As Winter threatens its us all with its final three weeks, Spring looms and promises that warm, fuzzy feeling, the snow thaw, and (most eagerly anticipated around the Peeled Snacks World Headquarters), this year's crop.  But talk lately by qualified scientists and unqualified politicians alike focuses on global warming and all its dangers and treacheries.  I ask you, though- is Global Warming ALL bad?

Well, yes.  But some things might confuse the issue a bit...

Take for example the once mythical but now nearly-real "NorthWest Passage", the shipping route North of Canada.  For 500 years now, if you wanted to get something from Atlantic Ocean or the Pacific, you really had to go around South America, which burns a LOT of fuel and/or time.  For a century we've been treated to the Panama canal, but today's super-tankers are too wide for that relic.

Well, thanks to modern science and 200 years of rampant air pollution, the Artic ice-cap is melting, making available, perhaps in the next couple of years, a passage long sought for by explorers from Magellan to Drake, but always a myth like El Dorado or the Yeti.  That could save OODLES of money for companies that can now cris-cross across an enormous water-way that's just waiting to be exploited.

With the cost of oil going up, up, and away, all sorts of companies stand to benefit from this new oceanic super-highway, Peeled Snacks included- now we can get Philipine rambutans delivered to a port in Hudson Bay, cutting heaps of cross-country shipping, saving who knows how much money per rambutan order.  SO much money, in fact, that I've been considering buying a bunch of styrofoam and stomping on it just to usher things along.

Let me underline this- Global Warming might be GOOD for economies, particularly free-trade based economies that like to buy their apples in China.  There may be corporate forces out there that try to interfere with green movements with an eye to their bottom line, and said corporations might act in subtle ways to accomplish these goals.  This is NOT PARANOIA.  This is BUSINESS.

And this is frighteningly short-sighted.  But more on that later.  I've got to go by me some styrofoam....

Posted by iankusc at 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Greetings Snackers,

My lovely and talented sister forwarded me a fascinating New York Times article the other week about Israel and it's attempt to adhere to an age-old Jewish tradition of leaving land fallow every 7 years.  To make a long, complicated story short, the Torah dictates that every 7 years (or shmita, sabbatical year), Jews should let their lands go fallow and, presumably, spend the year eating canned peaches.

Typical of holy texts, the Torah parcels out few details.  It implies that the land spends the year feeding live-stock and the poor.  But could it also be a manner of forced crop-rotation?  Seeing as the Jews came out of a thinly soiled land, they certainly had some incentive to avoid over-farming.  Whether it's an economic, social, or environmental tool, back in the day the law surely impacted all three.

But back in the day, there weren't 7 million citizens to feed.  Imagine if such a law were in place today in, say, California.  Granted, the soil would probably LOVE the break, but imagine the sudden lack of, say, almonds (California grows 60% of the world's almonds).  There would be "bring back the almonds" riots from Bangor to San Diego, and needless to say, Peeled Snacks would be TOAST.

According to the NYT article, Israel's found a strange, legalistic way around the problem (wherein Jewish farmers sell their land to Arabs for a year), but the haven't found a way to give the land the break it surely needs.  Therein lies the problem- in the era of looking at a future filled with environmental blight, do we have the means and discipline to take drastic steps to protect our natural assets?

I believe in part that's what ancient orthodox practices like this shmita were implemented in part to curb excessive environmental abuse.  I consider the ancient Jews to have been very practical people- if eating pigs kills people, stop eating pig.  If working too hard makes people less productive, invent the weekend (or sabbath).  This break of lands seems similarly very forward-thinking.

But we still need to feed people, and insure that people, say, 400 years from now get fed as well.  Can we adobt sensible practices like the shmita that don't mean people starve for a year, but DO preserve the land?  That's one of the (many) challenges facing us as we look to dealing with a changing environment, and religion can certainly help make solutions to such problems stick. 

Old orthodoxies can, surely, get in the way of progress (like, if you ask me, the current "solution" to the shmita problem in Israel is a total cop-out), but I dare not take that topic on- this is, after all, a SNACK blog, not a THEOLOGY blog.  Though a theology blog WOULD be fun to write....

Nah.  Just the snacks, man.  Just the snacks.

