When you have a baby, it seems, people shower you with gifts and acts of kindness.  It's no wonder, then, that the population is gowing- not only are these new creatures SUPER cute, but there's a bonanza of benefits behind them.  As a foodie, many of the gifts that my wife and I have received are in the food vein- home cooked meals for those tough days, cookies for sugar crashes, and....

....a gift basket intended for the hippie foodie set.  Contents include:

Gnu foods Flavor & Fiber bar

Earth's Best everyday Lavender lotion

Glenny's 100 calorie Chocolate Chip Brownie

Country Ovens Cherry De-Lite cherries (with added sugar!!!)

Almondina bran treats

Celestial Seasonings Clementine Chamomile tea

Crispy Green Crispy Apricots

Sleepy Baby Music CD

4 individual honey sticks

1 sea turtle finger puppet

1 giraffe stuffed animal

1 starfish stuffed animal

You might think that the basket intended for people like ME- lots of products with limitied ingredients, organic skin care products, and finger puppets (sorry, I freakin LOVE puppets....).  This basket was sent by a really thoughtful business associate who I'm guessing is neither a Foodie nor too terribly concerned with the Green Generation.  So here's who this gift basket is REALLY geared towards- people who don't necessarily know what Foodies and Greenies would like, but want to sent their Foodie/Greenie friends something nice.

Very clever.  And very thoughtful.  The tea will be drunken, the music played (if my boy likes it, it'll go into regular circulation), the lotion rubbed, the finger puppets puppeteered, and the Apricots have already been eaten....

But Cherries with Sugar?  I draw the line there.

Pay attention to who wants you to want something....

Ian "Peeled Skinny" K 

Posted by iankusc at 08:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here at Peeled Snacks' World Headquarters we're really not above the occasionally agregious breach in protocol, etiquette, taste, and sensibilty.  Example- when we cursed out ALL of our customers by sending them an email advertising Peeled Snack's brand new T-Sh!ts (it should have been t-shiRt).  Quite an "oops", that.  Of course, when I published my BLOG about it, I get more hits than EVER.

To commemorate that MAJOR goof, and to commemorate the entry of Oren Kelleher into the world, a MAJOR Peeled Snacks buddy (Thank you RACHEL!!!) and Peeled Snacks' Designer Extraordinaire (Thank you Christine!!!) got together and concocted a brand new T-shirt that fuses Peeled Snack's constantly hilarious falibility with it's sharp design sense and sense of humor.  To wit....

 
The NEW Peeled Snacks ONE-SIE!!!!

Just in case you don't have your reading glasses on, it says "Poo-What?" Damn clever, no?

And just in case you'd like to know what it looks like on the world's most phenomenal 5 day old model (I think that's not too big a boast, to be entirely honest...) here's the source material:

If that doesn't melt your heart, you should really read the Tin Man's autobiography. 

Happy Friday,

-the happiest Peeled Skinny in the world 

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So this past Sunday, I became a Daddy.  That's right, "Peeled Skinny" became "Peeled Daddy", and I couldn't be happier or more proud.  His name is Oren Kelleher, and though he came early, he gave me the best Father's day present EVER: himself.  Of course, that means that he's set me up for a lifetime of dissappointing Father's Day presents, but somehow I think I'll manage.

That's all that I have to say right now, because happiness like this needs nothing more than a picture.  Meet the newest Peeled Snacks consumer (his mother is HOOKED on Go-Mango-Man-Go), Oren Kelleher. 

Posted by iankusc at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I recently took a trip to Louisiana where I ate like a king, drank like a fish (mostly NON-alcoholic beverages, mostly), sweated like a pig (which don't sweat), and heard LOTS of great Jazz.  A Yankee like myself can't trundle through Bourbon street's smelly stretches without comparing them to, say, New York's Lower East Side, which certainly is just as smelly, but lacks the Jazz, and lacks...

Sweet Tea?  Apparently i have sorely missed the boat on my beverage consumption, in that the entire South has for generations been awash in this grand concoction of uppers (caffeine and sugar) mixed together in water with some ice thrown in to take the edge off.  Seeing as this brew fuels the majority of Southern productivity, McDonalds has jumped on the Southern Rock Band-Wagon and come up with its own version.

