nosh nook #140 - friday, september 25, 2009

police: vandal goes on snack attack at UC (link)
09.24.09 - wlwt.com

i'm pretty sure i've seen the movie p.c.u. over a hundred times since it came out during my sophomore year of college. that movie rules. everyone had a cause to trumpet, from the animal rights protesters who got a tub of meat dumped on them to the penis-hating womynists. after an entire film where the members of the pit had mocked & harassed all the politically correct groups on campus, they're all brought together to party as one when p-funk shows up on campus & plays the pit's rager. coeds love partying just as much as they love causes. college campuses have always been a place for flourishing activism, as plucky young boys & girls blossom into adulthood & decide they should at least stand for something, not knowing how beaten out of them that something will be by their mid-thirties. when your cause is still meaningful to you, it's a lot of fun. sometimes you protest peacefully, sometimes not. sometimes you get shot or tear gassed by cops, sometimes not.

it looks like there's was a bit of activism on the university of cincinnati campus just the other day. as wlwt reports, u.c. police arrested matthew peterson, a twenty-something dude with a "dude" sort of look when he "cut the electrical cords and data phone lines off of multiple vending machines, rendering them inoperable." vandalism! three counts! one! two! three! vandalism goes on all the time on college campuses, but when you make it so that wasted, hungry college students can't get their late-night cheetos fix, you cross a line & that just can't be tolerated.

where's the activism come in? campus police said that "peterson vandalized the machines because he didn't want people to eat the unhealthy food." dude cut the cords because he wanted to make a statement about unhealthy snacks. really dude? that's how you decided to make a difference? by cutting the cords of three vending machines & doing it in such a lame fashion that you got caught? i seriously hope you were all hopped up on goof balls at the time & hadn't thought it through properly. it's great & all to take action & get college students to eat healthy, but to be in your twenties & do so in such a ridiculously ineffective manner is some serious high-school shit. better luck next time, matthew.

the musical fruit: movement #10.

the musical fruit: movement #10.
song: "funny the way it is," dave matthews band
fruit: forelle pear



i don't mean to turn this column into a constant trip down memory lane, but here goes. i used to really like the dave matthews band. i saw them in concert a couple times around the first album & definitely had the exclusive recently ep you could only get via mail-order. it was during college, which is pretty much the only time i find it acceptable for anyone to listen to dave matthews & it was a time when i was playing a lot more guitar. my buddy tom & i had a band called "secret ninja." we had an album's worth of originals in our repertoire, but we definitely tried to learn a lot of the songs from under the table & dreaming and crash as well. a good portion of the time, my fingers were too small/inexperienced for the funky dave matthews chord structures that gave their songs their texture. anyway, good times but i haven't listened to the dmb in a decade.

now they have a new song--"funny the way it is," the first single off of their upcoming album big whiskey and the groogrux king. stupidest. name. ever. it's ten times worse than return to cookie mountain. i learned of it because tom mentioned a "new dave matthews band song" on his facebook wall. first i learn about michael jackson's death from my facebook wall & now i learn about this. who says facebook is a useless, mindless time suck? not me. the song's typical dmb. by that i mean that the opening lyrics are "lying in the park on a beautiful day, sunshine in the grass and the children play. siren’s passing, fire engine red, someone’s house is burning down on a day like this?" it goes on like that, with such groanworthy lyrics as "funny the way it is, if you think about it. one kid walks 10 miles to school, another’s dropping out." deep, dave. deep. it's like "ironic," but not as funny. the music's inoffensive enough, but i can't get past wanting to punch dave matthew's lyrics in the jeans.

last night whilst taking my trip to the dmb, i had myself a forelle pear, imported from dave matthew's homeland of south africa. this particular one was grown by capespan, a global fruit company that's located just a few miles east of parow, a northern cape town suburb. that's my last name! it's like i'm eating my neighbor! capespan grows a ton (bunch?) of fruits--citrus fruits, apricots, plums, avocados. junk like that. two of their avocado types are the "pinkerton" & the "ryan." that's my high school & roommate! so yeah, i really feel like i can identify with capespan.

