there's a good chance that i won't eventually settle down here, for now it's become what i refer to as my "home." since moving here almost a decade ago, i've lived in three different places & with each move, i've moved closer to manhattan. this past weekend, after a three-year run in my park slopish apartment, i reversed that trend & moved way south into a new place in dyker heights, a hood that many brooklynites would likely have difficulty pinpointing on a map.

sunday was moving day & for once, i was actually packed & ready to go a day ahead of time. the day started quite early, when my bro & i woke up at the ass-crack of dawn (7am) to make a 9am pickup time for a pickup truck he'd rented through zipcar. if there’s one thing i can say about choosing a vehicle for your move, it’s that if you choose to go the u-haul route, you’re a sucker. every single time i’ve rented from them, some sort of debacle has ensued--flat tires, u-haul locations that decided to close early on my moving day, missing hand carts, etc. this time, largely thanks to my bro's assistance, everything went absolutely swimmingly & by the early afternoon, i was already back at the new apartment & getting settled. best. move. ever.

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snackdown! - 1.15.10

as part of the ongoing changes here at eat!drink!snack!, this week, i'm introducing a new friday column...the snackdown! every friday, i'll be providing you with a rundown of my favorite snack/food/drink related stories from the week past. this week, we've got a contest for snacking genius, a ban on pork rinds, free cookies, salt chugging & predictions for 2010. enjoy!

• on tuesday, brooklyn's ici hosted "the next big small brand contest for culinary genius," where bklyn batch craft jerky took home the people's choice prize for their "orange-ginger strips of smoke-cured, grass-fed beef" jerky & kombucha brooklyn won the judge's prize for their "pleasantly mild iteration of [their] fermented tea." personally, i'd vote for orange-ginger beef jerky over fermented tea any day of the week. (ny times)


• lovers of authentic mexican pork rinds had their hearts broken this week when the u.s.d.a. announced that starting this thursday, pork rinds not accompanied by an official government certificate will be seized at the border. drug, gun & human traffickers who have always dreamed of getting into the food business rejoiced. (abc news)


• since travel basically sucks these days, companies like doubletree hotels & midwest airlines are trying to ease the pain of travel by baking cookies & dispensing them to their customers. they've both been doing so for around a quarter of a century, but if there was ever a time in history that called for free cookies, it's now. (ny times)


• yesterday, to protest nyc mayor michael bloomberg's latest health crusade--salt--awesome-hatted radio host curtis sliwa decided that it'd be a good idea to call bloomberg "the health care nazi" & then chug a bunch of morton's salt. the results...sodiumtastic hilarity! the "salt crackdown" segment starts just after the nine-minute mark. (ny1)


• it's a new year & with that comes new food trends. "out with the cupcake in with the new," i like to say. the detroit free press looked at some possible trends for 2010, specifically the rise of "umami," the fifth taste. too bad that they misspelled it "unami" in the headline. i'm pretty sure nobody's going to reintroduce an extinct native american dialect in an effort to spice up the food world. (detroit free press)

nosh nook #205 - monday, december 28, 2009

thinking of bringing leftover cookies to the office? don't. (link)
12.28.09 - globe and mail - by wency leung

for coming up on two weeks now, i've been lucky enough to have a nice vacation away from work but come next year, i'm going to have to eventually go back to reality & back to work. it's cool with me though. it's been a fairly eventful & relaxing holiday season & all but this cold weather & time off makes me go a bit semi-salinger after a while & i don't need that. a lot of people are already back at work this week anyhow & in my case, i work in the music industry, so it's not like it's a completely painful job to have to go back to. plus, when i return, there's a good chance that at least one of my remaining co-workers will bring in some sort of holiday treat for me to munch on & ease the pain.

according to the globe and mail's wency leung, if you've been thinking of bringing your leftover holiday snacks back to work with you upon your return, you probably shouldn't or you should at least read her article for tips or think about it first or something. what the article boils down to is that this time of year is a time when a lot of people are looking back on the past year, thinking about their ballooning ass/belly size & making plans for an totally healthy 2010 diet. when you start bringing in your "unwanted boxes of chocolates, unfinished tins of fudge and containers of excess butter tarts" for co-workers, you're "sabotag(ing) their nutrition plans." they hate it when you do that crap. also, please stop changing their computer desktop to a photo of fabio. it's just not topical any more.

wendy leung spoke with "karen brar, who works at a non-profit organization in surrey, b.c." ms brar used to get excited about all the holiday snackery. now she can't stand it & mentioned that "after a little while, you're eating the chocolate for the sake of eating it...and it loses its lustre. by the end of it, it's just like, 'ugh.'" still, if you want to avoid getting fat on your holiday sweets & choose to ignore the guilt of making people fat, leung also spoke with "jacqueline mackinnon, an addiction counsellor in kamloops, b.c.," who provided a few tips on how to unload your sweets. to guarantee that they move, you should put them out in the morning & make sure you do so with the lid off in a high-profile locale. people are suckers for that crap & as long as you can lay off the sweets they're bringing in, you'll actually keep your annual plan for a hot bod intact this year. good luck with that.

nosh nook #193 - wednesday, december 9, 2009

there's a 'cookie snob' in the kitchen (link)
12.9.09 - the washington post - by jane black

if i've learned one thing from cookie monster's lunatic ravings, it's that C is most definitely for cookie. that may be a public television-supported fact, but it's also a fact that C is for copious calories & chunky cellulite! am i right, cookie-loving ladies? i mean, i love cookies as much as the next guy, but i realize that man cannot live on cookies alone, so i try to keep my cookie consumption in check, lest i become known about town as "the tubby cookie boy." no amount of brownies or samoans are worth that nickname...unless you have a job in a traveling carnival...& you get to sleep with the sword-swallowing chick.

there's this "beer-themed restaurant" down in d.c. called birch & barley and according to the washington post, they have a "cookie snob" in the kitchen. her name is tiffany macisaac & she's been a cookie snob ever since her first job here in nyc at union square cafe, where she perfected the art of baking cookies. she made the move from nyc to d.c. earlier this year after birch & barley contacted her & her fiance (a chef) about an open chef position at their restaurant that they needed to fill PRONTO. it was a few days before their wedding but they jumped through hoops to get to d.c. & show off their skillz & in the end, both ended up getting hired, with macisaac becoming their new pastry chef. then they went to hawaii & got married...& macisaac baked cookies instead of having a wedding cake because she's obviously NUTS about cookies.

at birch & barley, she "turns out ginger molasses, chocolate shortbread and chocolate chip cookies, plus graham crackers." her future plans include "a late-night cookie bake" where "just before the restaurant kitchen closes, she will make about 60 cookies that servers will sell for $1 apiece in the upstairs bar, churchkey." then she'll dispense her tasty cookies to hungry & impressionable drinkers. it's an awesome idea, one that she describes this way. "think about it. you've been drinking and you're thinking, 'wow, i wish i had a snack,' "and then the smell of warm cookies wafts through the room. wouldn't that be awesome?" yes, tiffany. yes it would. wherever there are cookies wafting...that is where i want to be.