Regards, Peeled Skinny 

Posted by iankusc at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When was the last time you chomped down on an apple?  Okay, if you don't dig apples in their most "apple-ish" form, when was the last time you ate Apple Jacks, or an Apple Strudel?  It's getting to be apple season, and the produce aisles of supermarkets are piled high with those tasty red, green and yellow orbs.  But none of those succulent spheres would be here without BEES!

No, that's not a handful of raisins- that's a pile of dead bees scooped up by an Oregon farmer, and for 3 years such entomological horror shows have been found with increasing frequency across North America.  While bee hating children might rejoice at the news, apple lovers ought to cringe- every apple you ever ate was pollinated by a bee, and if bees take a trip down do-do way, so do Johnny Appleseed's children.

Here at Peeled Snacks World Headquarters, we've been following this Bee story for some time, all the while our eyes flitting nervously and our necks sweating bullets, because if bees all die, well, so does many of our ingredients (almonds, fruit, peaches, PLUOTS!!!).  When some of our farmer-friends have reported bee shortages, we've actually offered to pollinate the trees ourselves.  We try our best not to be offended that nobody took us up on that generous offer.

This lack of Bee-ness is actually very serious business for us, and, frankly, for any American that likes to eat "food".  So much produce relies upon bee pollination that a prolonged absence of bees might empty supermarkets' fruit aisles, not to mention punish the hard-working American fruit farmer.  Furthermore, many have worried that the bee die-offs portends to looming environmental disaster, which scares more than farmers and snack magnates.

When last I made my way through California's Central Valley (the source of most of our fruit & nuts), I noted a ridiculous increase in the number of chain linked fences.  I asked one of my farmer friends, "what's with all the new fences?"  He replied that some entomologists theorized that the bees were dying off due to increased cell-phone signals, which chain link fences disrupt.  Break up the signals, save the bees, or so the theory goes.

Seemed unlikely, but chain link fences are a cheap way to save America (though they won't do too much on the Mexican border, I'm afraid).  Last Thursday, however, researchers published a new theory as to the cause of the bee deaths.  Turns out, right about the time the bees started dying, beekeepers began importing Australian Bees, who, it turns out, are carriers for the vicious , bee-killing Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus!

So bee-keepers were re-enacting their own little colonization of the new world (complete with the common cold, which wiped out most of the Indian populations), and unbeknownst to them causing the largest insect genocide since the Summer of 1983 when my friends and I declared war on all 17 year locusts.   Native American Bees welcomed the Australians with plates of nectar and sweet potatoes, only to wind up coughing themselves to death shortly thereafter.

Let's hope that this new information will help entomologists and farmers find a way to save our bee populations.  I worry, though, that the card carrying members of the North American Bee Union (NABU) will have their jobs replaced by beer swilling, kangaroo eating bees who fly upside down and, instead of buzzing, make an annoying "Oi oi oi!" sound.

To learn more about the bees' colony collapse, go HERE.  Read all about the study HERE.  And then pray they find a cure.  I find it appropriate to deliver some semi-apocalyptic news today, since it is September 11th.  To think that just 6 years ago, Americans received the support and good will of the world.  And now we receive truly killer bees.

Posted by iankusc at 09:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My dear friend (alluded to in my recent GUNK! blog) and I started grappling the other day with my perspectives on poverty.  You see, I'm a bit of a conspiracy nut, in that I truly believe that America's economic engine benefits from cheap labor, and so we have numerous systems designed to keep the poor, poor.  His argument lies in the spirit of self-determinism versus "misery loves company", and while he expressed it well, I'll leave it to him to tell you all about HIS conspiracy theories.  [Ed. Note: My friend has no real conspiracy theories]

But let's get back to mine- America LOVES its poor, and makes sure that they're never in short supply.  There are all sorts of ways that we guarantee the supply (shoddy inner-city education, anyone?  How about limited access to capitol for minorities?  Would you prefer institutionalized racism?), but one of the perhaps accidental yet undeniable guarantees comes from FOOD.

Michael Pollan published another indictment of the food industry in this past week's New York Times, which he started with this strange puzzle: if you're a fat American, you're probably a poor American.  Hold it, WHAT?  The term "Fat Cat" assumes the opposite: the richer you are, the fatter (and, apparently, more feline) you become.  Well, that phrase no longer works, it seems.