the picture above is actually of a forelle pear i got earlier this month. by the time i finally got around to eating it, it was mealy & disgusting, but i liked the photo, so it stuck. last night's pear was significantly less orange & less mealy...tinier than your average pear but more enjoyable. i enjoy eating fruit with the skin on it if at all possible & the forelle passed the "skin on" challenge. the inside had a somewhat crisp feel & a taste that i can only describe as "peary but better." it wasn't the del monte's fruit cocktail pear of my childhood but a real, sweet but unsyruped pear. funny the way it is...it went down better than the new dave matthews band song did.

nosh nook #123 - wednesday, september 2, 2009

so this is dorm food (link)
09.02.09 - l.a. times - by david ross

in case you haven't heard, dorm food is the worst. they usually make it out of pigs' noses & discarded leather jackets & 1920s newspaper clippings, but it's college, so you live with it for as long as you can & hope that you don't get a tapeworm. i was lucky enough to only have to spend one year in the dorms & therefore only had to endure dining hall food for that year. the other three years, i was in apartment style housing, where i had a stove & microwave & toaster oven & was able to retain complete control over my cuisine. over time, i became quite the spicy stir fry whiz kid.

saul sutcher, a student at l.a.'s snooty occidental college (home to obama for two years) couldn't take dorm food either & decided to do something about it. as the l.a. times explains, after trying dorm food for a while his freshman year, he "started eating off-campus as much as (he) could afford." that first summer home, he interned at eccolo, "a high-end trattoria" in berkeley. sophomore year, he & a small group of friends started getting together for dinners that they made in the dorm kitchenette & by second semester, it'd turned into a full on cafe called "cafe norris" with a first meal that featured "pancetta-wrapped quail, butternut squash and ricotta ravioli, and tarte aux pommes for dessert." fancy!

this summer, he worked some connections to open a successful version of the cafe (cafe 20) back in his hometown of berkeley. now that he's back for his junior year after a summer working with small dishes, he's planning on creating dishes such as "braised goat, rabbit medallions and salad of house-cured anchovy with toasts." the kicker is that on the last day of school last year "signs appeared in dormitory kitchenettes stating they were to be used only for warming foods." sutcher is hoping that occidental will be flexible on the policy & still let them cook full meals. after all, the dinners build community. without fancy dinners, they'll have to resort to normal college community-building exercises--keg parties or passing the bong or something.

#82 - a wing & a player.

 ...so friday night i met up in the city & spent a few hours in midtown (eek!) having beers & conversation with a college friend who i hadn't seen since we graduated twelve years ago (eek!) & found ourselves out in the non-mtv real world (eek!). with my nh upbringing, back in college, when i first met him, he represented a good portion of my initial experiences with nyc types & dramatic types & literary types.

i originally met him during my sophomore year through his cousin, the only girl who lived in our fraternity house. we're both irish & thus enjoy drinking & were in college & not yet beaten down & around the fraternity & whatnot.  as a result, we shared countless late nights of intellectual/philosophical discussions during our time at b.u.  we're both wicked smaht.

so i haven't seen this guy in over a decade & we met up at a bar located at the bottom of his apartment building.  i showed up after work, around 7pm, but since he's not working, he'd been there since noon & drinking since four.  as such, he already had a bit of the enhanced "everyone here is awesome & you should all know each other" swagger that i remembered of him from our college days.

since we were spending the evening on his block & at his regular bar, during the evening, i got to meet everyone who came within ten feet of us.  during the night, i heard the half-joking phrase "oh, you knew him back in college, huh?  you must have stories!" a ton of times.  i was introduced to all the cute female bartenders.  we spoke to a hot mommy outside of the bar, as she returned with her baby from some sort of hot mommy happy hour event.  in addition, he seems to attract famous people, so he regaled me with sweet stories of all the people he's brushed elbows with over the years, including informing me that a relative of his is soon to be married to one of america's most hip, radical authors.

anyway, he's a blast to hang out with & tends to make every moment interesting & friday night was no exception...a high-roller & a true player.

