nosh nook #58 - wednesday, june 3, 2009

starbucks revamps bakery food ingredients (link)
06.02.09 - reuters - by lisa baertlein

when it comes to shopping with a conscience, starbucks has always been one of my main nemeses. over the years, i've definitely done my fair share of starbucks bashing, but have also made my fair share of starbucks purchases. without fail, i end up with one or two starbucks gift cards per year, which leads to me making a few trips a year. this usually snowballs into me going back even after the gift cards have run out & as a result, i end up spending actual money there as well. occasionally, i'm just buying coffee, but since the flavor's a bit too rich for my tastes, i'm usually spending money on their baked goods & sandwiches.

as lisa baertlein reports, at the end of june, starbucks will be overhauling its menu & offering customers healthier food options. this means that they'll "begin selling baked goods without high-fructose corn syrup or artificial flavors and dyes," items like a banana walnut bread made from only eleven ingredients & a reduced fat very berry coffee cake that's twenty percent fruit. these efforts even come with their own clever tag line--"real food. simply delicious."

starbucks' food division has constantly struggled, but they hope that making a push toward using healthy, all natural ingredients in their foods will allow them to finally right that ship. michelle gass, starbucks' executive VP of marketing, noted that "food has always been the achilles' heel of this company...that statement will be long buried after we launch this program." it's funny, i always thought their achilles heel was their inflated prices...or their until-recent practice of flooding the market with starbucks...or their anti-unionization tactics. apparently it's not. it's their pumpkin bread.

#24 - beantown.

seriously, boston. sometimes i just don't give you the love you deserve, especially when it comes to your music scene. i was born in 74', which means that i was in high/school college when the notable boston/mass bands included the pixies, sebadoh, belly, morphine, the lemonheads, juliana hatfield, buffalo tom, the mighty mighty bosstones.

until much later, i didn't listen to any of them, save a buffalo tom song on the no alternative compilation. a recent girlfriend was shocked dumbfounded surprised that i had never listened to the pixies. luckily this was a few years prior to their reunion tour, so i was hip to that when it came round.

during my high school/college years, i was giving compton & seattle & york, pa a lot of my love, but my boston area bands were letters to cleo & dinosaur jr, a testament to my preference for pigtails & guitar soloing weirdos.

& then i moved to nyc (save five months in 06') and to me, the boston music scene became as familiar to me as the akron, oh music scene.

#24 - beantown.

snack: ghirardelli intense dark citrus sunset 60% cacao
drink: blueberry cobbler flavor new england coffee

seriously, that's how you spell that company's name? ghirardelli? c'mon? really? the letter combos make me afraid to even run that one through the spell check.

so tonight i was walking to pathmark to pick up a few things, including a snack for the evening and on my walk there, was listening to the new amanda palmer album (the videos are the best part!)...boston music...a boston artist who has been around since the beginning of the decade as half of the dresden dolls but who has flown under my radar until recently. it is officially my favorite album right now, with that okkervil river album coming in at second. alphabetically, it is the first album on my ipod, which means that if i just keep pressing the play button on my ipod all monkeylike, without really even paying attention, it goes to that album by default. the first note is loud & hurts my ears sometimes when i do that though. anyhow, maybe you should give it a quick listen or maybe you shouldn't.

...so i walked to the store listening to amanda palmer & anticipating a boston creme pie to snack on in celebration of boston. when i got to the store & went to the freezer section, i thought differently. boston creme pies are friggin' $8. f that. ain't nobody's birthday up in my apartment tonight.

so instead, i went the gourmet chocolate route with the ghirardelli (thank you cut & paste function) citrus sunset...cacao beans for beantown.

i needed to re-up on the coffee as well & to my delight, the bags of fresh ground new england coffee were on sale for as much as the run-of-the-mill pathmark brand, so i went for the blueberry cobbler flavor. new england represent. fruit represent.

the results...the chocolate is really good. it's dark chocolate with bits of orange and caramel crunch, all things i love. the coffee is also really good. so good that the two cups i've consumed should have me up into the morning with caffeinated bloodstreams. usually the caffeine doesn't have extreme effects, but right now, i'm amp'd, folks. oh, wait...

