pumpktoberfest #43 -
treat yoself.

spice up yer nuts.
 

pumpktoberfest 2010!

#195 - links &
drinks 2011.
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Entries in lemonade (6)

Tuesday
May032011

flea at laff #11: brooklyn bangers.

snack: beef brisket hot dog
drink: lemonade

when it comes to sleeping in, i rule. i'm pretty much a world champion at it, especially when my brain whips together yarns that'd make luis bunuel giddy. why wake up when i'm getting a free, private screening of a never-before-seen bunuel film? this past saturday, i was in the middle of a prime sleeping session, making my way through a series of surprisingly hot & steamy dreams. before i knew it it was 1pm, the sun had been shining upon brooklyn for hours already & i hadn't made it further than kicking the covers off...yeah, adulthood. to remedy this, i got the hell out of bed, quickly made myself presentable & headed out the door for the flea. i figured it was the least i could do to get my day started.

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Wednesday
Jun022010

#159 - by the time i get to arizona (pt 2)

during the first two days of my trip to arizona to visit the sis, we tried something called "guacummus," paid a visit to a famous breakfast joint in phoenix & brewery in tempe, and mixed in some at-home snacking. over the final two days of the trip, we just kept on eating with a purpose.

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Wednesday
Sep022009

#123 - breaking news!

breaking news! california's on fire again! over 100K acres! it happens every year like clockwork. nature shows its destructive side or some jackass starts a fire & next thing you know, the california hills are ablaze & firefighters & helicopters are all over the place & people end up losing their houses. that has to suck, especially since if you're living in the hills, you probably have a sweet ass house, the kind that hurts extra bad when it burns up. the entourage house from the first couple seasons is totally on fire! that actually started in the kitchen, but there are probably some sweet houses getting torched right now. breaking hearts!

breaking news! disney bought marvel! i know, right? i'm not even a comic book fanatic & i know that's a big deal. the most powerful, happy, family friendly entertainment company on the planet is now in charge of a roster that includes more brooding characters than a paramore show. it only cost disney $4 billion, but it's money well spent. think of the possibilities! just as they did with beauty & the beast, the little mermaid, mary poppins, they could take spiderman & put him in a broadway musical, providing another cheesy outlet for tourists. oh wait. they're already doing that...with u2. maybe a thor musical with music by led zeppelin then? breaking boundaries!

breaking news! millions of people cried "hot yahoo! my mail is down!" on tuesday afternoon when gmail stopped working for them for almost two hours. whatever, right? if your friend doesn't get back to you about plans for friday, it's all good. you wait. here's why it was so awful: apparently some businesses depend on gmail as their primary source of email. seems like sort of a cheap way to run a business. i mean, even i have a dedicated email address for this stupid blog. it's sad but true & so it affected their workflow or something. breaking bad!

i have to level with you. technically, none of that stuff is breaking news any more. cali's been on fire for a week now & the disney/marvel thing happened on monday. the gmail breaking catastrophe isn't even breaking news any more since i decided to pass out last night before finishing writing this.

breaking news! shawn watched mad men & played games on his ipod for way too long & watched the season finale of f/x's rescue me & consumed a goat's worth of goat cheese (it's back in the house today) & fell asleep around 2am listening to the sounds of talk of the nation's neal conan. it was a segment called "a day in the life of a forest firefighter." i'll probably have to listen to it again to make sure i caught the whole thing. surprisingly, there was more talk of fire on npr than the rescue me finale. thanks for those dreams about pretty much everything bursting into flames, mr conan.

#123 - breaking news!
snack: lärabar cinnamon roll bar
drink: joe tea half & half



...earlier yesterday, whilst still at work, i had deemed it "snack time." my office sharing co-worker was working from home after going to the doctor earlier in the day for what started as insect bites but what we're now pretty confident is a colony of spider babies lodged inside his arm. we've convinced him as such. with the office to myself, i had to make things interesting. along with "snack time," i also had "spreadsheet hell hour," "guns n roses rock block" & a "system reboot anger management challenge." the official snack time snack was a lärabar cinnamon roll bar. can i get an umlaut up in this piece? lärabar's got an umlaut & that shizz is over the "a," which is hip. they also have a blog, which is hip & useful. for instance, emma, yesterday's fan of the day...i don't mean to objectify her, but she's pretty durn pretty & hopefully old enough for me saying that to not be creepy. i find that useful.

this lärabar shit's good...or at least the cinnamon roll one is. it's a solid but chewy bar & somehow through only using dates, walnuts, almonds, raisins, cashews & cinnamon, they've created a seriously flavorful snack bar. unfortunately, i ate the whole thing in under a minute, so i'm not exactly able to comment on particular flavor nuances, but i have faith in your imagination skills. pretty much everyone can eat this thing. it's vegan. it's raw. it's kosher. it's gluten, dairy & soy free. it's like the u.n. of snack bars & according to the packaging, they're "the original fruit & nut bar," so i guess that also makes them the elder statesman of fruit & nut bars.

