#131 - pumpktoberfest!

if you're proactive or confused & you've already gone & flipped ahead to october in your fictional eat!drink!snack! wall or desk calendar, you'll know that tomorrow is october 1st, which marks the beginning of pumpktoberfest, the happiest, pumpkiniest month of the year here at eat!drink!snack! since it's one of those brand new holidays (the hallmark deal is still pending), you may not be familiar with the inner workings of pumpktoberfest, so imma break it down for you. basically, halloween is the lamest holiday ever. pumpktoberfest is one of the best holidays of all time. thirty-one days, yo! thirty-one days!

as legend has it, pumpktoberfest developed one day in the mind of shawn parow, a mid-thirties blogger from brooklyn. for days, he had been wondering what stupid gimmick he could roll out next on his blog. after a string of post-work evenings standing in front of the coolers at bierkraft poring over microbrews, he realized that, with about a month until halloween, there were a shit ton of pumpkin beers coming out. he'd tried a pumpkin beer or two in his day, but had always taken the same stance with them as he did with christmas beers--they were too much of a spicy novelty item. maybe it was the presence of all that alcohol or maybe it was the five hours sleep the night before, but on that evening, he had a change of heart.

there were enough pumpkin beers in those coolers to field a basketball team & our plucky blogger reasoned that there had to be more out there...& he was right. he started checking the coolers at assorted bodegas & delis. he went on the world wide web. he found that there were enough pumpkin beers out there to field a canadian football team. he got a bit obsessed...& from there, pumpktoberfest was born. initially, he thought BIG & planned to celebrate pumpktoberfest each day with a different pumpkin beer, reporting back to you in blog form. like most of his plans, after going out & collecting a number of pumpkin beers, he realized that he could only field a canadian football team with a few substitutes & scaled those plans back to a pumpkin beer report every odd-numbered day for the entire month of october, each paired with another of his recently rekindled loves...horror films.

he figured that halloween month is the only logical month to go nuts over horror films & then he came across a trailer for the michael bay-directed remake of nightmare on elm street & that sealed the deal. then he watched some footage of the shuttle disaster online & decided to do the columns in countdown form. as he envisioned it, every odd-numbered day for the month of october, he'd give the low down on pumpkin beers whilst providing a list of his favorite horror films, culminating with his top pick...ON HALLOWEEN NIGHT. as the legend goes, if you drink a pumpkin beer with a friend this october, you pass the spirit of pumpktoberfest on to them & when they drink a pumpkin beer with another friend & don't invite you along, they're passing on the spirit of pumpktoberfest...& so on & so forth. it's like herpes, but with less physical contact! happy pumpktoberfest! spread the pumpkin love!

#131 - pumpktoberfest!
snack: david pumpkin seeds
drink: southern tier pumking


in celebration of the impending pumpktoberfest, last night, i half-lazily put together a pumpkin snack-drink combo. for my snack, i picked up a 5 oz bag of david pumpkin seeds that i kept at my side during the evening. whenever i felt the need to run to the kitchen, grab every item in the refrigerator door & mold them into a masterpiece of pumpktoberfestian proportions, i just popped a few of the pumpkin seeds in my mouth & the urge faded for about 60-120 seconds. then i repeated as necessary. i have to be honest though. i'm not all that into pumpkin seeds. i'll take sunflower seeds any day of the week, but pumpkin seeds are just plain weird. with sunflower seeds, at least i know that i shouldn't eat the shell. with pumpkin seeds, sometimes it's a gray area. the bag's not even clear on the subject, but they do encourage you to "break out of your shell™."

these ones have the white, extremely salty outer shell & in typical pumpkin seed fashion, if you manage to crack open the shell, there's a tiny green seed awaiting you on the inside, a pumpkin that never reached its potential if you will. oh well. chomp chomp. since, like i mentioned, i'm not all that into pumpkin seeds, i got sick of them after a while & ultimately tossed them aside, wondering what else i could eat as i picked the pumpkin seed shells from my teeth. maybe i'll use the rest of the bag to stem off smoke cravings or something.

