foodvents #1: heinz-falutin'.

hey, so real quick...occasionally, i find myself at food events & eat a bunch of stuff & would love to give said gluttony a writeup now & again, but the tale doesn't usually fit into any of my existing columns. sayonora to that worry. the upside for you is that you get to enjoy this TOTALLY NEW, TOTALLY EXPERIMENTAL new column, where i go to food events & eat food & vent & yeah...FOODVENTS. [rim shot].

...so last week, i was kind of a high roller. i'm not really one who goes to press events & all but a kind blog buddy named amanda (read her blog yeah you're welcome or die, bitches) turned me on to a TOTALLY EXCLUSIVE heinz ketchup event going on in the city. i was all "hellz yeah. i love me some heinz ketchup." plus, eat!drink!snack! has NOT been giving ketchup its propers. three plus years & one ketchup post (about herr's ketchup chips) prior to this one? unacceptable. anyway. next thing i knew, it was an early evening on a thursday & i was knee deep in ketchup & ketchup-related items.

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the fifty states project #6: CA.

if i've learned one thing from 2 pac & dr dre, it's that california knows how to party, or at least they'll know how to do so in the year 2095. personally, though i've attended a number of rockin' parties in the san fran area in my time, i can't attest to southern california's partying skillz, so i'm just going to have to take their word for it. since the state's got the most people of any in the nation & an economy that's larger than canada's, i suppose that their ability to throw an acceptable party is pretty good. they could get beer from their hundreds of fine craft brewers, wine from their hundreds of fine vineyards & weed from their thousands upon thousands of fine weed proprietors. any cali band except for the red hot chili peppers or green day or blink 182 can provide musical entertainment. if all that cali party awesomeness doesn't do it for you, you can just drive east to vegas to gamble your face off amidst a blur of neon, hookers & adrenochrome.

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cut copy bday BBQ.

photographic evidence of food & drink at my oft-brooklyn flea companion jessica's bday BBQ gathering in prospect park just outside the bandshell, where cut copy was playing...

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snackdown! - 2.19.10

it's official, world. it's been a world-class week ever since they lit up the doobie-inspired olympic flame in vancouver last friday. personally, i haven't watched a single minute of the games but from what i hear, we've already had triumph & heartbreak & even death. throughout it all, we've had copious mcdonald's commercials advertising their "sweet chili sauce," the very same duck saucesque sauce eaten by olympians in the olympic village! the same sauce eaten by all those world-class athletes who've decided to wait until the week of competition to say "fuck all" to the strict diets they've been adhering to during their years of training & start wolfing down athlete-sized portions of chicken mcnuggets. maybe the curlers are able to get away with eating mcdonalds, but i'm even skeptical of that. regardless...world-class week.

• last friday, as part of little debbie's 50th anniversary celebration event, airtran unveiled the "little debbie 1," a boeing 717 jet with little debbie's smiling face plastered onto the side of it. in addition to introducing the plane, airtran & little debbie be cross-promotin', giving away fifty vacation packages to lucky customers. at the event, they also announced the winner of their little debbie look-a-like contest, tennessee seven-year old rhea lynne connor. i don't know. she sorta looks like little debbie. since she won, her face is going to be featured on boxes of little debbie for a limited time. too bad she doesn't get it on the side of a plane. (seattle post-intelligencer)


• in the category of "that's bloody disgusting," starting today chessington world of adventures, a u.k. theme park, will be giving away free sample bags of edible insects to guests. theme park general manager david smith has given the insect treats a test & gives them the thumbs up, but he's general manager of a theme park with an area called "beanoland," so you sort of have to take his opinion with a grain of salt. if it turns out that people actually enjoy the bags of edible insects, they plan to start selling them in "wild asia," the new asian-themed area of the park. what can we learn from this? asian people are synonymous with eating bugs. (the telegraph)


• are you obsessively following the olympics? does anyone even do that anymore? if you are olympic-obsessed, you're probably the type of person who would get a kick out of making your very own olympic-themed snacks. luckily, the philly inquirer has offered up a recipe for nanaimo bars, a british columbia coffee shop staple. the treats, which are named for a town on vancouver island, are made up of three layers, "a chocolate-graham cracker base embedded with coconut and nuts; a buttercream middle enriched with vanilla custard; and a smooth dark chocolate top." if you're fancy, you can even top them with icing in the shape of the olympic rings. they're apparently pretty fattening, but what do you care? it's not like you're competing in the olympics or anything. (philadelphia inquirer)


• i don't know what's up with nicolas sarkozy's conservative-republican party, but they seem to have issues with the french muslim population. first they go & ban burqas & headscarves & now that quickburger (a local chain) has started serving burgers made with beef slaughtered according to sharia law, they've got their panties in a bunch again. apparently they're extremely concerned that the existence of sharia meat will lead to cultural isolation. um, yeah. the best way to promote cultural harmony is to take issue with a certain section of the population's religious-based dietary habits. that makes perfect sense. keep up the good work, france! (ynetnews)


• cnn, the cable news channel known for seamlessly blending disaster stories, celebrity breakdowns & political scandal into award-winning news programs, has jumped on the snack bandwagon with their "snack nation" column, a part of their tokyo-based "cnn go" coverage. the column, which provides coverage of different japanese snacks, has in the past taken a look at items such as "chocolate sparkling soda" & "pepsi azuki" (a red bean-based beverage). this week, they reviewed kirin's "espresso tea," a black tea product. according to the review, it actually tastes more like a cafe au lait than espresso, but what did you expect? after all, it's a tea leaf-based canned beverage. from what i can tell, there's not a lick of "espresso" in it...crazy japanese. (cnn go)

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?