nosh nook #164 - thursday, october 29, 2009

sanchez donates dogs (link)
10.28.09 - ny post - by mark cannizzaro

i don't follow pro or college football all that much, but i do follow the news & if you're a new yorker who follows the news, it's almost impossible to have not heard of the NY jets rookie quarterback mark sanchez. for now, the new york papers friggin love him. before he'd even stepped foot on the field for an NFL game, he was a multi-millionaire with a $50 million contract. since he's one of those uber-sexy quarterback types, he appeared in GQ back in may & had been dating sports illustrated swimsuit hottie hilary rhoda, who'd appeared with him in the GQ spread. in my outsider's opinion, he's basically tom brady, but not as good & with less super bowl rings and, at the moment, less swimsuit models. i'm confident he'll one day get a swimsuit model of his own.

this past weekend, sanchez & the jets were out in oakland for a game against the hapless raiders & since the raiders are awful, the jets ending up blowing them out 38-0. by the fourth quarter, the jets were relaxed, so much that the tv cameras caught sanchez eating a hot dog on the sidelines, which is apparently a sports ettiquette no-no. he's young & didn't know any better, but according to the ny post, he's trying to take his silly mistake & "turn it into a positive" by donating "500 hot dogs and 500 hamburgers through a&p supermarket to the community soup kitchen of morristown, nj." i'm not sure why he chose morristown of all places, but he's probably made a lot of folks happy. i can't wait to see what he donates when he gets caught out late one night with a hooker.

head coach rex ryan feels that sanchez has handled the hot dog incident fine, but since he's "an old-school football guy," he's still sort of disappointed in his rookie quarterback. "it is unfortunate. we have a great game, run for 300-some yards, have a breakout game, a 38-0 score, get a shutout, and now the focus is on the hot dog." don't pat yourself on the buck that much. you were playing the raiders. i heard that they lost to a high school team two weeks back. can you really blame the media for focusing on a hot quarterback eating a hot dog?

#135 - abstruse adjectives.

monday marked the octennial anniversary of a grand day in our great nation's history, that historic day back in 2001 when the crucial USA PATRIOT act was signed into federal law by the best 43rd president we ever had, GWB. since that stupendous day, this terrorist-preventing bill has remained strong. i mean, has there been a horrific terrorist attack in the good ol u.s.a. since 9/11? not that i can recall, so today, we're going to celebrate the two day-old anniversary of that momentous bill signing with a grandiloquent display of out of sight adjectives. it's going to be scrumtrulescent!

...so the amazingly heroic USA PATRIOT act. thank almighty god that our gracious government came up with it. it's always working hard to keep us hard-working u.s. citizens safe with a solid, balanced diet of law enforcement enhancements, terrorist-thwarting legislation & unprecedented data collection, with some occasional messy fingerprinting mixed in. a little-known fact about the glorious PATRIOT act: there's a special section in there where if you make tasteless light of the infallible bill on your radical left-wing blog, you'll be whisked off to the southeastern edge of a tropical communist island within twenty-four hours. true story.

hold on a cotton-pickin' second. i just remembered something. in michael moore's award-winning documentary farenheit 9/11, there's an eye-opening scene where the crafty filmmaker is in washington d.c. & he catches a couple of u.s. senators basically saying "we don't actually read the bills. that would take too long." i sort of wish they would have at least read the freedom-altering bill instead of rushing it through in a knee-jerk bluster, especially since it gives our curious government & inquisitive law enforcement officials some pretty awesome powers.

you know what? now that michael moore has made a totally bold statement & in the process, made me think about it, the controversial USA PATRIOT ACT is pretty much the most injudicious piece of governmental legislation that the unrepentant bush administration gave us. a whole bunch of orwellian provisions in this satanic bill are set to expire on december 31st of this quickly-fading year, but i have scant faith in anything changing. i mean, we can't get rid of the PATRIOT ACT, right? if we did, crafty terrorists, determined to undermine our precious freedoms, would instantly begin flooding our preeminent cities with muslim bombs. if we were to let the shining sun set on those wide-sweeping provisions, well that'd just be plain unpatriotic. it'd be a downright flag-hating act.