AMP'D.

...and a side beantown note...this is blog entry #24...the number worn by my favorite baseball player growing up & the owner of the one of the top moustaches in red sox history.

#18 - satisfied?

what do you need in life?

is it a deeper spirituality? is it a soulmate? is it financial security? is it another drink? is it adventure? is it a winning team? is it relief from back pain? is it tropical climates? is it to be thanked? is it another kid? is it another cheeseburger? is it a daily jog? is it an alibi? is it peace & quiet? is it another scratch ticket? is it a hand to hold? is it companionship? is it taller shoes? is it to get a man? is it to get away from your man? is it a ride to the mall? is it hot sauce? is it deodorant? is it a digital converter for your tv?

have you already found what you need?

i know i have.

#18 - satisfied?

snack: snickers rockin' nut road bar
drink: coffee

dude, all i need in life is a snickers...& a coffee, i guess, but mainly a snickers. they are so satisfying, especially when i'm not going anywhere for a while. i don't retain that much advertising, but i can't recall coming across an ad for the snickers rockin' nut road bar, so i've come up with one for them, based on their past ads, which i've slightly retained/looked up on the internet. mars corp...if you'd like to use my idea, please leave me a blog comment & i will get in touch with you with my price.

ext - iraqi desert - night.

the night sky is pitch black & in the distance, there are sounds of bombs falling. suddenly, the blackness is broken by a flame from a large lighter, positioned underneath a smore on a stick.

off screen, a voice shouts "put out that light right now!" the fire goes away. we see a dejected soldier giving his commanding officer the finger in the darkness.

title card: NOT GOING ANYWHERE FOR A WHILE?

the soldier breaks into a box of mres, pulls out a snickers rockin' nut road bar, tears it open & bites into it. he is clearly satisfied. he passes out snickers bars to the other soldiers & they are all satisfied. everyone in iraq gets snickers rockin' nut road bars & the satisfaction is contagious.

title card: GRAB A SNICKERS.

#13 - backyard yumfun.

i spent this past weekend up in n.h. at the parents' house, celebrating my father's retirement from the the u.s.p.s. after 38+ years of service. government jobs are strange animals that breed interesting people. these jobs & people have things like pensions & grievances & overtime rules & seniority & pay scales & a union. whereas my father had all these things, i, at the one job at which i even had the chance to join a union (when i worked for b.u. after college), chose not to join, half because i felt unions pressured people into joining & half because i couldn't afford it. oh to be a naive 23-year-old again.

the retirement gathering was on saturday at the house of one of my 6'0" tall almost-16-year-old brother's friends, whose father my father has become friends with. they live in a house with a yard that slopes down from the road past the house & some landscaping into the backyard, where the grass continues downward around the pool & pool house and rolls for a while before hitting the sand area, featuring a horseshoe pit & bocce court. off to the side, there is a shed & behind it all, there are two tall trees, from which they have hung a 30' x 50' screen that they pull out at will to project movies onto in front of the forest. one phrase i overheard from one of the more-grownup-than-me grown ups was "he must have at least an acre here." i am not the one to verify acreage, but i was duly impressed with the environs.

it was a perfect day weather wise & a 4pm start time gave the heat a chance to partially subside. after three hours of yummy catered food & homemade salads of both the fruit & vegetable variety, the sun began to go down & our hosts capped off the meal with a table full of cookies & treats, of which i chose...

