#101 - drrrty.

yr so drrrty! yeah, manhattan, i'm talking to you. don't act like you didn't hear me. i know you're leaps & bounds cleaner that you used to be, but there are still friggin' bags of trash everywhere all the time & inadequate trash cans on your streets & the S-M-O-G & FIFTEEN swine flu deaths. i swear i sucked in a radioactive gas & a tapeworm in times sq the other day. hey brooklyn! for the most part, you're cleaner than manhattan but i'm keeping an eye on you. don't think i haven't noticed all that dog poop on the park slope sidewalks.

when it comes to thinking about where i'd like to finally put down roots, i'm a wavering individual. i've lived in nyc for more than any other locale besides nh (sorry, boston) & love it here, but sometimes, the urbanness of the city really gets to me.  i can easily escape into prospect park if i want nature, but i don't know if i could buy some property & settle down here because i could never sit on my back porch & gaze off into the silence of the vast woods behind me.  as i get older, that might be integral toward keeping my sanity intact.

...but new york has so much cool crap going on all the time.  how could i leave that behind?  there's an abundance of bands & live shows here & speaking of dirty, i gave the new album by brooklyn's dirty projectors (bitte orca, which came out last week) a good listening to this weekend.  a few weeks ago, i finally gave their previous album, 2007's rise above (an album that's an attempt to recreate black flag's damaged without having heard it for fifteen years) a listen.  HATED IT.  this new album's good though.  the songs are a bit more structured but still have some obvious jangliness to them.  they bring the rock, so the kids can probably dig this a bit more than the previous album.

speaking of dirty...real dirty, can we talk about porn star sasha grey (NSFW) for a moment?  she stars as a call girl in steven soderbergh's new film, the girlfriend experience, so i've been coming across articles about her here & there.  rolling stone did an article on her entitled "the dirtiest girl in the world."  i read it over a series of trips to the can & the one thing that i can't shake from my head is the mention of her debut porn scene, where she asked her co-star to punch her in the stomach...basically, she's friggin' dirty.  she wants girls to know that it's OK to be a slut.  she reads neitschze & brecht.  she just turned 21 back in march.  now she's the star of the new soderbergh film.  i'm intrigued, so i probably have to see it, no matter how dirty it makes me feel.

#101 - drrrty.
snack: food should taste good jalapeno tortilla chips
drink: function: urban detox citrus prickly pear drink



since i believe that food should taste good, the other day, i picked up a bag of, um...food should taste good jalapeno tortilla chips, which were conveniently discounted at one of the better-than-average neighborhood supermarkets. based in needham heights (just outside boston), food should taste good is a brand started by some dude named pete lescoe back in 2006. his secret? he bakes the ingredients right into the chips. genius.

it makes for a really flavorful chip & they even have a little spicy kick to them, since there are jalapenos baked right in. they're the sort of tortilla chips that are just fine sans salsas & guacs & dips & whatnot. if that sounds yumtastic to you, they have a $1 off coupon on the website. all you have to do to get it is join their fan club. since all i do every weekday when i'm on the clock is work on fan clubs, i went for it & joined. to be honest, i'm not sure what it gets me other than a spot on the mailing list & this coupon...now i just need to find me a bag of the chocolate kind so i can redeem this puppy. tasty discounted chips rule!

after being in the city all week for work, i spent my weekend exclusively in brooklyn, but still needed to wash the city away, so with the chips, i cracked open a bottle of function: urban detox citrus prickly pear drink. it includes the "smog-scrubbing" super-antioxidant N-acetyl cysteine (NAC), which is apparently "designed to evict the free radicals hanging out in (my) lungs and sinuses." if there's one thing i loathe, it's free radicals in my respiratory system, especially them hippie greenwich village radicals.  they should lock em all up, i tell ya. scrub this city clean.

anyway, the urban detox is made with science!...& prickly pears! dangerously spiky tasty prickly pears!  get this...the prickly pear isn't a pear at all.  it's actually a cactus!  that's right.  i drank a cactus.  i'm not afraid to get down & dirty for the blog, drink a little cactus for my readers.  i'm crazy like that.  only in new york!

nosh nook #65 - friday, june 12, 2009

thank you for purchasing our product (link)
06.11.09 - kfsm (ft smith/fayetteville, ar) - by pop culture package