#135 - abstruse adjectives.
snack: zesty tomato terra chips
drink: arizona mucho mango



when searching for an ambrosial snack worthy of PATRIOT act day, i was looking for something with a tantalizing name, something that made me want to go on an intrusive "sneek & peek" or tap into an innocent person's mobile phone. i found that pined-for snack in zesty tomato terra chips. these tasty treats aren't your everyday chips. they're exotic vegetable chips made from taro, ruby taro, sweet potato, yuca, batata & parsnip. it's a very healthy, chromatic mix of chipified veggies seasoned with tomato, worcestershire & celery. basically, you could toss some vinegary horseradish & a few hefty shots of top-shelf vodka in with the zestily-spiced chips, swirl everything around & you'd have yourself a fernand petoit-approved bloody mary.

my absolute favorite of the vivid vegetables is the ruby taro. it's mellifluous & flavorful & the chip version of the festive ruby taro drove my middle-aged mouth wild with repressed excitement. for a while, i singled a privileged bunch of them out from the sorry rest of the plebian chips because they were clearly too good to be in the lowly company of those other inferior vegetables. that's not to say that i didn't enjoy the other ones. since i got 15% MORE CHIPS FREE in the bag & they have NO TRANS FAT, i eventually went to the proverbial town on all the chips equally...just because i could. i'm loco like that.

i felt that it was muy importante that i found a refreshing beverage that reminded me of the refreshing USA PATRIOT act. the arizona mucho mango definitely fits that bill. it's named for the state where both aging senators love the PATRIOT act & it's MUCHO & made with 5% juice. wait. that doesn't sound like MUCHO mango. hmm. if you visit the arizona beverage website, you'll come across a totally hip music player featuring rocking, cutting-edge musical acts like this blue holiday, laser blade & a rag-tag bunch of other no-name bands. while you're there, you should head over to the smoove AZ lounge. it's like a graffiti wonderland! you should check it out if you want to be boss.

the mucho mango is mucho sweet, basically because the second ingredient after filtered water is high fructose corn syrup. i guess there wasn't enough mango puree or pear juice to make it taste sweet, so the inventive folks at arizona decided to go all the way. on a serious note, i had to take a brief break part way through drinking it. i felt like my train-wreck teeth were buzzing from the herculean amount of HFCS. it could just be a microscopic listening device implanted in my unsuspecting incisor by the nefarious government while i slept, but i want to be an unwaveringly-true patriot, so i'm just going to grin & bear it, like i did with the sacchariferous arizona mucho mango.

pumpktoberfest #13 - so board.

pumpktoberfest #13 - so board.
film: witchboard
beer: st. ambroise pumpkin ale



as a thirteen year-old boy, when i first laid eyes on tawny kitaen in whitesnake's 1987 video for "here i go again," i was hooked. she had big rocker hair & rolled around on the hoods of cars to the sounds of metal guitars & wore a white see-thru dress. you could totally see her underpants! at that age, she was totally my kind of chick. i didn't see her performance in bachelor party until some time in the 90s, but in 1986, she'd starred in a movie called witchboard, which i came across soon after first seeing the whitesnake video. cable tv was sort of a new thing in our house & my dad had started taping movies off of showtime. when he wasn't paying attention, i'd scan through them. that's when i came across witchboard. i fell in love with it & it TOTALLY had nothing to do with the fact that there's a scene in it that represented the first time i ever saw a specific part of the female anatomy...courtesy of tawny kitaen.

in the film, she plays a woman who becomes terrorized & eventually possessed by a ouija board because she keeps using it alone. obviously, the spirit terrorizing & possessing her (this dude named "malfeitor") is evil, so people start dying in hilarious 80s horror ways. there's a sweet impaling, a dude who gets crushed when something falls on him, all that good stuff. if you head over to youtube, there's a short montage of scenes from the film, perfect for some quick guffaws. overall though, it's a pretty spooky film. to this day i'm not so cool with using ouija boards. based on my recent dating record, i'm just as frightened of the other things i saw in the movie as well.

