#140 - ...the end of the year as we know it & i feel meh.

time to do some reflectin', loyal eat!drink!snack! readers! loyal readers, you're SO loyal that i'd feel bad if i lied to you & said that 2009 hasn't been the most exhausting year thus far in my 35 year existence. i think it was that way for a lot of people, so at least i'm not alone, but man, i am so ready for 2010 to begin so i can implement some sort of calendar based-psychological shift & let the happiness start rolling on in again. as that shift approaches, i definitely have a lot to be thankful for, but there's a lot going on in my world & the world at large that calls for the use of a rather large frowny face, one with non-true blood or twilight inspired fangs. 

at the start of the year, when we were inaugurating the new hope & saying goodbye to eight years of bush hell, i tried to be optimistic that obama & democratic congressional majorities would turn the country around, but twelve months later, i can't say that i'm impressed. guantanamo's still open, the health care debate is off-the-rails & the current bill is disgustingly compromised. ten percent of my friends still can't get married. we're upping the troop count in afghanistan, but that was expected, since obama did say that he would do that in the campaign. i didn't vote for him though, so i have a right to be disappointed by him.

...but there are a bunch of bright spots. despite the music industry's shortcomings, i'm as excited about music as i've ever been (year end bests to come!). the same goes for tv. for the first time in a long time, i can't count the shows i follow on my fingers alone. i need toes too! i wish i could say the same about film. as for the world of literature, 2009 marks the first year in my life that i didn't read one book...not one. instead, i spent the time that i would've usually spent reading books on the internet, reading blogs & news sites. i can't say i'm sad about the lack of books in my life this year though, because i've consumed enough media & info that my curious nature has been sufficiently sated.

i've also had an unquantifiable mess of fun in '09. there was my summer chicago trip for the pitchfork festival, where 1% of the calendar year equaled 10% of my 2009 fun. there were bunches of concerts, including multiple bday week dirty projectors shows, this summer's phish shows & ac/dc from the second row. there were the occasional visits from out-of-town friends, from the periodic todd martin visit to drop-ins by now-new orleans resident mike weber to a long weekend visit from my childhood friend & strong proponent of portland, chris dorin. as a bonus, when chris visited, he brought me a booyah amount of snacks from oregon, which will soon be featured in a january series i'm putting together on portland & their mostly-awesome snacks.

the thing i'm most thankful for at the year's end is the fact that i still have a job & as of jan 1, will have been at my job longer than any other in the past. as of november's numbers, 10% of the nation's still unemployed & throughout the course of the year, i've lost a number of co-workers to job cuts. having a job means having a roof over my head & that's something i've reminded myself of all year long. it also means that i can maintain a constant flow of tasty snacks & drinks into my belly. it means that at night, when i'm tired & done with people for the day, i can return to my abode, sit down with a snack & drink & engage with my best friend, this here blog.

2009 was the year when this here blog & writing in general became one of the most important aspects of my life. 2009 was the year where folks started introducing me as "a writer" as opposed to "some guy who does some music industry thing." 2009 was the year where i penned thirty something columns for the amazing fuckedinparkslope, which is run by ms erica, just one of the amazing people i met this year & someone who, just a few weeks back, elegantly captured the reasons why having a blog both totally fucking sucks & totally fucking rules.

for eat!drink!snack!, 2009 was the year where i introduced a new column that's now helped me reconnect with journalism (my initial college major). it was the year where twelve folks (& my bro) blew me away with hilarious/insightful guest columns. it was the year where i OD'd on pumpkin beer for a month. it was the year where i finally decided to sort of think about what i was eating. for eat!drink!snack!, it was a good year. for me, it was meh. i'm already way optimistic about 2010 though. if nothing, we'll get the final season of LOST, a show with a title that's quite fitting for the times. once that's done though, i'm not sure what we'll do. hopefully we'll learn something about how to reset time or something.