# 82 - a wing & a player.
snack: buffalo nickel honey mustard horespower wingers
drink: newcastle brown ale


it's been a rainy saturday, so tonight, i'm staying in & chillin' & snacking from a bag of buffalo nickel honey mustard horespower wingers that i picked up at the local bodega.  buffalo nickel makes five versions of their "wingers," each with a number rating denoting their hotness.  from tamest to hottest, the flavors are "no bull barbecue," the honey mustard ones, "nacho chilichanga," "caribbean zing" and "fiery buffalo bleu."  they have a makeup that's similar to bugles, with a light crunch, round shape & hollow inside...and of course, there's the awesome, slightly-winglike, slightly-squashlike shape.

these honey mustard horsepower ones have a flavor that's pleasant enough but sort of off.  i utilize honey mustard quite often in my sandwich-making & pretzel-eating & was initially pretty excited about them, but after eating a few, i felt a bit underwhelmed.  the honey mustard taste occasionally shines through, but the horseradish is almost non-existent & overall, the taste left in my mouth was only tolerable with something to eventually wash it away.

...& my choice of weirdly-tangy wing flavor eradicator is a newcastle brown ale.  back in college, newcastle was my beer of choice, the beer i'd carry around in my backpack at frat parties to avoid having to drink lame keg beer.  it remained my beer of choice for quite some time but over the years, as microbrews have exploded in popularity, i've found myself with many more choices, choices which when compared to newcastle, are way better-tasting.  regardless, for me, i still enjoy the slight-bitterness of a brown ale & it's still a nice, easy-drinking beer, so i continue to return to newcastle every once in a while, if only for the place it holds in my history.

on a college related, player-related note, b.u.'s hockey team totally took the national championship tonight. go sports!   sigh, if only i had cable...then i'd be a player too...until then!

#6 - university salute.

i was raised roman catholic, meaning that i am totally down with the guilt & the shame. as a result, for about a week now, i've found myself reflecting upon the early bloggy days of eat! drink! snack! & feeling that the chosen snacks & drinks for my first few entries may not have been of the healthiest variety possible. also, the "snacks ain't healthy enough" issue may have had a tiny bit of something to do with my trip to the beach last weekend.

to combat this wickedness, i decided yesterday that when i was at home tonight, i was going to have some sort of snack that embraced health & more specifically, some type of fruit.

today was when i decided that regardless of whatever fruit i chose, i was going to take that fruit & dip it in nutella...& have it with a tasty beer.

#6 - university salute.
snack: strawberries & nutella
drink: wolavers' organic oatmeal stout

my senior year of college was the first year that i lived off campus, in a just-remodeled apartment in the allston area of boston, where i lived with three sophomore roommates i had met the year before. we had a porch off the kitchen, which gets me on a side track. i've yet to have a porch in new york...just rooftops. new york prefers rooftops to porches for some reason...maybe because porches are best for sitting & we can't sit still for a spell in this city to save our lives.

two of the roommates were a couple. the guy was a younger fraternity brother of mine from romania via lower jersey & the girl was in the same program as he & the daughter of a diplomat. she loved carnivale. they spent a high percentage of their waking moments together, many of them at the apartment. i don't think either of them had to do much cooking until they came to college, so when they ate, they fell back on a lot of the same foods & dishes. one such item consumed in mass quantities was nutella, or as i like to call it...chocolate of the gods. they ate it by the spoonful, dipped breads & fruits & meats & whatnot in it and for all i know, probably poured it all over each other. it is a wonder that they didn't both gain immense amounts of weight or develop a candy shell.

the other roommate was a girl who i also met the year before, a time when i was dating her roommate & she was dating mine. this roommate of mine she was dating was a good fellow, another of my fraternity brothers. he was totally from vermont, dude...the sort of guy who got kicked out of a yanni concert for brawling with a canuck.

in remembrance of this era of my life, tonight's snack pairs the healthiness of hazelnuts & chocolate with strawberries, who won out over the mango when i didn't feel comfortable with my ability to judge the ripeness of a mango on the fly. sure, i could have used it as an opportunity to strike up a conversation with someone, since i hear it is a great way to meet babes in a grocery store. does this mango feel ripe to you...babe?

that's not really my style though.

the wolavers beer, brewed by otter creek brewing company in middlebury, vermont, contains the healthiness & starting-your-day-right goodness of oatmeal with the certified goodness of organic beer. mmm.

vermontwise, middlebury is about an hour south of winooski (the town outside burlington where my former roommate grew up). to compare, winooski has its down-the-street proximity to higher ground & phish (who rumor has it may be reuniting!), but middlebury totally has a college that's a member of the little ivy league. they're so tiny those lil ivy leaguers! i'd pinch their lil middlebury panther cheeks if the panther wasn't such a ferocious jungle cat!

good pairing. definitely healthy.