And neither does our country's "Farm Bill."  Pollan, in his article, takes to task the current $25 billion "Farm Bill" (which has impact far beyond farms) for encouraging the growth and consumption of corn, wheat, and soy, and basically nothing else.  This pathetically structured, forgotten bit of legislation encourages industrial agriculture, and nothing's easier on the machinery than corn.  Hence, the cheapest thing out there is cookies full of useless high-fructose corn syrup calories.

I highly recommend that you read the Pollan article- there are MANY points in there worth toying with and mulling over.  But my take-away from it is that our government has sanctioned (nay, INSTITUTIONALIZED) the fattening of the poor by insuring that the worst food for you is the only food that most Americans can afford.  In short, we're paying taxes (about $100 per person per year) to keep poor America fat.

Right now it takes about 2 farmers to work every 1000 acres of American farmland, courtesy of industrialized farming.  The impact, on our poor, on foreign markets, on the environment, is tremendous and frightening.  But if we re-organized our agricultural systems so that more people would work less land, well we sure would have a lot more jobs for people, no?  For POOR people....

No, as Pollan points out, there's no easy solution to this problem, but the current situation helps NOBODY....

Except (back to my conspiracy theory) the corporation owning Americans who benefit from a cheap labor market.  This should make us all sick.  Frankly, all that High Fructose Corn Syrup DOES make me sick....

I wrote a poem about this earlier, and here is its encore presentation. That's right, returning to our pages from Mars are your favorite green skinned, people eating Martians, Zergplek and Metzelfark.  Thanks for making the trip back to our pages, guys.  Now please stop chewing on the intern's arm....

It's about time, Zergplek.

Yes, Metzelfark, it's almost harvest season.

Olympus Mons' Southern Face is turning

from amber rust to crimson fire,

and the Valles Marinaris runs full with squabe.

Zergplek, get your plucking gloves on-

It's time to reap the fattened terran crop.

Yes, all the fat little morsels

on yon planet so blue

will taste so deliciously like Cheetohs...

...and sweet, corn-syrup filled Pepsi...

..oh yes, and pepsi, 

at this October's harvest barn dance.

My moorsaphate has knitted me a snazzy bib,

lest I spill saturated transfats

all over my brand new vyxerpus vest.

Fire up the interplanetary drive,

and let's go harvest some fatsos!

Posted by iankusc at 03:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Peeled Snacks California tour took a turn South last week as we pointed ourselves towards, beautiful, warm Los Angeles, which, in spite of its name, is angel free 40 years running.  The last angel there was run over by a car while trying to earn his wings by saving the soul of Edmund Brown, who went on to lose the Governorship of California to Reagan.  Things have sucked ever since.

It was a very eventful week, what with the Natural Foods Expo West going down in Anaheim, and all sorts of meetings with Lo-Cal-So-Cal foodies.  We walked the Anaheim show, because actually sitting in a stall gets boring.  Walking past all those companies'booths offering "the NEXT Omega 3" (or whatever neutraceutical they happened to be peddling) sometimes make me wonder if I'm in the wrong business. 

Tasting that crap, on the other hand, made me think, "yes, it's true, Peeled Snacks ROCKS!"

Touring the LA countryside makes me wonder what that landscape looked like before every square foot of it was covered with strip malls, highways, and aparment complexes.  It'd surely fry the eyeballs to see a before and after picture of Pasadena with the last 50 years in between the photos.  But then again, it fries the eyes looking at the city's heart breaking, bleeding heart colored sunsets (color courtesy of all those bloody cars.  Sigh).

Others surely have discussed the differences between Northern and Southern California, but I'll take up 3 important points before leaving it be...

1: Southern Californian buildings have heating units.  Why the more Southerly city has sounder thermostats, I'll never understand, but it certainly made mornings more pleasant.

2: Northern California has better food, better menus, and better grocery stores.  Gelson's is for safe food from big companies.  Guess you won't be finding Peeled Snacks there anytime soon.