#140 - ...the end of the year as we know it & i feel meh.
snack: blue diamond habanero bbq almonds
drink: tröegs dreamweaver wheat ale



as i sit here reflecting on the past year, i'm snacking from a can of blue diamond habanero bbq almonds that i came across this holiday season up at a nh wal-mart. i have a long & colored history with blue diamond, from their lime chili flavor that i tried out way back in january as an accompaniment to college football's '08-'09 championship game to their wasabi & soy sauce flavor, which was my #1 snack of 2008. the habenero bbq ones are one of a few slightly-new blue diamond almond flavors & from what i can tell, they're so new that they haven't had the resources to add them to their website yet. stupid economic downturn. here's to them making it onto the website in 2010.

they're aight & definitely live up to their name, with sufficient bbq flavor & sufficient spicy pepper flavor on blue diamond almonds. a year after declaring them my #1 snack, i'd still pick the wasabi & soy sauce ones over any other nuts. i don't think i could say the same thing for the habenero bbq ones, but they're still pretty damn good. they have a taste akin to a good bbq chip (which, btw IMHO is hard to find) & the habanero flavor adds a nice kick to the mix. plus, with blue diamond almonds, as long as you're a fan of nuts & near-excessive flavoring, you really go wrong. they're tasty & relatively ok to consume, with their fiber & low carbs & whatnot. if you can find them wherever it is that you live, they're definitely worth checking out.

since i started dreaming of a more-promising 2010 months ago, i'm pairing the almonds with a bottle of tröegs dreamweaver wheat ale, made by harrisburg's tröegs brewing co. tröegs has been brewing out of PA's capital for the last decade plus & at the moment, they offer over a dozen beers, all with puntastic names & interestingly-designed labels. i've tried out a couple of their beers, including their sunshine pils, which i tried out back in april. although the sunshine pils was one of three tröegs beers that won a medal at this year's GABF & promised the sunshine of pils, i still felt pretty meh after drinking it. overall, from what i've sampled of their beers, they've been good but nothing special.

as for the dreamweaver, it promises dreams but was also fairly meh. the flavor's fine & all, but it's pretty much your average, everyday wheat bear with less of a cloudy, wheaty consistency than you'd expect from a good, quality wheat beer. i drank it relatively quickly & when i was done, i had trouble thinking of anything unique about what i'd just drank. their website mentions that is has a slight banana taste, which would have been unique, but i didn't notice it at all. it's also only 4.8% ABV, so if i was looking to get shnookered (fuck it, i'm on vacation!), i'd need to down a bunch of them to reach my goal. in this economically-challenged, post-9/11 world, having to do that somehow seems wasteful.

nosh nook #191 - monday, december 7, 2009

coming to a theater near you: the snack police (link)
12.7.09 - smartmoney - by kelli b grant

i have to be honest with you. pretty much every time i go to the movies, i'm at least sneaking in a soda. like most rational human beings, it kills me to pay $4.00 for a friggin fountain soda. it's just insane. are we living in japan or something? i mean, i get it. theaters make a huge portion of their money off of concession sales, so they need to keep that revenue stream pumping. unfortunately, we're living in a crap economy & money's down all around for theaters, concessions included. as a result, theaters are starting to crack down on people cutting into their precious concession revenue by bringing stuff in with them. just last week, the second biggest theater chain, amc theaters, announced that they're ending their policy of letting people bring snacks into the theater. they figure it's time for us cheapskates to start ponying up at the concession stands.

since the movie theaters are trying to milk us for all we're worth at concessions, smart money has a few tips to help us save money elsewhere when we're venturing out to the cineplex during these tough economic times. basically, their tips add up to a bunch of ways to take advantage of discounts. for starters, lots of theaters have loyalty clubs that "offer gratis and reduced-price snacks" at those lame times when nobody goes to the movies, which works out swimmingly because you're also trying to save money by going to a tuesday matinee. luckily, you & your three closest friends are unemployed, so you can easily work it into your schedule. even if you're still employed, you can buy packs of vouchers that offer discount prices on concessions.

their best suggestion is to "pick your movies carefully." i couldn't agree with this point more. there is no reason that you need to rush out & see madea goes to jail in the theater. trust me, you can wait until it comes out on dvd. if you're going to see crap, at least go see something like transformers, something that requires a big screen to really appreciate all the extraneous explosions. it's pretty self-explanatory. stop seeing so many crappy films & you'll save money.

as a service to my readers, i'm going to offer up a movie savings tip of my own: just keep sneaking snacks in. laws are meant to be broken, people. it's not like a theater's going to pat you down on the way in, so you can easily smuggle in a candy bar & a couple of nips no problem. it's no $10 jumbo popcorn/soda combo, but you don't need that crap anyway. from what i hear, that combo has as many calories as a small baby. nobody should eat an entire baby during a summer blockbuster. it's just not healthy.

