nosh nook #86 - monday, july 13, 2009

'organic and chic' alternatives to junk food (link)
07.12.09 - npr's weekend edition - by liane hansen

kids say the darndest things. for sarah magid, author of organic and chic, there was a day when her son was all "give me twinkies, mom." kids love twinkies! kids say the darndest things! sarah magid grew up jewish in southern cali, so kosher + health conscious = never tried twinkies. instead of getting them for her son, she decided to come up with an organic version of them..."goldies." they're made with dark chocolate sponge cake, a whipped vanilla butter cream, chocolate glaze & an edible gold powder.

this story's from npr's weekend edition sunday, which has been hosted by liane hansen for the last twenty years. i love her stories & manner. plus, she's married to neil conan (host of npr's all things considered) & gets to do the sunday puzzle with puzzle master will shortz, who's basically the only person with a degree in enigmatology (the study of puzzles). now she gets to meet the inventor of goldies, a cute brooklyn mom who will make you healthy alternatives to junk food. is there anything liane hansen doesn't get to do? she's so lucky.

as for magid, she also makes custom cakes & the book just came out, so she was in chicago for book signings this past weekend & is in l.a. near the end of the month. whirlwind book tour! seriously though, her cakes are friggin nuts! one of them has a bird's nest thingy on top of it! what's also nuts is that that cake's entirely organic, right down to the nest. you can't say that about a lot of cakes. too bad it can't survive a nuclear holocaust like a twinkie can.

#21 - x = _.

i listen to a lot of npr. you might call the amount of npr that i listen to in a given week "disgusting" or "irrational" or "humanly impossible," but i do it. it's just that, by nature, i'm curious about everything that's going on at all times everywhere. a typical week by my calculations:

all things considered (weekday) - 135 minutes x 5 days = 675 minutes
all things considered (weekend) - 50 minutes x 2 days = 100 minutes
all songs considered - 30 minutes x 1 day = 30 minutes
morning edition - 105 minutes x 5 days = 525 minutes
day to day - 50 minutes x 5 days = 250 minutes
fresh air - 50 minutes x 5 days = 250 minutes
news & notes - 50 minutes x 5 days = 250 minutes
talk of the nation - 110 minutes x 5 days = 550 minutes
tell me more - 50 minutes x 5 days = 250 minutes
weekend edition (saturday) - 105 minutes x 1 day = 105 minutes
weekend edition (sunday) - 105 minutes x 1 day = 105 minutes
car talk call of the week - 5 minutes x 1 day = 5 minutes
this american life - 60 minutes x 1 day = 60 minutes
studio 360 - 52 minutes x 1 day = 52 minutes

TOTAL - 3,217 minutes (53 hours) = 32% of my time

it's really not as hard as you might think to listen to this much npr. i have the ability to slap on a pair of headphones whilst at work, so i usually end up spending half my time there listening to npr. between walking, subway & whatnot, i usually get in another two hours of listening a day. then, the rest of my listening is done whilst at home, which comes out to...

3,217 minutes per week
work listening - 240 minutes x 5 days = 1,200 minutes
travel listening - 120 minutes x 7 days = 840 minutes
home listening - 1,177 minutes (19.6 hours per week/2.8 per day)

two facts you may have gathered about me:
1. i love math
2. i am slightly o.c.d.

#21 - x = _.
snack: e. frutti x-ray fish
drink: snapple goji punch

with my math, i've decided to break out the gummy x-ray fish that i got when i was up in boston weeks ago for the radiohead show. check out this (hastily photoshopped) bad boy:

obviously, everything gummy is good, so we don't even have to go there. the best part about gummy things is that they contain gelatin, which means that i'm getting my daily fill of connective tissue! yay! as you can tell, the skin comes off to reveal the best parts of the fish--the head, spine & tail. mmm. fish spine.

to wash this fishy down, i'm having a snapple goji punch. apparently a goji is basically a wolfberry & according to the back of the label, this fruit "just might be the world's most powerful food." why is it so powerful? according to the front of the label, the beverage offers immunity to the drinker. this excites me to no end. if i am ever attacked by infection, caught in a foreign land with contraband, or on a reality show, i am so going to drink another one of these. the bonus? it's tasty too.