...so it turns out that there are actually satiric & slightly cynical, funny people in the ft smith/fayettevile, arkansas area. i know! i was shocked too when i first found out, but it's totally true...& they're penning pieces for the local cbs affiliate, spitting the wit for their razorback brethren. the target of their satire? the food industry. i could say something fish in a barrel-related, but i won't.

the food industry would like to "thank (us) for purchasing (their) food-like snack," which comes complete with "only the most processed ingredients full of sodium, high-fructose corn syrup and additives." mmm. apparently, these food-like snacks also "may contain broken-off pieces of the equipment (they're) made with." i hope their processing equipment is made out of gummy worms...preferably the green kind! gummy-worms go really well with food-like snacks. they go "less well or not at all with food-like snacks not produced by (the company that makes the food-like snacks)."

these days, companies are really trying to do their part to be involved in their communities. if you buy the aforementioned food-like snacks, "five percent of the profits from this food-like snack (will) go to the north korean nuclear program." asians are so good at science! the best part about the food-like snacks is that they've been made "by machines that are untouched by human hands," meaning that when you eat them, "you are the first human being to gaze upon your food-like snack."  that sounds extremely exclusive & if there's one thing i enjoy, it's exclusivity.  thank you for purchasing your product?  no, food industry...thank you.

nosh nook #64 - thursday, june 11, 2009

crow meat comes back -- boosts sexual potency? (link)
06.09.09 - national geographic news

if you'd come up to me junior year of high school & were all, "hey, shawn. get this. in 2009, when you're 34, they'll be a time when you'll be living in brooklyn & you'll have this blog that loosely revolves around snacks & has a weekday morning column focusing on snack news. in june, for two days straight, the main topic of that column will be crows"...i'd have been all, "slow down there, tiger. that's crazy talk. first off, what am i doing in brooklyn?" and "what do crows have to do with snacks?" and "wait, i have a column? does that mean i've achieved my dream of becoming a journalist?...& what the hell is a blog? " regardless, that day has come, so screw it...i'm writing about crows again.

today's nosh nook article comes to us from national geographic. here in the u.s., "eating crow" means "admitting a humiliating mistake," but in this case, as NG reports, in lithuania, crow has once again become a delectably popular dish. initially, crow "was part of a traditional diet throughout the centuries mostly eaten during times of hardship." these days, they're now a part of traditional feasts. why? according to lithuanian dalia keriene: "this is a great dish, crow meat is very tasty and good for men because it increases sexual potency. try it and you'll see." really? sexual potency? make no mistake about it...there isn't anything wrong or humiliating about that.

apparently, you prepare crow by boiling it in cooking oil at around 190° C (375° F). i've never tried quail myself, but it tastes sort of like that & goes great with vegetables. i'm not sure what would lead people to believe that if you eat a crow, you'll boost your sexual potency, but if it works for them, more power to them. the way i figure, if you go the crow-eating route, you don't have to waste a bunch of money on viagra and when the time's right, you get to say something like "hold that thought, baby sugar cakes pumpkin butt. i gotta go munch on some crow...get in the mood, if you know what i mean." what woman wouldn't get turned on by that?

#100 - happy anniversary!

this monday was my parents' thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, meaning that in just over five months, i'll be turning thirty-five. they've stuck it out even though they haven't always had the most normal relationship, but i congratulate them. they seem to be trying hard at making this growing old & retiring thing work. if they had never met back in the early seventies, some marty mcfly shit would happen & you wouldn't get the chance to read this right now & that'd be a tragedy on the level of the great boston molasses disaster of 1919. holy molasses! that's tragic!

yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of eat!drink!snack! [insert fanfare here]. when i first launched the blog last june, i was just hoping it'd be a way to get me to write more. after yesterday's second meditation was posted, i'd written my 100th "meditation" column since the blog's launch. those pieces have definitely evolved over time. of the two columns i've added, the weekday "nosh nook" snack news item/journalism critique has got me in the habit of being informed about what's going on in the food industry and i've been consistently delighted by the weekly "snack away!" guest columnists, some of whom i didn't even know had writing skillz.

my top five fave topics from the last years' columns are, in no particular order:

• snack away! #5 - deez nutz. - guest blogger wilky wilk almost had to cancel on me at the last minute, but he came through with a reminder of his verbal hijinx. i urge him to bring back clownbaby.com (his old blog site) or some new incarnation ASAP.
• #52 - bcs bs. - doing a live rundown of a sporting event was one of those experiments i wanted to give a whirl. now that i've done it, i'm ready to live-blog the 2012 election. i'm looking in your direction, cnn.
  