while my snack was lazily thought out, the drink portion of it definitely wasn't. when i first came across it, i knew that i had to ring in pumpktoberfest with the king of all pums, the southern tier pumking. it's a local beer, brewed in upstate ny & according to the bottle, it's "an ode to púca, a creature of celtic folklore." that means that this beer was made in the name of a mischievous shape-shifter who from what i gather, has november 1st (the day after harvest) as his day. since i don't believe a word of that crap, i also ignored the label's suggestion to "pour pumking into a goblet." what kind of person has a friggin goblet lying around? vampires & other blood-drinking types, that's who & i'm not one of those (yet), so i poured mine into a pint-sized mug like a real man & basked in my defiance of labels.

um, this stuff is amazing. when i first opened it, i gave it a good sniffing, since i'd read that it was really pumpkiny. of the pumpkin beers i've tried, i never really felt that any of them were all that pumpkiny. it was more like with them, "pumpkin" meant pumpkin spices--nutmegs & cinnamons & allspices & the like. when i first sniffed the pumking, i could already tell that it was something different. the bottle lists "puréed pumpkin" as an ingredient & since i don't have many opportunities to use this phrase, i'm going to use it here: "you can really taste the puréed pumpkin." you can also taste the caramel malt in it & it's not overly spiced like most pumpkin beers. it sets a pretty high bar for pumpkin beers & i'm skeptical that any of the other pumpktoberfest beers i have in the queue can beat it. i guess we'll just have to wait & see. surprise me imagined pumpkin beer canadian football team! surprise me with one of those grey cups or something!

nosh nook #30 - friday, april 24, 2009

day of pigs (link)
04.23.09 - examiner.com - by liza zimmerman

hot dogs are sweet. tiny hot dogs are even sweeter. wrap them up in a puff pastry & you've got "the bomb." if you feel like i do, you're in luck, because today is national pigs in a blanket day. i would have had no idea were it not for the heads up from lisa zimmerman, who got the heads up from her editors & then decided to reminisce about her personal pig in a blanket dealings...cute headline, ms. lisa.

as a kid, they were her favorite thing about dinner parties. as an adult, she once worked for "a high-brow publishing house in new york, where the publisher's favorite food was pigs in blankets." nuff said there. pigs in a blanket are obviously adored by both young & old.

i have to be honest though. her recommendations for drink pairings--a number of different red wines--strike me as odd. i know that the pig in a blanket is most famously a snack for cocktail parties, where folks are often drinking wine, but essentially she's saying "this wine goes great with a hot dog." there's just something about the mixture of typical low-brow (hot dog) with typical high-brow (wine) that cracks me up...although i suppose that once you've miniaturized that hot dog & wrapped it in a puff pastry instead of a bun, you've, at some point, crossed the border into high brow.  it just seems weird is all.  day of pigs!

#83 - candy pants mcgee.

seriously, what would easter be without the bunny?  that rabbit kicks ass, right?  i mean, rabbits in general are pretty important (see bugs, roger, greg, the trix rabbit & the jackalope), but the easter bunny takes those other rabbits' importance, adds it all together & then does something mathematical to it, resulting in a level of importance quite unparalleled in the animal kingdom.  here's why.

he's been more successful in wrestling easter away from jesus than anyone on the planet.  growing up, we usually celebrated easter with a combination of easter mass, candy & treats for the kids and visiting & dinner with the family.  what part was most important?  the part where i got to down an entire tray of single serving reese's easter eggs or consume the entire head of a rich, chocolatey, hollow rabbit the moment the parents weren't paying attention.

SPOILER AHEAD...before i was old enough to figure out space & time and know that there wasn't an actual easter bunny filling the baskets of children all around the world every easter morning in honor of the resurrection of god's son, that bunny ruled.  when it came to easter, he was where it was at holiday wise. he had the candy & he'd give you some.

if only he had a van he could've lured me into in exchange for said candy, we could've left the world behind & gone on all sorts of wacky, candy-filled adventures.  it'd be just like the baby looney tunes' eggs-traordinary adventure, but with less emphasis on the search for the true meaning of easter, since we already know that the true meaning of easter is four.

#83 - candy pants mcgee.

snack: three musketeers raspberry dark chocolate minis
drink: flying dog garde dog ale


tonight, i'm going to down like fitty of these three musketeers raspberry dark chocolate minis.  they're a limited edition version they've brought out for the spring, with a bag that urges consumers to "bring the spring feeling home" and promises "whipped up, fluffy chocolate-on-raspberry taste."  if there isn't a bit of a pornographic feel to that promise, i'm a monkey's uncle...coincidentally, the monkey's uncle is the second awesomest animal in the kingdom, trailing only the easter bunny.