3: Southern Californian 20 and 30-somethings are "hipper", and "hotter", but Northern Californians are better looking.  That is to say, look across West Hollywood and all those prancing Brangelina wannabees smile dashingly and flip their hair oh so perfectly.  But it's a LOT more fun to scope out the looks of the Mission District's denizens, or play "who's the Crunchiest?" in East Bay.  Weirdos entertain infinitely more than actor types.

Of California in general, I've this crass generalization to offer:

The Good:  The food is superb, the ingredients fresh, and the trends momentous

The Bad: The traffic is obscene, with cars everywhere, utterly heedless of the environment 

The Ugly: Mix the great food with the driving (and its implied lack of exercise) and you get an uglier me- I probably put on 10 pounds this trip.  YUCK!!!

More round-up soon.  I just gotta say some thank yous....

Thank you Jonathan and Ells for putting us up in your phat flat.  It was a delight....

Thank you Rena for sharing your home and your dog, who I miss VERY much...

Thank you Dana for showing us the sights, and being such a thoughful foodie...

Thank you Ellen for being such a fun friend, taking us to Skywalker Ranch, and putting up with your brother, who should call you more often...

And, most importantly, THANK YOU CASSIE, for keeping the ship running so smoothly while we were wandering Westward.  You TRULY rock....

Ian, Peeled not quite so skinny.... 

Posted by iankusc at 09:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

California's suffered an odd winter this year, as Los Angeles received, gasp, snowfall, yet San Francisco has its driest January EVER.  Somehow, the Bush regime BS tact of renaming Global Warming "Global Climate Change" seems oddly apt as all those Angelinos huddle by their car engines (the city's only source of heat, I think).  The Bay area just got  its first blast of rain, though that hardly corrects the "change".

If anyone reading this wonders what on Earth the weather has to do with snacks,  then said person hasn't been paying attention.  To anything.  Two Fridays ago, an announcement by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change basically amounted to an attempt to say "the discussion is over.  This is happening, and it's our fault.  Now, what do we do about it." 

The White House's reaction? "We agree with it, and the science behind it is something that our country has played a very important role in," or so says U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman.  Of course, this is the same Samuel Bodeman who, after Katrina hit, stated...

"We are committed to doing everything in our power to meet the immediate needs of those directly affected by Hurricane Katrina." Of course, he was speaking about oil company executives, but if words were deeds, he'd really seem like just the sweetest guy.

Anyway, all this chatting about weather and the environment and vulgar lies reminds me of the great state of California's tradition of pushing the cultural envelope.  Before dumping into the sea, this nation of ours (sometimes yours) takes some daring strides towards re-invention.  For 150 years,  the vangaurds of social change have used California as a testbed, sometimes progressing (John Muir, anyone?), sometimes impressing (HOLLYWOOD!), sometimes depressing (Nixon comes from here).

But the legacy's a dubious one.  After all, this is where "Car Culture" truly found its footing, and thanks to the highway system, you can no find ample parking in the rush-hour traffic all over the state.  In spite of whatever claims to environmentalism Cali might have, the Military Industial Complex has hooks deep into the state.  And for all the parks put up here, soil erosion and habitat destruction receive no reprieve.

Furthermore, most impacting on California, at least as far as we're concerned, are the labor policies.  I suppose that's a way of saying "most impacting one Peeled Snacks", but whatever.  All the people here don't amount to enough people to pick all the pears off the trees come harvest season, so the crop spoils, and "Shock-olate" suffers, as the farmers proved last November when they dumped several tons of wasted crops on the Whitehouse lawn.
 
A former part of Mexico, California now protects itself as best it can from "illegals", yet the whole day worker culture runs on them.  And while California is often considered the great socialist experiment, the homeless problem here is out of control, and most of its citizenry suffer from the same Health Insurance mess as the rest of the country.  The ideals and intents just don't match the reality.  Though, in all fairness, at least here they're trying.  Texas can't brag as much.

California's put a couple of presidents up there, but they were both Republicans.  Yet somehow the state is perceived as a liberal home.  Hippy culture started here (though surely its roots run to New York soil), yet so did porn culture.  Is this place liberal, or libertarian, agrarian conservative, or inclusively socialist, or just the dystopian urban landscape run amok as predicted by "Blade Runner"....?

Well I'll tell you one thing- it's a great place to sell Peeled Snacks, and an even greater place to avoid the snow storms of the East Coast.... 

