snackdown! - 2.26.10

since all of our politicians apparently believe that everyone on the other side of the aisle has cooties, this week mr president gathered democrats & republicans together in d.c. to try to get both sides talking about the current health care legislation. during the televised six-hour summit, the president basically learned what he already knew--republicans just aren't going to offer anything, so the democrats have to go it alone. yay washington! it makes sense though, since it took them forever to decide whether there would be snacks on the table at the summit & whether they would be eaten on or off camera. sure it's an important issue, but it's largely symbolic of the whole health care debate. luckily, it wasn't representative of this week's food news.

• as i've noted many times on this here blog, i'm a huge fan of delaware's dogfish head breweries. i've always wanted to take a trip down to delaware to visit their brewery or their restaurant, but have never made the journey. now it looks like i may not have to. on tuesday, dogfish announced that they're coming to me & opening a rooftop bar & restaurant in midtown manhattan with mario batali, the jolly, ginger-bearded chef & food network star. until recently, i haven't had cable for years, so i don't know jack about him, but if he's smart enough to pair up with what may be the top microbrew in the country, he's cool with me. (grub street)


• are your chips not meaty enough? fret no longer, meat lover. chadwick, a british food company, has submitted a patent for "meat crisps," a snack product that would be made by pulverising meat, mixing it with an emulsion, seasoning it along with a range of binding agents & heating it in a wrapper before slicing it into thin pieces and microwaving it. they'll be lower in calories, fat & salt & if testing works out, they'll be in stores by the end of the year. the name i'm suggesting for their product: "moo crisps." brilliant, right? chadwick, you can use that name if you want...just send me a bag. (the telegraph)


• if you've ever wondered who the mad scientist behind mcdonald's creations was, this week chicagonow did an interview with dan coudreaut, the director of culinary innovation for the fast food chain. coudreaut, who started his career as a dishwasher at the four seasons, has been in his current position since 2004. he's the man responsible for the angus burger, the now-defunct asian salad & the current mcdonald's darling, the snack wrap. given mcdonald's enormous reach, when it boils down to it he's the most powerful chef in the world. it doesn't mean a thing though if he can't get mcdonald's to add that artichoke spread & asiago cheese burger they have in italy to the menu here in the states. (chicagonow)


• on tuesday, the ny times ran a piece about "snackbot," a robo chef designed by graduate students at carnegie mellon university. snackbot, who is "outfitted with a $20,000 laser navigation system," is designed to learn about robot-human interaction through serving food. i can picture it now. "hey snackbot, make me a sandwich." "hey snackbot, go get me another beer." "hey snackbot, fresh guacamole. stat!" snackbot bows his head obediently..."yes, shawn." he's not the only robot chef on the block though. the chinese unveiled the “world’s first cooking robot” back in '06 & famen, a japanese restaurant, has "two giant yellow robot arms preparing up to 800 bowls of ramen a day." it's pretty cool, as when the robots take over the world, they'll hopefully still make us dinner. (ny times)


• consolidation! yesterday, diamond foods, who's best known for pop secret & tasty tasty nuts (including my #1 snack of 2008), announced that they're buying oregon's kettle foods for $615 million. diamond, who started off as a co-op before going public in 2005, is the leading u.s. exporter of walnuts & has recently been running bizzare ads which, given this week's events at seaworld, may or may not be in good taste. for diamond, buying kettle foods is a smart investment, since they've doubled sales & increased earnings significantly over the last four years. also, their chips pretty much rule. (financial times)

#139 - documenting genius.

since i'm a genius myself, i feel like i'm qualified to say that the best part about being one is that if you end up going off the rails at some point, there's a good chance that folks will just chalk it up to you being an eccentric, madcap intellectual & just let you be your babbling, holes-in-your-shoes self. my favorite type of insane genius is the mad, musical type, so over the past week i checked out two films that document the lives of two such geniuses--wesley willis & lil wayne.

the first film--wesley willis's joy rides--came out on dvd last week & to mark its release, pitchfork had it available for viewing all last week, so i checked it out. the film gives us a glimpse into the life of wesley willis, the late artist from chicago. willis, who was known as much for being a for being a 300-pound schizophrenic as he was for being a prolific artist, released hundreds of songs in his lifetime. they're all simple pop songs with simple, humorous & sometimes obscene lyrics that almost always end with a company's tagline. there's "northwest airlines," which ends with "american airlines. we mean business in chicago." there's "oprah winfrey," which ends with "johnny rockets. it's the original hamburger." there's his biggest hit--"rock n roll mcdonald's"--which ends with "wheaties. breakfast of champions." obviously.

in addition to his musical output, willis also did countless ink pen drawings of chicago as he saw it, usually in extremely intricate detail. the filmmakers speak with him a lot & it's obvious that he was troubled, consumed by demonic voices that "shouted profanity at him" & as he described it, took him on "hellrides." still, until he died of complications from leukemia, he was known as a jovial guy & a prolific artist & the film does a great job of capturing both that & his mental troubles.

the second film--the carter--came out on dvd a few weeks back. it follows lil wayne around during the time that his last album (the carter III) was released & is directed by adam bhala lough, whose 2002 film bomb the system focused on nyc graffiti & won some festival acclaim. he does a good enough job telling the story of lil wayne. i'm only familiar with wayne based on his prolific output over the last few years & although i like what i've heard, i've never been able to understand what all the hype was about. it was that sense of "seriously...why is this guy so huge?" that made the carter an interesting film for me.