...so the raspberry three musketeers minis taste reminiscient of a chocolate you'd randomly select out of one of those holiday hearts or boxes filled with assorted chocolates.  as far as new three musketeer flavors go, i prefer the mint flavor to the raspberry, but if a tiny japanese guy challenged me to a eating contest involving the raspberry flavor, i wouldn't turn him down...& i'd wipe the floor with him in the process.  u.s.a.!  u.s.a.!

my beer of choice on this sacred easter night is a flying dog garde dog ale, a french "beer de garde."  that's french for "beer for keeping."  i'm not sure why that is exactly, because i'm definitely not keeping it around for very long.  it's flying dog's spring beer & has a light, fruity sort of taste, which is odd when juxtaposed with the snarling, ralph steadman dog on the label, but it's all good.  it has a feel somewhere between a pilsner & a cider, so i'm pretty sure that means i'm getting servings from both my bread & fruit groups all in one beer.  yay nutrition.

so yeah...happy easter, all you pagans.

#73 - patty boom-ba-latty.

aw yeah, suckas. st patty & his irish posse in the hizzouse! let's give it up for the people i have the highest percentage of ancestry with! sorry my lesser perecentage brethren from canada, france, belgium, germany & scotland. when you create a crazy-ass drinking holiday, i'll give it up for you too.

for now, one-two one-two. check it. i'm from the boston area, so i definitely know me some st pattys day. growing up, we had a green felt erin go brah pennant hanging in our house. whereas st pattys day was a good time as a kid & to some extent up until college, now the holiday makes me want to employ some whacking day tactics a la the simpsons a la st patrick on just about everyone.

that's one of the downfalls to living in a large city. all the sudden, mid-march comes & thousands of people start wearing green like it's halloween & other people from other cities come to your city & take to the streets, get wasted, puke & fight, all in the name of the irish. i wonder how many of them, other than those who are actually irish, have any clue about the recent political violence in northern ireland...or that there is a northern ireland...or what the color green actually represents...or that at one time, st patrick was represented by the color blue.

this year, since st pattys fell on a tuesday, the holiday started two days early for a lot of people...on saturday the 15th. didn't someone somewhere once say something about bewaring ides at some point during this particular month? i seem to remember something, so i tried to stay away from the city this weekend & stayed in brooklyn, where idiots in green cat-in-the-hat getups & drunken girls with green sparkles & beads & stumbly walks in impractical heels are kept to a bare minimum.

#73 - patty boom-ba-latty.
snack: tico's plantain chips
drink: mcsorleys ale

then tonight, on the actual holiday, i left work & fled the chaos of times sq for astoria/queens to have a power meeting at the abode of musical genius & society darling james call of the missing teens. post-power meeting (& a couple yuengling black & tans), we went around the corner to his local pub, sunswick, for the obligatory st pattys day beer. they have something like twenty beers on tap, but it's friggin st pattys so i wanted to go irish & a guinness is way too obvious, so i went with a mcsorleys ale...it sounded irish enough.

turns out that other than the name, it's not very irish at all. in fact, it's made by pabst. the irish have been tricked again! it tastes better than a pabst, but not much.

when i got home, after an hour train ride, i hadn't had dinner yet, so i cracked open a bag of tico's plantain chips to munch on. i know they're not irish, but they come in a bright, ehnaced-kermit green bag that features a cartoon parrot. the color isn't exactly an irish hue, unless you're wearing a long-sleeve shirt of this color under a short-sleeve shirt of typical irish color. then you're just fashionable, which is totally an irish quality.

as to the plantain chips, they're fairly tasty & have a simple list of ingredients, which i like...

- plantains
- vegetable oil
- salt

truth be told, plantain chips are boring though. wee lil crisps made from a bloody fruit. i'll take my hash over those wankers any day o' the week.

