nosh nook #47 - tuesday, may 19, 2009

when twitter met food trucks (link)
05.18.09 - cnet news - by caroline mccarthy

social networking, status updates, shameless self-promotion...is there anything twitter can't do (in 140 characters or less)? as far as i can tell, the answer is "no." in fact, it's become so helpful & totally important that for a number of food trucks in nyc & l.a., it's a key promotional tool, helping them spread the word about their businesses & build a loyal customer base. as a result, the food truck craze is now upon us.

as caroline mccarthy reports for cnet, these mobile businesses aren't just hawkling junk food from the back of a truck. in nyc, the wafels & dinges truck peddles "wafels of mass deliciousness," while in l.a., kogi bbq trucks dispense korean bbq tacos. both have used twitter to let customers know where the truck will be parked, develop a community of customers & even hold little contests & junk. personally, i think it's friggin brilliant (no rent, community building) & apparently, so do a bunch of other people. there are other trucks in both cities, but there are others in other cities. san fran has a truck that sells frog legs on the go & portland, oregon will soon be getting a korean taco truck. yum & yum.

as is usual in this great nation of ours, with its opposing viewpoints & such, there are some who aren't so psyched about the food truck craze. for local business owners, with rent & whatnot, mobile trucks just mean more competition to deal with. here in nyc, a local starbucks in the west village even went as far as to have the iconic orange mud coffee truck booted from sheridan sq...probably because they don't have a twitter page. sorry starbucks, but this is what you get for having a business model that involves jacked up prices, rapid expansion & paul mccartney.

late side note: how crazy is it that cnet has articles like this, articles that are 50 times more in-depth than most major news outlets' output?

#92 - leery of denis.

it's no secret that this past year, i've been doing my share of tv watching & have declared my undying love for a number of fx series--damages, it's always sunny..., sons of anarchy, the shield--but until recently, i've held out on rescue me. i have a love/hate relationship with denis leary. back in college, i chose to read no cure for cancer as part of my american humor class. it's pretty funny, but the shtick bores me & sometimes annoys me. i decided to give the show a shot regardless. i took in the first season over the last few weeks, but yesterday, i barreled through the second season & um, HOLY CRAP.  the shtick doesn't bother me at all.             

i really like it. the show focuses on a firehouse in manhattan just after 9/11. peeps are having all sorts of issues exacerbated by the 9/11 baggage. leary's character is in a marriage that's fallen apart & he starts getting it on with his cousin's widow (via 9/11). the other members of the crew include a guy who starts writing poetry, a guy who falls for the only female member of the crew, the chief, whose son is a gay firefighter in boston & whose wife is suffering from alzheimers, a guy who falls for a "fat chick" (a girl who i definitely saw in my hood this weekend) & a guy who perpetuallly wanders through hookups. there are a number of other stories going on at all times, told through reality, religion, ghosts, hallucinations & dreams. it has a manly feel, but gets into the feelings of men.  for those interested in men, um, hot firefighters talking about their feelings.

my dad's father was a fire chief in chelsea, mass, just north of boston & logan. he definitely saw people die in the line of duty & his loyalty to the people he worked with is evident in the stories he tells. i've gone down the white collar tract, but there isn't a month that passes where i don't wonder what it'd be like to know a trade--welding, firefighting, anything in construction--instead of spending my weekly 10-6 in an office. to be honest, i didn't really consider my grandfather' profession until i started watching the show, but damn...the shit these characters on a tv show deal with, i'd be a mess.

luckily, i have two and a half more seasons to keep me busy, because i'm hooked. it's funny & smart & stupid and when it tiptoes into sentimentality, it's usually in a good way. my mom's mom died after a bout with alzheimer's, so by the end of the eighth episode of the second season, at the end of a bbq for his son's boyfriend, when the chief is accepting of the circumstances & dancing with his wife and his son & boyfriend are dancing beside them & all the crazy shit that alzheimers thrusts upon families is set aside for the moment, i totally broke down. oh the crumbling human body & oh to grow old with someone.

#92 - leery of denis.
snack: madhouse munchies fire sweet mesquite bbq chips
drink: anchor steam summer beer


how friggin coincidentally perfect that the only snack left in my cupboard saturday night was a bag of madhouse munchies fire sweet mesquite bbq chips. it's got "fire" & "madhouse" in the name, so that's rescue me in a nutshell. i'm usually skeptical of anything mesquite, but these had an appealing sweetness to them & were actually pretty good. they're kettle cooked, which seems to be the way to go these days.  it gives the chips ten times the crunch of a lame lays potato chip.

a bonus: these chips aren't all greasy & smeared with flavor like some other kettle chips.  this is slightly weird to me, given that they're made in colchester, vt & most of the people i know from that area are wicked greasy & smeared with flavor.  jk vermont!  lol!  one thing i do know about colchester...winooski broke away from it back in 1922.  those crazy secessionist winooskians.  go spartans!

as for tonight's beverage, the anchor steam summer beer, it's not as firefighting related as i'd have hoped for, but it's out of san fran, a city which, given the attention that the show pays to male identity & the way it deals with homosexuality, it seems perfect anyhow.  it's a wheat beer that has a light, summery taste & a smidgen of flavor to it.  i could definitely drink a few of these on a hot summer day...perfect for both the gay & non-gay beer drinker.