#13 - backyard yumfun.
snack: many dainty canollis
drink: iced cappuccino

...& we waited quite a while for the sun to go down so we could watch the slideshow my brother & his friend had thrown together in the hours before the party. the husband host offered up coffee beverages. i was away at the restroom & missed when he initially took orders, but when i returned & saw people with cups that featured a straw sticking out of them & a whipped cream topping, that changed faster than you can say "gimme." turned out they were iced cappuccinos & turns out it was the best iced cappuccino i have ever had...ever...in the history of me.

coming into the gathering, i had expected that, given the flagpole that jutted out of the sand area & held both a large italian flag & a large american flag, that the evening's dessert would feature either tiramisu or cannoli...either way, i knew victory would be mine, yumwise & when they brought out the boxes of dainty cannolis, my tastebuds flashed the ol' V sign.

as we waited for it to be dark enough for the slide show, i passed the time with my tasty treats & a conversation with my dad's friend/our childhood dentist, a man who, when i was a kid i thought of as "preachy." now that i'm an "adult," he is "opinionated." during our chat, his wife brought up this youtube clip, which captures him at his dental office on this january's nh primary day working on a patient whilst talking politics. he commented that it had over 1000 hits already.

finally, the sun went down & my brother put on the slide show. we got to see my father graduating, in various poses with the four children and in a series of photoshopped photos that placed him in canada, paris & italy (where he also had a photoshopped afro & sunglasses). among the photos were photos of me, my oldest brother & my sister as "adults." as my teenage brother had put the whole thing together that afternoon, he pulled this photo of me off myspace & it became the adult photo representation of my dad's eldest son:

i would have gone with one where i wasn't half blinking & at a party, but that's just me...& in a time that lasted in the area of two minutes, the slideshow looped back around & was over. soon after, the guests started to head for home. i hung around for a while & left with my mom for home, with approx. fifty pounds of food in my belly, all topped with dainty cannolis & iced cappuccino.

#5 - hot chocolate.

oh to the days of summer, oh so fun. jacques heim & louis reard, i salute you wholeheartedly. today, i traveled to atlantic beach, out on long island, with a few folks, two of whom were basically from the area we were in, although it appears as if they were those working as cabana boys at the beaches & not those owning the houses on the beaches. since they were from the area, we went to a local deli-type place where all the sandwiches were named after the various beach clubs. i got the ocean club, with its chicken & craisins & feta & felt like quite the vip. i also picked up a snickers charged bar for later, not even considering that after three-and-a-half hours in the sun & a day that later led to a tube of aloe, said snickers bar would be a melted mess. i tried putting it in the fridge to turn it back into some sort of solid, but i just couldn't bring myself to eat it.

#5 - hot chocolate.
snack: snickers charged bar
drink: maxwell house french roast iced coffee

...so when i was later at the rite aid counter purchasing aforementioned aloe, i chose to give snickers charged a second life. later in the evening, at the stroke of midnight, i "settled down" for a tina fey/carrie underwood snl rerun (featuring mike huckabee) & what i like to call my "midnight special"--a candy bar infused with caffeine, taurine (not to be confused with chlorine), and b vitamins...paired with a cool, summer glass of iced coffee.

first off, this candy bar features a rhino on the packaging. right off the bat, that gets me pretty amped. rhinos mean two things--DANGEROUS & HUGE. i am expecting that upon consuming this candy bar, i will fly into a dangerously huge rhino-like rage, a rage not unlike one expected from the incredible hulk, who, btw, does not have an endorsement deal with snickers as of yet...snickers does, however, have an adventure bar!...& who likes the adventure bar? who? harrison ford, or possibly a character played by harrison ford, that's who. arti-FACTS! exotic spice! hint of coconut! with all its mars-based tie ins, you'd think i'd feel compelled to go see this movie about crystal skulls, but i haven't, because crystal skulls are totally fake & i apparently now hate anything that isn't steeped in realism. thanks a lot, survivor.

the best part about iced coffee is that it is coffee, but with ice in it.

seriously, check out the maxwell house website if you are so inclined. among its many features are a "smile report," a "which brew are you" function & a "good news" section. the current good news articles are "fourteen tips to avoid nagging," "red panda twins born at zoo" and "dog rescues drowning boy." can you guess the target market? i'll give you a hint...it's not me. i guess i should toss my remaining grounds & go to the starbucks across the street from my d.u.m.b.o. office & get me a bag of $11 sumatra/peru blend for what is probably a pretty good cause and/or tied to paul simon. target markets are funny.