since i'm just a regular ol joe, i chose a joe tea half & half to wash down my tasty bar. joe tea's just a regular ol tea company out of regular ol upper montclair, nj. they're apparently "the original off road tea." it's a title that's not as cool as "original fruit & nut bar," but does ensure a higher probability of a 4x4 ride. i'm a fan of the labeling. the photo above only gives you half of the half & half picture. on the back of the label there's an almost identical image with the lemonade section on the top & lemon tea section on the bottom. it's a nice simple design with a classy use of a red pickup truck.

joe makes a good tea/lemonade hybrid. two for two for snack time!...& all natural! one of my major beefs with the varied lemonade/tea hybrids (snapple & arnold palmer, i'm looking in your direction) is too much emphasis on the lemonade side. it gets all sour & occasionally pulpy & i don't stand for that crap. joe apparently can't either, so his half & half is balanced nicely & with the cane sugar is sweet but not disgustingly so. well done joe bro.

breaking news! blog insider exclusive! i bought those sunglasses you see in the forefront of the above photo for $12 well over a year ago. about a week after getting them, one of the nosepieces broke & fell off. for some reason, i haven't replaced them. that's just the sort of guy i am...slow on the breaking.

Saturday
Aug012009

#114 - HFCS breakdown.

a few weeks back, i decided that i was going to cut high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) out of my diet. i'd been vaguely hearing a consistent rumble of "HFCS is horribly bad for you" chatter recently. HFCS will eat you & your children & your children's children if you keep consuming it. i guess that chatter built up inside of me to a level where i was all "i should not be eating this." i mean, if starbucks is capitalizing on the trend, it must be true. it was a feeling i got about fast food after watching super size me, one that resulted in a ban on fast food that i eventually gave up on & the net effect of changing my overall dietary habits & eating fast food less...so i've been reading a lot of labels recently, selecting juices over sodas, fruits over yodels, hippie chips over doritos.

...but if i was going to bother changing my dietary habits, i wasn't going to do so without finding out a little bit more about HFCS & why it sucks so bad. those on the pro-HFCS side argue that it's made from corn, which the indians gave to us when the pilgrims first arrived here, so it's totally good for you. in reality, HFCS is produced by milling corn into starch & then processing that into syrup before adding enzymes that turn it into a fructose, which results in something pretty far removed from corn.

those against HFCS consumption link it to obesity, diabetes & a range of health problems. one study found that almost half the HFCS-containing products they tested also contained mercury, which is all toxic & whatnot...so it's sort of a problem when it's in friggin everything. humans & mercury in most quantities don't mix. as a sf chronicle article from 2004 about HFCS notes, "the theory goes like this: the body processes the fructose in high fructose corn syrup differently than it does old-fashioned cane or beet sugar, which in turn alters the way metabolic-regulating hormones function. it also forces the liver to kick more fat out into the bloodstream. the end result is that our bodies are essentially tricked into wanting to eat more and at the same time, we are storing more fat." i knew there was someone to blame!

anyway, it's fun to see the pro-HFCS and anti-HFCS folks battle it out. the corn refiner's association has launched a website called "a sweet surprise" to give the corn-inhaling public the true facts about HFCS. they even have a page that debunks all the"myths" about HFCS. there's this sweet HFCS propaganda ad. love that top! it's spawned a bunch of spoofs, including this hilarious one & this one, which features a conversation between two livers. there's even a crude two-part short film called "HFCS ninjas," which focuses around ninjas plotting to take over by implanting HFCS in the food supply. part two apparently contained something owned by warner music group & they hate youtube, so the audio track on that part's been disabled. oh to be a young with a camera & a love of ninjas & swearing.

#114 - HFCS breakdown.
snack: caramel chocolatey chunk rice krispie treat
drink: turkey hill pomegranate lemonade



so...after a few weeks HFCS free, i slipped & then eventually broke down. not thinking, one night, i poured a bunch of ken's french dressing with applewood smoked bacon onto my luscious salad & said dressing totally had HFCS in it. then, last week i was "hanging" around my apartment with my roommate, feeling a bit parched & peckish, so i took off for the preferred local bodega. i only had a few bucks in my pocket when i arrived, so in the interest of both economy & my desire for maximum sweetness, i decided to set the HFCS ban aside with a caramel chocolatey chunk rice krispie treat.

snap, crackle & pop manufacture their tasty rice krispie treats in a laboratory seven strata beneath the earth's surface out of HFCS & approximately fifteen other ingredients melded together from across the periodic table of elements. the result is the most unnaturally chocolatey caramel deliciousness possible. growing up, my mom used to make the slightly more natural peanut butter version for us (a brave move given her peanut allergy), so i grew up only occasionally trying the homemade marshmallow or caramel versions, but to this day, still have a warm spot in my heart for all things krispie treat.

my roommate had a bottle of turkey hill pomegranate lemonade that he was tearing through & he offered some up to wash down my rice krispie treat. i've had turkey hill's beverages in the past & one word comes to mind every single time i have them--"crack." seriously. i used to spend time at my ex's place out in jersey & we'd make trips to the pathmark supermarket that'd often end with me purchasing & consuming an entire half-gallon of their lime iced tea in a single evening. it's just that flavorful & crackalicious.

the pomegranate iced tea is no exception. since it's jacking up pomegranate & iced tea with a bunch of HFCS, it's as sweet as a monkey knife fight & very hard to resist downing all quicklike. as my roommate commented, "i'll definitely finish that entire bottle tonight." when i woke up the next morn, i found that he was a man of his word. since that night, i've had a couple glasses of coke, but managed to keep the HFCS consumption mostly at bay. one thing i've definitely noticed since i first started cutting out HFCS--the belly/waistline area has gone through some reduction. now if i could just find some way to be motivated enough to tone that area up, i could knock people around with my abs. anyway, starting tomorrow...back to the ban. F-U-C-K- H-F-C-S.