luckily, it's almost summer & it's going to get so hot out here in the nyc any day now that things will start bursting into flames right on the streets...& firefighters will be there.  down in lower manhattan, at ground zero, there will still be a hole in the ground, but you will be able to get a t-shirt that shows you what used to be there.  you can probably get a bootleg FDNY cap there too.  final destination of proceeds is unknown.

nosh nook #46 - monday, may 18, 2009

dallas couple finds jesus inside cheese snack (link)
05.16.09 - dallas/forth worth news 11 - by beth wagner

the best thing about finding jesus is that he's so omnipresent & everyone's done such a bang up job spreading his word that you can find him pretty much anywhere. these days, you don't even have to be in a church to find him. he's on t-shirts. he's on tv. as a dallas-area couple discovered, he's even in your afternoon snacks, just waiting for you to eat him. it's like the body of christ you get during mass but cheesier & less like styrofoam.

when the texas couple found a cheeto shaped like jesus, dallas reporter beth wagner just had to find out more about this miraculous discovery. as her hard-hitting journalism explains, one day, on the way out of town, dan bell went to the gas station & picked up a bag of cheetos. in his munching, he came across a particular cheeto that was shaped like jesus & decided to keep it, even naming it "cheesus." a word of advice to my friends & family--if i ever start collecting & naming my snacks (before later trying to sell them on ebay), please contact a doctor on my behalf.

my favorite part about wagner's story is where she speaks to the ubiquitousness of cheeto jesus--"various incarnations of cheesus have shown up before; in houston, missouri, and on the internet site youtube."  no way!  on the internet site youtube?!!!  i mean, houston & missouri make sense, maybe even a conan or ellen appearance, but i didn't think that cheesus would ever go on youtube!  that means they've really hit the big time!  congratulations internet website http backslash www youtube.com!  a word of advice to you regarding your new found fame...don't start worshipping the cheesus, because you'd totally be breaking a commandment if you did...number one, i believe.

nosh nook #45 - friday, may 15, 2009

vancouver mayor pays up after lost hockey bet to chicago counterpart (link)
05.14.09 - vancouver sun - by gerry bellett

yesterday was a sad day for my hometown boston bruins, as they exited the playoffs after losing to the carolina hurricanes in game 7, in overtime, with the winning goal scored by the same guy who had sucker punched a bruins player just two games earlier, possibly breaking a bone in his face. on monday night, the vancouver canucks suffered a similar fate, as they were bounced from the playoffs by the chicago blackhawks, 7-5.

as gerry bellett reports, yesterday, his hometown mayor--gregor robertson--made good on a bet he had with chicago mayor richard m. daley, where the mayor of the losing city had to send a package of local food & drink to the mayor of the winning city. robertson shipped daley "cases of beer from molson’s, granville island brewery and storm brewing; musqueam first nations smoked salmon; dried morel mushrooms from pacific rim mushrooms; chocolates from bad girl and purdy’s; que pasa hand-cut organic tortilla chips; vegetarian blueberry sauce from thai princess and a couple of cartons of the mayor’s own happy planet fruit juices." HOLY CRAP. you can leave that molson's junk up in canada, but i would eat the hell out of everything else in that gift bag. daley's sending robertson a consolation prize--chicago beer & sausages.  sorry chicago, but i'd much rather have the vancouver stuff.

it makes me chuckle a little bit. to an outsider like myself, robertson & daley seem to be from two completely different planets. robertson presides over the most marijuana friendly city in canada, gets to oversee the city during the 2010 olympic games & is the co-founder of happy planet, an organic food & drink company. daley is chicago irish & the son of the notorious richard daley. he's also a year-and-a-half away from beating his father out of the title of longest-serving mayor in chicago history. he's trying to get the 2016 olympic games, may be the most powerful mayor in the country & is definitely no stranger to controversy...a totally different planet--the daley planet.

nosh nook #44 - thursday, may 14, 2009

list calories, and diners will at least look (link)
05.13.09 - boston globe - by stephen smith

we new yorkers have always been trendsetters. last year, led by the genius of folks like nanny-mayor mike bloomberg, we forced restaurants with more than fifteen nationwide locations to list their foods' calorie counts on their menus, allowing restaurant-goers to assess the damage before deciding what to eat. now, after a few other locales (philly, seattle) have jumped on board with this idea, massachusetts has decided to join the party.

as steven smith reports, posting calories has had some effect on peoples' purchasing decisions. "surveys by the new york city department of health suggest that the calorie counts at least make people think a bit more about what they put in their stomachs." i've always been a bit skeptical of the idea that chain restaurants should be forced to post calorie counts. on one hand, i'm all for keeping businesses honest, but on the other hand, i'm not sure it's the answer to our health & dietary problems. if consumers can't figure out that a mcdonalds big mac has a lot of calories by now, they probably shouldn't be eating it. although MA is the exception, with their state-mandated health care, i find it perversely humorous that governments in general fight so hard for regulations such as this, but not to get people health care.

since this article came out yesterday, the mass public health council has voted to adopt the regulations, meaning that starting in november 2010, any restaurant with over twenty locations will have to start posting calories. all the thousands of other restaurants in the city don't have to worry about it though, so unless you're someone who eats at mcdonalds every single day, you're not going to know how many calories you're taking in at all times. if you are eating fast food every day, then you have an issue that's larger than restaurants posting calories on a menu board.