#165 - something's fishy.

something smells fishy around here. at first, i figured it was just the foul-smelling scent of city garbage marinating in the hot summer sun, but that smells more like cheese than fish. then i thought that maybe i'd forgotten to put on deodorant this morn. after a couple of sniffs of the pits, i ruled that out as well. was it actually fish? it couldn't be that. i hardly ever eat fish outside of a sushi joint. you know what? it's probably just a dead possum caught in the floorboards. oh, wait. i live on the basement level. i don't even have floorboards. i bet it's just a case of something that's metaphorically fishy, like the rod blagojevich trial or a perp's story on CSI or a BP solution, which, come to think of it, is both metaphorically & tragically fishy.

you know what it probably is? it's probably that frankenfish they're creating. have you heard about this? the FDA currently has the issue of approving genetically engineered salmon on their plate & any day now, there's a good chance they'll allow it to be introduced into the food supply. it'll become the wave of the future! depleted fish stocks be damned! i know, i know. by calling them "frankenfish" & not "genetically engineered salmon" and by writing "introduced into the food supply," i'm imbedding language that attempts to sway your opinion on the matter. that's not fair. i haven't even formed my opinion about whether or not we should be manufacturing fish & then consuming said fish alongside our genetically modified corn & potatoes. tasty, fishy science! but really, i should just let you form your own opinion.

gut reaction: no friggin way. you can't just whip up a salmon in the lab, slice it thin, toss it on a bagel with some schmear & call it safe, right? if there actually is a god, i have to imagine that he would not be cool with that. do we want to anger a vengeful god? so yeah, gut reaction: no friggin way. i trust the internet more than i trust my gut though, so i decided to be open-minded & do a little research before condemning the tech-salmon right out. according to salmonnation.com, some boston-based company called aquabounty technologies has developed a way to, using growth hormones, grow salmon two to four times faster. mmm...growth hormones. the ny times reported on the subject a few weeks back & it sounds like the FDA's close to approving the technology. the salmon are the same thing taste & nutritionwise. they wouldn't be introduced into the environment either, so there's no impact there.

if they do let aquabounty go ahead & distribute their salmon-growing technology, it could open the door to other animals being genetically altered. next thing you know, companies are making fat-free bacon & cows that don't pollute the earth with their farts & poo. i'm all for more bacon and less cow farts & poo, but i'm still skeptical that it can be done without side effects. i'm sure we can get by on non-manmade fish for now & if we screw that up, we can just move on to veggies or another animal, something that's sustainable, at least for the moment. i don't know, really. the idea of genetically-altered fish just sounds messed up. i suppose i just prefer my fish to come from fish sex, not from fish science, ya know?

oh & while we're on the subject...PHISH.

snack: xplosive pizza flavor blasted goldfish crackers
drink: snapperhead i.p.a.

in honor of all this fishiness, i've assembled a fish-themed snack-drink combo. for my snack, i went with a bag of xplosive pizza flavor blasted goldfish crackers. back when i was a lil tyke, we only had plain, cheddar & pretzel goldfish. nowadays, pepperidge farm makes two dozen types of goldfish, a bunch of which are FLAVOR BLASTED. basically what happened was they realized that their plain, cheddar & pretzel goldfish were LAME & not flavorful enough, so they decided to BLAST them with flavors, flavors like nothin' but nacho, burstin bbq cheddar, monstrous mozzarella stick, raging ranch, slammin' sour cream & onion and the explosive pizza ones. as you can probably tell by the names, they're pretty hip. they even have a sweet jingle sung by two dudes, one of who looks like the lovechild of sammy hagar, dan cortez & nickelback's chad kroeger.

the back of the package asked me "READY TO GET XTREME?" it was late in the evening, but i was totally ready, so i went to the site the package told me to go to...goldfishfun.com. i LOVE fun! it's like my thing! when i got there, i was greeted by a plucky goldfish with sunglasses named FINN who was hanging out in a virtual bedroom. he said "follow me!" & then went under the bed. i had no choice but to follow him under the bed, where a few of his goldfish buddies were hanging out. they'd stashed a laptop, a tiny sports stadium & a poster with some "missing" goldfish on it. the poster pointed to a mouse hole in the wall just beyond the bed, so i bet the mouse took the "missing" goldfish. case solved. i could go on for forever about the site, but i'll let you discover all four seasons of the "goldfish films" TV show on your own. that's right. you read correctly. the show is now in its fourth season.

they made a good move in choosing to BLAST the goldfish with flavors. the ones i remember from my childhood were bland & unaccompanied by mascot-driven online fun. these pizza ones are cheesier than an episode of 24. XPLOSIVE. i guess they're pretty close to pizza. they're made with tomato sauce and cheddar, romano & parmesan cheeses and sprinkled with a red, pizzalike powder. i definitely felt sufficiently BLASTED with flavor...like in my mouth. i'm pretty sure you'll like their XPLOSIVE PIZZA FLAVOR BLASTED all over the inside of your mouth as well.

it's a scientific fact that goldfish go well with beer, especially when said beer is fish-themed, so i paired my XPLOSIVE goldfish with a can of snapperhead i.p.a., a beer brewed by butternuts beer & ale, an upstate new york brewery that also produces pig, cow & alien-themed canned beers. their pig-themed beer, the porkslap pale ale, was one of the first drinks i reviewed here at eat!drink!snack! & my #8 drink of 2008. they're just one of a handful of breweries that have recently returned to packaging their beer in cans, a trend that's actually made it possible to get good tasting beer in cans. while butternuts beer isn't the pinnacle of this return to cans, they put out a respectable canned beer.

i'm not sure that i.p.a. is the right classification for the snapperhead. it definitely doesn't taste like one. it's a hazy orange beer with a slight citrus smell to it, but it's definitely not as malty or hoppy as the name might suggest. the i.p.a. designation is fishy & overall, it's a fairly average beer. i was expecting more from it, but was happy that it was at least flavorful. put it this way...it's the kind of beer that if you brought a six-pack of it to a BBQ this summer, you'd be cooler than the guy who brought coors light, partially because it tastes much better than that crap but mostly because you brought a beer with a walkman & sunglasses-wearing fish on the can.