Monday
Nov242008

#40 - mr shawn goes to washington.

yesterday, i took a trip down to the d.c. area to spend an afternoon, evening & morning with mr tadley martin, friend from high school & beyond. previously, i'd been to the city (or the "doggone capitol," as i, quite cleverly i might add, like to call it) twice in my life.

the first time i went was when i was working at ny press. i won the january monthly sales contest & that month's prize was that in the following month, i got to attend the annual association of alternative newsweeklies (a.a.n.) eastern conference with my boss & the publisher. we stayed at the renaissance mayflower hotel, where reagan apparently took breakfast. we had a quick bite there one day & though i can't be entirely sure, i bet there was probably some pol at least as evil as reagan sitting a nearby table as we enjoyed our salads. one afternoon, i did myself a few hours of "lookin' at junk"...memorials & monuments & whatnot. somewhere, there's a mini dv tape of my adventures.

one night, a group of us went to an ethiopian joint in adams-morgan. it was my first experience with ethiopian food & the injera bread, or as it was dubbed that evening due to its rolled-up nature--"penis bread." "floppy penis bread" was also acceptable nomenclature. we ended the night (please note that i may actually, in my head, be squashing two evenings of memories into one evening) at a salvadorian restaurant in lord knows what area of the city. we had been drinking a bunch that night & the restaurant had a side room with salsa music & dancing. we went in there & i, non-dancer that i am, obviously took up the invitation of a short salvadorian woman when she asked me to dance & we danced to the music as she quickly taught me how to salsa & together we salsaed our butts off over the course of the next (what seemed like an) hour. color me gay but my favorite part was when she spun me round, which she did more times than you can count on your normal human hands. it was only later, after we left, that my group informed me that they had been debating whether or not i'd end up on the receiving end of a blade before the night's end, as i danced oblivious to the glare of the woman's boyfriend and/or brother, who was sitting at a table in the corner.

the next night i got home to brooklyn & got mugged by two ass clowns who stole all the spending cash i received as part of my sales contest prize & then the police caught them within the hour, after following the ass clowns' tracks through the snow.

the 2nd time i went was to hang out with mr tadley martin when he lived across the river from d.c. in virginia in what i want to say was an area called ballston. we made an evening trip to black cat for a britpop/indie rock dance night. good times.

#40 - mr shawn goes to washington.
snack: utz smokin' sweet kettle classic chips
drink: sweet leaf cherry limeade

this time, i stayed with tadley in his swinging bachelor pad
in rosslyn, va, a pad complete with a bathroom with good face wash & some sort of heated hair device, both of which could either be his or his girlfriend's. it's an interesting area, with lots of modern-looking construction & towers built on the hills just across the river from d.c., a placement (just outside the city limits) that allows them to build taller buildings. d.c. has a height restriction on buildings. originally, it was nothing taller than the capitol (289 feet). now the limit is the width of the adjacent street + 20 feet. virginia has no such restrictions...an interesting washington post article about the effects of the heights restrictions here.

near his place, there was a lil' convenient store that we went to a few times over the course of 24 hours. naturally, i was intrigued by their snack selection, as convenient store snack selections are often largely regional & i love that kind of crap. on my first trip there, i got a bag of blue diamond maui onion & garlic almonds. i was all "dude, what?" i have never seen these in new york, even at target, who could possibly have the finest selection of blue diamond nuts in the city outside of the west village...but i digress.

they also had two utz kettle flavors that i've yet to come across here in nyc--smokin' sweet kettle classics and salt & malt vinegar. on the front of the package of the smokin' sweet ones are the words "spicy heat with a kiss of sweet"...just like my love makin' stee-lo...so i had no choice but to choose those for later snacking purposes.

as i write tonight, i'm enjoying those chips & with them, i'm having me a bottle of sweet leaf cherry limeade that i picked up upon my arrival back in brooklyn this evening. the non-threatening cartoon granny on the label was also on a decal affixed to the door of a local convenient store, plugging her sweet leaf teas & beckoning for me to come check her out when i was done picking out a quart of milk. when i was done, i went over to visit her & couldn't resist her allure. her cherries. her lime. her ade. her promises of "homemade goodness in a bottle"...so i went with the cherry limeade.

dear label granny,

unfortunately, i don't enjoy your creation. like, if the flavor of the best flavored lemonade ever is equivalent to making out with a really hot chick, the the flavor of your cherry limeade is equivalent to making out with, well...a granny. catch my drift?...but seriously, granny...you seem like a very nice person.

yours in beverage,
shawn.