lucky spooky 13! our thirteenth beer of the pumpktoberfest season is the st. ambroise pumpkin ale, from our good friends north of the border in montreal. i found it late one eve/early one morn at a bodega about some twenty blocks down fifth ave from my apartment. on my evening rides home, i've been hopping off the train quite often & treating myself to the healthy/gourmet wonders they have there, from local macro vegetarian dumplings to fresh fruit to amy's teriyaki wraps to vosges chocolate bars. they also have a pretty good beer selection & on one of my pumpkin beer excursions, i came across this one completely out of the blue. with every other beer i've tried this pumpktoberfest season, i'd read about it online & was keeping an eye out for them. with this one, i was all "a canadian pumpkin beer? well i've never!"

it's actually not that bad. it's a light, smooth, orange-colored ale with a prominent cinnamon taste & smell and a light pumpkin flavor. for some reason, even though i've been beaten over the head with a number of pumpkin beer spice explosions for most of the month, i enjoyed the wealth of cinnamon in the flavor. the bottle smells like a scented candle! i give it a sept point trois! tres bien! & with that, only three more beers to go!...& my top three horror films! it's going to be a pumpktoberfestastic finish to the month! stay tuned!

nosh nook #163 - wednesday, october 28, 2009

modesto snack shack: big dream starts tiny (link)
10.27.09 - the modesto bee - by marijke rowland

man, the nyc department of education has really been going crazy recently in their fight against obesity in the schools. it's all part of them trying to get in line with a wellness policy they created back in june. a few weeks back, they signed a new contract to overhaul the school system's vending machines. now they've decided to crack down on bake sales as well. they're making it so peeps can't make any money. sorry, chess club. why don't you try selling bags of m&ms on the subway like those nice teens trying to get uniforms for their football team?

in california, education & snacking are a whole different animal. as the modesto bee reports, cedric & alivia king, a home schooled brother & sister from modesto, recently opened the "snack shack," a "lemonade stand on steroids," on their front lawn. kids love steroids! since they're home schooled & according to cedric, have "free time now," they had their dad build them the snack shack, which opened three weeks back, jack. from the shack, they're selling items like gum, candy, chips, soda & energy drinks that they've bought in bulk at costco.

their house is located right across the street from the high school, where you probably can't buy the stuff they sell at the snack shack, so they get some foot traffic (about twenty people a day). their mom says they're getting a permit & making it all legal. once that happens, cedric's all about pouring the money back into the business, but alivia wants to be able to buy a pet snake. hellz yeah, little girl. let me guess...your brother's the nerdy one? she also likes working at the snack shack better than doing schoolwork for some reason, but unless she continues working for herself, i bet she'll one day rethink that stance.

nosh nook #162 - tuesday, october 27, 2009

cheesecakes vs cheese steaks (link)
10.26.09 - the ny times - by jennifer 8. lee

woo hoo! game one of the world series is tomorrow night! championship yeah! are you friggin pumped, philly? i wasn't on your side for any of those NBA conference finals back in the 80s, but i'm on your side this time! that's because you're taking on the yankees & those douche nozzles are my sworn enemies so i'm supporting you! their douchiness is your gain, phillies! fyi, it's the world series, so you need to use a bounty of exclamation points or you won't be taken seriously as a sports journalist! steve phillips, for instance, didn't use enough exclamation points. ha!

so yeah, go phillies. win your senators some cheesecake. according to the ny times, "if the yankees win the world series, new york senators charles e. schumer and kirsten e. gillibrand will get a supply of philly cheese steaks. if the phillies win, pennsylvania senators arlen specter and bob casey will win a supply of junior’s cheesecakes." maybe if the phillies win, junior's will throw in a free mouse for the PA senators! senator specter feeds on baby mice anyhow. well, at least he does if he still has room after eating a 543 calorie, 37g of fat slice of junior's cheesecake. surprisingly, that's actually less than his state's cheese steak, which has 690 calories & 29g of fat.

as the times points out, the best part about the whole world series wager is that senator gillibrand "was just railing against obesity monday morning at a rachael ray event." maybe it's just a friendly wager & we shouldn't look into it that much, but maybe gillibrand's PR people should coordinate her messages better? if they did, glen caplin (her chief spokesman) wouldn't have to call back the times & utter the words, "the senator believes in everything in moderation, except winning world series titles." um, nice save glen but GO PHILLY! BACK 2 BACK!