I ran into a friend the other day who was proudly bragging about the tea's virtues, declaring unabashadly that it's delicious and energizing, "and not so bad for you like pop".  Forgive her- she's from the Mid-West where "Pop" takes the unwieldy term "soft drink" and chops off a syllable.  Knowing I'm a foodie, she dared me to scrutinize this tea and find fault with it.

Full disclosure- while I do appreciate many a soda, I prefer the less sweet sodas (though NEVER diet), and when it comes to both coffee and iced tea, I never add sugar, EVER.  So this Sweet Tea just ain't for me, and I'm not going to bother trying it just as an excuse to rag on it.  Obviously there are people that really like it, and I say more power to them.

My question is, is it better or worse for you than McDonalds' other beverage of choice, Coca Cola?  The Sweet Tea isn't yet listed on the McDonalds' Nutritional Information Website,  nor are the ingredients listed, but the grape-vine has informed me that, unlike Coca Cola, McDonalds makes its Sweet Tea with genuine Sugar, which shows some integrity.  They must be getting KILLED by the price of Corn Sweetner.

Calorie wise, the info isn't totally official, Associated Info reports that Coca Cola actually has 50% more sugars and calories (210 calories vs. 150 calories) than the Sweet Tea.  So maybe this stuff will actually improve the average McDonalds goer's health (however slightly).  I don't really know if this new product will stick, but in attempting to research excuses to call it a boondoggle, it turns out to be not so offensive a beverage as I initially guessed.

But I still won't be drinking any.  I like my coffee, BLACK, and I like my Fizzy Lizzie, GRAPEFRUIT! 

Posted by iankusc at 02:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has been rattling its sabre lately, declaring that with people starving, governments all over the world will need to soon shovel out money (to the tune of $30 BILLION per year) if they want to stem the upheval inevitably brought on by commercials asking people to give money to starving Africa starring celebrities B-List or higher.

Sigh.  For a UN meeting held yesterday in Rome, the UN gathered around at least one person from every government that it could find (Paraguay sent "Lenny"- Lenny had nothing better to do, was just sitting around bored, swatting flies and reading Wikipedia articles about shampoo companies...) to fix the world's food problem.  Lots of talk and meetings and experts, and they figured out all by themselves that Money will fix the problem.

Sigh.  Covered in the meeting was the problem posed by bio-fuels, and how syphoning off food to oil production deprives people of crucial, cheap calories.  Because what people REALLY need to be eating is corn and sugar.

Sigh.  Also covered was the price dedicating all that agricultural land to bio-fuel, and how the US REALLY thinks Brazil should grow more, you know, Soy Beans and stuff that won't interfere with it not growing more bio-fuel-friendly sugar cane.

Sigh.  Also covered was how trade tarrifs and other impositions to free-trade really are what's to blame for people starving- because if food exporting countries can't export cheap corn to hungry countries because there's not enough profit in it, then those countries DESERVE to starve.

Sigh.  Also covered was how 3rd world countries shouldn't export cash crops, but instead use them to feed their people, because money (of all things) just can't solve the problem.

Huh?

I read reports like this and shake my head- consider that this crisis of food prices invites nations to bicker and back-stab, muscle one another, play global economic politics, and in general TOTALLY MISS THE POINT.  Consider the causes of this problem (my last blog offered that it all boils down to distribution, which is really a problem of oil), be it oil or climate or whatever.  Consider that it is NOT an economic problem.  Does it them warrant an economic solution?

Nope.  Land reform, political flexibility, and a GLOBAL alternative to oil = solution.  Throwing money at a problem just creates new ways of skimming off the top.  If the US had developed an energy policy during the 1973 oil crisis, we might not be in this mess.  But a solution to that enormous problem takes DECADES to concoct.  In the near term, sure, why not throw money at the conundrum?...

Next blog, I'll tell you why.... 

Posted by iankusc at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)