#49 - i want to be anarchy.

it's official. these days, film degree be damned, i prefer tv to movies & here's why. tv gives the show's creator(s) greater freedom to meditate on an overarching storyline, stretch it out, pass it off to various directors, highlight different characters, kill people off, introduce new people, etc etc. with the exception of sequel films, which often suck, stories told by film are generally limited to a static 1.5-3 hours of story. that just doesn't do it for me these days.

i just finished watching the seventh & final season of the shield, which means i watched about 70 hours of storyline with that show alone. as david bianculli noted in fresh air's 12/24 segment on the top ten tv programs of the year, well-executed tv can be like a novel, with a starting point, an ending point & a journey in between. when he said this, it was in reference to the shield. screw the sopranos. the final episode of the shield might just be the greatest series finale ever made. it was directed by clark johnson, who also directed the pilot for the show & also directed the pilot & final episodes of the wire (in addition to playing gus haynes, the baltimore sun desk editor in the wire's final season). seriously, it's worth watching the series straight through just to get to that final episode of the shield. for me, it also helped that unlike with the sopranos, i had no prior knowledge of how the show ended, which allowed me to experience something with uninfluenced expectations, a rare opportunity.

in addition to the clark johnson example, with my growing love of tv, i've discovered that there's some serious tv incest going on. fx's new highest rated show, sons of anarchy, is created by kurt sutter, who wrote for the shield & also played armenian hitman margos dezerian in the 1st & 3rd seasons. he's married to ms peg bundy katey sagal, who plays one of the leads on sons of anarchy and also had an occasional role on the shield. sons also features a major creepyass storyline with jay karnes, who played dutch on the shield.

sons is impressive. i watched the first season while i was in new hampshire at the parents' house for the holidays. there are shakespearean undertones, religious undertones, reflections on aging & paths taken & not taken, copious amounts of punching and hot biker babes like the characters played by maggie siff (who you may also know from her hot work as rachel menken on mad men) & taryn manning (who you may know from her hot work as a prostitute). heck, i'll go as far as to say that katey sagal's hot & the main character, played by charlie hunnam, could definitely knock johnny depp from the title of "dude i'd most prefer to sleep with." turns out he was on the uk version of queer as folk. well there you go then.

i found myself about eight episodes into the season on wednesday night when i decided it was time for a snack run...

#49 - i want to be anarchy.

snack: t.g.i.friday's quesadilla snack chips
drink: shock top belgian white

...but being that it was 9pm on christmas eve in new hampshire, the places open for snack purchasing were at a minimum. i hopped in the car with my teenage brother & we tried the shaws supermarket in windham (closed), the 24-hour wal-mart in salem (closed. wha! commerce closes?) & eventually settled for the hess gas station in salem. people always need gasoline & cute mini tankers round the holidays. here's what i could get my hands on:

for snacking, i picked up a bag of t.g.i.friday's quesadilla snack chips. i've seen them before & always avoided them but had to go with them given the low uniqueness/appealing nature of the hess snack selection. i have no idea what gives t.g.i.fridays the right to qualify these snacks as quesadillaesque other than the shape & them calling them "quesadillas." basically, the "quesadillas" are puffy crackerlike things shaped like quesadilla wedges, with a bunch of powdered cheese on them. eh.

for drinking, i scoured the beer cooler for something unique or barring that, tasty. if i'd gone for a single beer i would have been drinking bud or some equivalent & i wasn't having that, so i had to decide on a six-pack. the one that looked most unique was the shock top belgian white, with its mohawk-wearing orange mascot on the label. i took a six-pack of it out of the cooler & started to examine it when a female employee of the gas station came out of the back room & as she walked by, said to me, "shocking, isn't it?" well played, gas station lady. well played. when i got the six-pack home & popped one open, i glanced at the label & discovered that shock top is a michelob beer, one of anheuser-busch's attempts to create microbrewlike beers with some semblance of flavor. eh. the sons of anarchy drink michelob round the club, so that makes me cool by default. sure they aren't drinking the belgian white, but i suppose it'll have to do.

by the time i left nh on saturday morning to head back to brooklyn, i had finished the first season of sons of anarchy & the quesadilla chips. one amazed me & made me wish i was in a motorcycle club, or at least living the free lifestyle & babes that come with it. one did not. the six-pack of shock top remained unfinished. for me, there's a limit to how many beers i feel comfortable drinking when home at the parents for a three-day holiday stretch, especially when it's basically just slightly better than michelob michelob. that limit? five.