• #74 - 1974. - in honor of my birth year, i looked into the events of 1974 & soon discovered that there was a lot of violent stuff happening...i guess that's any year though. plus, i was reminded how much yoo-hoo sucks.
• nosh nook #50 - friday, may 22, 2009 - thanks to the folks at jack's links, i now know that MATADOR is the most extreme meat stick on the market. radical teens crave it for snack consumption.
• nosh nook #12 - tuesday, march 31, 2009 - the headline said it all..."prostitute paid with chicken snacks." sad story. hilariously-phrased.

over the next year, i have a ton of random ideas for the site, both columnwise & otherwise, some of which will actually pan out & you'll notice over the coming months. esperanto month? maybe. insect thursdays? possibly. an off-off-broadway musical? if you're lucky. the world is my oyster or dumpling or something! so yeah, seriously folks who drop by...thanks for reading.

#100 - happy anniversary!
snack: joyva jell ring
drink: naked gold machine juice smoothie



with the anniversary & whatnot, i was totally jellin' late last night, so i decided to treat myself to a three-pack of joyva jell rings. they're a simple candy--chocolate covered raspberry jelly rings. they're made by the joyva corp, a local company who crafts their magical jell rings right here in scenic bushwick, brooklyn. i guess that makes me some sort of locavore or something.

biting into these things was a much more pleasant experience than i'd anticipated. the jell's not all that weird & it's a little firmer than i expected, which is somewhat of a plus. i definitely wouldn't want some watery smuckersesque nonsense squirting out all over the place with every bite i take. well played, joyva. i'm a fan of fruit & chocolate pairings and since the raspberry is currently vying for the top spot on my fictional "best fruits to pair with chocolate" list, i really dug the jell rings.

since i'm currently addicted to smoothies but still too lazy to make my own, i'm pairing the jell rings with a naked gold machine juice smoothie. naked's become my go-to smoothie & i generally stick with the "machines." in terms of how often i get the different kinds, it's the first time i've tried the gold machine, but the green machine's my current favorite at the moment, followed by blue, with red holding down third place. i usually struggle with justifying the price, which ranges between $3-$5 depending on where you are in the city, but in the end, i never complain, as without fail, naked smoothies have been giving me energy & bringing me back to reality on a regular basis recently.

the gold machine is made up of one golden kiwi (which sounds like an indy jones quest item), one banana, two apples, a hint of passion fruit & pineapple & a bunch of vitamins & healthy stuff. it's a little sweet, even for me, but regardless, i have to put it on the same level of tastiness as the blue machine. it's going to be tough to knock off the green machine though.  as weird as it looks, i can't get enough of it.  it's like the smoothie equivalent of ben stiller.

nosh nook #63 - wednesday, june 10, 2009

junk food gives crow chicks a weight problem (link)
06.09.09 - new scientist - by macgregor campbell

i grew up a curious child who collected national geographic animal cards, a child fascinated by the earth's cornucopia of animals. since they were one of the animals i actually got to see on a regular basis, i came to like the crow. sure, i saw chickadees & sparrows & purple finches every day, but those birds were tiny & none of them had the rebellious jet black appearance of the crow. crows were clearly a far superior bird. now, as an "adult," i may have to rethink my childhood theories about them.

as macgregor campbell reports, a group of researchers at binghamton university learned that while suburban & urban crows have a more dependable, easily accessible food source, the "leftover french fries and donuts a crow would find at these sources may be fine for adults, they can have a detrimental effect on growing young crows." the researchers discovered that "not only were suburban nestlings smaller than their rural brethren, their levels of blood protein were also lower. the results suggest that their diets, while adequate in terms of calories, lack nutrients that nestlings need to grow to their full potential size."

it's mind-boggling.  according to kevin mcgowan, one of the study's co-authors, "if someone throws out trash, then the crows eat the trash instead of, say, a baby rabbit."  when i read that, i was floored.  what kind of being turns down a perfectly tasty baby rabbit?  while researchers believed it made sense that the crows would go for the food that was easiest to find, they didn't know why the crows would feed their young the less nutritious foods.  maybe they just want to be like us intelligent humans.  after all, if it wasn't for us, they never would have been able to experience the awesomeness of a hostess twinkie.  that would have been a crying shame.