nosh nook #180 - sunday, november 22, 2009

a kid's idea, for dogs to savor (link)
11.20.09 - the ny times - by susan dominus

thanks to a bounty of boring snack-related news stories on thursday & personal laziness on friday, i decided to delay friday's edition of the nosh nook to today, where i'm bringing you a TOTALLY SPECIAL weekend edition of the nosh nook. seriously, at the end of last week, the big news in snacking was that, on the heels of kraft attempting a hostile takeover of cadbury, everybody & their mother (nestle, hershey, fererro) was thinking of buying the candy egg-making british company. YAWN. i'm so sick of hearing about people wanting to buy cadbury. other than that, there was another snack mix recall. BORING.

this weekend, things have remained pretty quiet on the snack news front, but i did come across a ny times article about christian liendo, a 16-year-old "bright-eyed science buff" from queens who's trying to make snacking more fun for dogs. he had to think up a product idea for a program/competition that he's enrolled in & after a few meh ideas & some childhood reminiscing, he eventually settled on "blizzard dog," an ice cream for dogs. he started out making the doggie ice cream with "carob powder (chocolate is dangerous for dogs), soy milk and lactose-free milk" & had friends' dogs try it out. since dogs aren't always all that bright, as far as flavors go, "corn and carrot were bigger hits than chocolate and vanilla."

in the end, he ended up losing to a "young woman who made vegan cookies," but he did take home $250 & an honorable mention for his idea. he hopes to eventually take his idea to the big time & wants to do so in a unique way--the ice cream would not be sold in pet stores. it'd only be sold in ice cream stores so "dog owners won’t feel bad when they stop for a cone and their dogs whimper in longing." i don't know, christian. that sounds like a pretty specific (& possibly health code-violating) target market--dog owners out buying ice cream while walking their dogs. you might want to think bigger than that if you want to one day make "blizzard dog" a household name. as it stands, your current business plan is for the birds.

nosh nook #177 - tuesday, november 17, 2009

does boston have room for more ice cream? (link)
11.16.09 - wbur - by monica brady-myerov

it's official. today marks thirty-five death-free years of life for me & as such, i'm making my way up the east coast via motorcoach for a celebratory evening of food & drinks & dirty projectors with friends in boston. it should be a radical way to pay tribute to my quickly approaching middle age. the best part? it's supposed to be below thirty degrees tonight. the temperature's going to be less than my age. how chilling!

it's obviously perfect ice cream weather, but how about fresh, custom made ice cream from a machine? can i get that? unless i want to trespass on the northeastern campus, i can't get it today, but as wbur reports, next month moobella, a taunton-based company who has developed an "ice cream shop on wheels," will be turning on 100 of their machines "in cafeterias, museums and food courts around new england." they already have one of their machines on the northeastern campus & according to one student "it's a really cool machine."

sure it 's a cool machine (what machine isn't cool?) that creates ice cream for you while you wait, but what sort of effect will it have on the overall ice cream experience? wbur spoke with lynda utterback, from the national ice cream retailers association & she's cool with it, since people aren't going to decide to "take the family to a machine" instead of hitting up mom & pop ice cream joints. plus, as she notes, "there's always room for more ice cream." you said it, ms utterback.

nosh nook #54 - thursday, may 28, 2009

nice cream! (link)
05.27.09 - ny post - by carla spartos

it's almost the summertime, which means it's time to shed those extra pounds so you can fit into that super sexy swimsuit. on a related note, it's also almost ice cream season. for us new yorkers, ice cream season provides the opportunity to say "screw you neapolitan!" and try out some TOTALLY CRAZY ice cream flavors. it's new york though, which means there are thousands of places around the city to get ice cream & if you're like me, having to make choices about anything, let alone ice cream, is a daunting task.

luckily, the ny post has again come to the rescue. yesterday, nestled between all their other totally ground-breaking, objective coverage (i.e.--this gem on the pedestrianizing of times sq), was a little piece by carla spartos, a piece that narrows your crazy ice cream choices down to a manageable, count-em-on-your-fingers-if-you-still-have-them-all list of ten locales...you can count to ten, right?

on the list, there are places where you can get such tantalizing gelato flavors as red bull, olive oil, sweet corn & pine needle-redolent mastic (whatever the hell that is).  it features places with ice creams made with pandan leaf, taro & candies such as fireballs, twizzlers & gummi bears. for all you alcoholics out there, there are two locations--cones & DBGB (opening in june)--that serve, respectively, kumquats with johnny walker black label gelato & a cherry ice cream made with belgian beer. unfortunately for brooklynites, the list contains only one place to get crazy ice cream--jacques torres ice cream--which opens up in DUMBO this weekend.

try them all! i give you permission to...& when you put on all that extra ice cream-induced weight, you can just visit one of the post's sponsored "flat belly" ads which, depending on the whims of their ad server, should be conveniently located at the bottom of article.

#26 - shawn's fantastical hoighty toighty ice cream sandwich.

...so i'm watching the emmy awards tonight on abc & it's a three-hour show, so that means tons of commercials & of course, that means tons of commercials for abc's fall lineup. that means tons of commercials for a lineup that includes samantha who?, ugly betty, desperate housewives, boston legal, brothers & sisters, eli stone, dirty sexy money, life on mars, grey's anatomy/private practice and pushing daisies...oh, and the crappy reality tv shows.

the best part about the ads for these shows is that each commercial ends with the note that next week is, "national stay at home week," an occasion created & announced by abc's pr team about a month back. what this means is that with tomorrow being the start of fall, we should avoid the outdoors at all costs & plop our asses down on the couch for the next week to absorb the abundant wonders of abc's fantastic fall lineup.

if you choose to not celebrate national stay at home week, you're disobeying a national holiday & not only would that make you a communist, but christina applegate would probably never talk to you again. samantha who? sassy christina applegate, that's who!

#26 - shawn's fantastical hoighty toighty ice cream sandwich.
snack: bierkraft's dark chocolate gelato & cherry blondie
drink: lakefront cherry lager beer

with the emmys, i'm enjoying a dark chocolate gelato & cherry blondie from bierkraft, the local yummy beer & cheese & gourmet food shop. a few weeks back, i went there to buy some beer & on the way in, noticed a sign they had posted on the door that suggested pairing their chocolate chip ice cream sandwich with a smuttynose old brown dog ale. i passed on that particular occasion, but filed it away for later.

the other night, i decided to go back & pick up the combo. i got the smuttynose but when i saw the ice cream sandwiches in the freezer, the dark chocolate gelato & cherry blondie made getting that pathetic chocolate chip one a non-option. at the register, i discovered i was purchasing a $5 ice cream sandwich. hoighty toighty. that night, i totally drank the smuttynose & then the freezer door got left open for a couple hours at some point during the evening, so the ice cream sandwich got a little thawed/melted. undeterred, i went back to bierkraft today & picked up the lakefront cherry lager to pair with it.

they're both really tasty. the ice cream sandwich itself is so rich & tasty & filling that it's a two-sitting ice cream sandwich...it'd better be for $5! as for the beer, it's brewed with wisconsin cherries, which i assume are good based solely on their work in the field of dairy.

in closing, yay mad men yay!...and people sure do love tina fey, huh? "the elaine may of our time," according to alec baldwin's speech...which means she has both a mikey & nickey and an ishtar in her. people probably love tina so durn much because she's wittier than any other female on earth & a verifiable stone. cold. fox. seriously, i'd give my left...