from what i've heard of his music, his beats are kind of boring, but the dude has a ridiculously intelligent lyrical vocabulary & carries a recording setup with him wherever he goes. from what i've heard of his lifestyle, dude's smoking blunts & rapping 24-7 & artists who are never sober but still manage to be both good & prolific intrigue me. the film opens with a disclaimer that lil wayne refused to do a proper interview, but regardless, after 90 minutes of seeing him in hotel rooms & on the bus, i was left with the feeling that he really thinks that he's the best rapper alive & until somebody else puts as much passion into rapping as he does, i'm not going to argue with him or fault him for smoking blunts 24-7.

so why did i enjoy these two films so much? it's largely because i'm obsessed with music & a lot of what i enjoy is made by mad musical geniuses. although the documentary i recently watched about him was totally boring, pink floyd's syd barrett & his descent into LSD insanity both make me sad & curious. when i watched the devil & daniel johnston, i was more interested in why daniel johnston has become a disturbed cult musician than in his music. artists are generally off by nature & when i get to see what makes them tick, i can't help but think that if they were "normal," it just wouldn't be the same.

#139 - documenting genius.
snack: mcdonald's grilled chipotle bbq snack wrap
drink: dixie blackened voodoo lager



in honor of the late wesley willis & his undying love for rock n roll mcdonalds, tonight i'm snacking on a mcdonald's grilled chipotle bbq snack wrap. since wesley died in 2003 & the snack wrap wasn't introduced until 2006, he never got to sample the wonder of the mcdonald's snack wrap, but i'm sure he would've wrote a sweet song about it if he'd had the chance. it'd be all like "mcdonalds snack wrap. you are healthy to the max. i like to eat you. you go good with the rock" with his signature keyboards behind it. it'd be way better than any song mcdonald's has ever used in any of their ads.

the grilled chipotle bbq snack wrap...as a snack, it's aight. i've eaten a ton of them in my day & if i had to choose a favorite snack wrap, the grilled chipotle bbq one would definitely win. since it's built back on the mcdonald's assembly line, it never comes out looking as awesome as it looks in their ads & signage, but they slather it in bbq sauce & i can easily be distracted by the right amount of bbq sauce. on top of that, they put it in a wrap. if you've been following the trends of the past decade, you know that that means that it's exponentially healthier. as far as chicken goes, the meat's pretty white & essentially acceptable, although i just saw food inc this past weekend & i'm pretty sure that the chickens that gave their lives to make my snack wrap didn't enjoy a life of struttin' in the meadow.

to pay tribute to lil wayne, i'm washing down the snack wrap with a bottle of new orleans' own dixie blackened voodoo lager. i was planning on trying out drank, the "relaxation beverage" that helps you "slow your roll" & is named after the cough syrup & soda concoction popularized by rappers like lil wayne. i stopped into hundreds of bodegas & corner stores over the past week trying to locate a can of the stuff to no avail, so i picked up a bottle of the blackened voodoo instead. it's made by the dixie brewing co, a brewery that has been around for just over a hundred years but is in bad shape these days because of what katrina & the successive looting did to the brewery. apparently their website got looted too.

i first tried the blackened voodoo just after college, when i was living with this guy named dave who was a mad genius in his own right & one of the first people i knew who picked up six packs of good beer. at the time, i was more of a "twelve-pack of red dog" sort of guy, but dave would occasionally come home with six packs of stuff like the blackened voodoo & offer a few up while we sat around & talked about the mysteries of bog butter. i remembered the blackened voodoo being a lot darker & blacker, but it's actually a dark brown sort of color & is smoother than i remembered. i'm probably just remembering it that way because i like to think that my past was darker than it actually was though. after all...a dark past is a sign of a true genius.

nosh nook #3 - wednesday, march 18, 2009

snack attack: new 'mac snack wrap' from mcdonald's — who needs the big mac bun? (link)
03.17.09 - the national post - by karen hawthorne

i consume a hell of a lot of snack wraps. the bright, flashy, multi-floor 42nd st times square mcdonalds is right at the base of my office building, so it's extremely easy to just hop in the elevator, take it down twenty-four floors, pop out into the chaos of time sq like a cute lil gopher, procure my snack wrap (grilled chipotle is the current fave) & head right back into the building & back upstairs, pausing only ever so slightly to admire the large ecko sign across the way, which features girls in bikinis making ecko jeans for the world.

starting next tuesday, canadian mcdonalds will start serving the new "mac snack wrap," which is basically a half big mac with all its important ingredients wrapped in a tortilla. i enjoy big macs, but as karen hawthorne notes, "the special sauce oozes into your mouth" & "the flavour is creamy comfort on your tongue." that just sounds plain pornographicly disgusting.

i suppose the mac snack wrap will be a lo-carb alternative to the three-bun big mac, so it's sort of half way in between the full-on big mac & what they tried to do a few years back when they devoted a whole portion of their menu to atkins-style versions of their burgers. that was just plain ridiculous. at least this has some semblance of reality to it. after all, everything tastes better when you wrap it in a tortilla.