nosh nook #100 - saturday, august 1, 2009

how america eats has changed; snacking is the new meal (link)
07.30.09 - the register herald (beckley, wv) - by john blankenship

straight out of brooklyn, the $5 slice (link)
07.30.09 - the ny times - by manny fernandez

sorry for the nosh nook delay, folks. yesterday morn was a little off the normal schedule for me. i was planning on heading to liberty park for the all points west fest (more on that debacle to come later), so in order to leave work at a reasonable enough time, i planned to get into work at the SHOCKINGLY early time of 9:30. when i woke up yesterday morn to pen a nosh nook about john blankenship's thursday piece about how america's meal habits are becoming more snack like, i came across this OTHER ny times article & decided i just had to write about that instead...so i waited on it til today. plus, it's the 100th edition of the nosh nook so i like to be happy with the pieces tied to randomly important sounding numbers. i know...excuses, excuses.

so this times article by manny fernandez focuses on di fara pizza, a new york legend located in the midwood neighborhood of brooklyn & run by a 72-year old guy who only uses ingredients flown in from italy. they recently raised the price of a slice to $5, which is a big deal to a lot of people because as fernandez notes, "the price of a slice has long been one of the city’s unofficial economic indicators." even bloomberg's had something to say about it. “the real question, relative to the local economy, is whether people are trading up from a $2.75 slice or down from a $25 entree, and from what i hear in the subways and on the streets, it’s probably a mixture of both. but if you’ve ever had a really great slice of pizza, you know there are worse deals.” ok bloomy, we get it. you ride the subways like us regular folks.

a mother of a friend of mine works somewhere in the public sector in a job that has something to do with the city economy, so they contacted her for this article. she let them know that they should contact her son, who i've heard rave about di fara at least once a week for months now. while he didn't provide an official comment, he told his mother to tell them that "hell yeah it's worth it." i haven't tried it yet myself, but don't see anything wrong with paying $5 for a slice if it rules that hard. anyway, the times article looked at it from a slightly different angle (more with the ties to the greater economy), but it's a topic that the ny post already reported on way back on monday, so i wonder if some scooping happened here. mmm...scooping.

nosh nook #36 - monday, may 4, 2009

machine dispenses snacks while bbc talks doom and gloom about the economy (link)
05.03.09 - slipperybrick.com - by conner flynn

how would you like it if every time you got bad news, you got a snack as well? swine flu has shuttered your country? here's a bag of doritos for you. your fiance is a murderer? crack open a cool, crisp nestea. eighty civilians died today in a bombing in your village market? have a clark bar. it's pretty obvious that if we had vending machines that took the edge off bad news with a free snack, life would be a lot sweeter. at the plymouth college of art, in the u.k., such a vending machine exists. in this case, it's just an art project, but that's technically still reality.

as flynn notes in the article, bbc headlines come up on a monitor attached to the vending machine. every time a headline speaks to bad economic news, the vending machine dispenses a packet of walker's crisps, which you can take. glasgow based ellie harrison, the current artist in residence at plymouth college of art, developed the piece, which speaks to both generosity & "a time in the future when our access to food may literally be determined by wider political or environmental events. we may not be able to access what we want, when we want, at the touch of a button."

vending machine from ellie harrison on vimeo.

i like it.  good concept.  good snacks.  good art.

nosh nook #8 - wednesday, march 25, 2009

when economy sours, tootsie rolls soothe souls (link)
03.24.09 - new york times - by christine haughney

holy crap! did you hear that the world economy is totally in the shitter? it's true. everybody's getting bailouts. it's so bad that just the other day, the good people of aeg touring had to band together & create a bailout package for michael jackson. only took them a few hours to get that plan in action. all he has to do is play 50 shows at london's o2 arena. if he actually survives to the end, it'll set the record for the longest residency by one artist at one place. take that prince! pfft. 21 shows.

one area of the economy that doesn't need a bailout is the candy industry. they're doing just fine, thank you. you know how i know? because the ny times said so & they would never ever lie to me. according to christine haughney, who wrote the article, gives us a wide range of perspectives from candy store owners around the country. no matter who you ask, whether it's candyality in chicago or economy candy in the lower east side, things are as peachy as those yummy gummy peaches. people need their candy, y'all.

she goes on to note that the economic stability is also seen amongst the manufacturers & in fact, cadbury, nestle & hershey have all seen recent profit growth. thank god for that, because the last two are working with multiple billions of dollars in revenue & as we all know, companies of that size are just too big to fail.