Posted by iankusc at 02:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you know me (or my blog babbling), you know that I've a weakness for sodas, particularly the super-funky, fruity, bitter, or odd-ball variety.  I'll take as strong a ginger-beer as you can find me, or as fruity a grapefruit soda as you can concoct (and oh, can Fizzy-Lizzy make one fruity grapefruit soda).  In NYC, I know exactly which shops dabble in the funky sodas, but here in Cali?  I just didn't know where to go for the odd, the ambitious, the enticing soda or "pop"....

Then I discovered "The Berkeley Bowl"....

What do you look for in a grocery store?  Perhaps you look for variety?  Or maybe you look for your particular brands.  Maybe you're price concious.  Maybe you want all organic.  Do you like to discover new stuff?  In need of bulk?  Curious about the butcher shop?  Have high standards for veggies?  Are you (like my dear friend Eirik) a cheese addict?  What if you're into ALL these things? 

I kind of am.  I like my organic meats and produce, but I also like inexpensive bulk cereals and grains.  I know exactly what kind of canned tomatoes I like, but I want to have a lot of options when it comes to olive oil and tea.  The "Bowl" caters to ALL my needs in a bewildering, blinding fashion.  It's enormous, yet it has a density of substance (unlike, say, your box-store grocery, or anything in New York short of Fairway).

When I first walked into the Bowl, I was flabbergasted.  Piles of freshly baked bread loomed overhead as a maze of wines lurked behind, and aisles upon aisles of canned goods beckoned, while an army of veggies waited in the wings.  I felt like Theodore Davis must have felt when her first uncovered King Tutankhamen's tomb.  So much to SEE! So much to DO!  So many MUMMIES to FIGHT!

No, wait.  Scratch that last part.  Though there were a LOT of "Mommies" (Berkeley, much like NYC, seems to be experiencing a sizable Baby-Boom).  Frankly, I was in heaven, and what was supposed to be a quick trip to pick up some rice-milk turned into a veritable ORGY of shelf-gawking.  I dare-say that I've never, NEVER, seen such a perfect arrray of produce in all my life.  And anyone that knows me well will tell you that I'm a total produce SLUT!

But that's the great thing about California, isn't it?  You can pick up a locall grown, organic orange pepper for $1.09 per pound (and I did), and buy mushrooms by the wheel-barrow full (if you happen to own a wheel barrow).  Considering the cold-snap that my co-workers in New York are enduring, I can't rightly complain about the San Fran weather anymore, but if I COULD, I'd have to say that the produce makes it all worth it.

Now, if you'll forgive me, I'm going to go pick up some grapefruit soda.  And some carrots.  And some cereal.  And some lamb chops.  And some cheddar cheese.  And some olives.  And some...

...you get the point... 

Posted by iankusc at 04:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ever been to San Francisco?  Peeled Snacks trucked out here for last week's Winter Fancy Food show wilth all of our New York muchachos enviously braying about how we were so lucky to be heading off to the balmy weather of California. 

You know what?  California is COLD, a special kinf od COLD, a COLD that seeps into your clothes and nose and fingers, and for a moment makes you think that you're not cold, but then gives you a terrible COLD.  Sure, New York's chilly, but at least there people are expected to wear gloves.  Here, cold weather attire is an extra handkerchief and a frienship bracelet.

Furthermore, in the East we have enough cold to realize that cold requires treatment.  We weather proof our windows and install functioning heating devices because we realize that, yes, cold sucks.  But in the Shangri-La that is California, the windows all seem to be terribly drafty and the heating units warm up a good 3 sqare feet each.  But don't worry, if you get chilly here, you can always borrow a mood ring.

So we brought our tasty treats out to San Fran, and (shockingly enough) they seem to have been very warmly accepted by the chilled hands of Californians (sorry, I'll stop with that now).   The Fancy Food show here is about a third the size of New York's July version, though it attracts a different crew.  Fewer Europeans, more "foodies", and almost no charmless New York style sharks (the kind who ask the price before tasting anything).

Naturally, we have the utmost confidence that our snacks will do smashingly out here, since Caifornians are known for their active lifestyles, their appreciation of good ingredients, and spectacularly warm weather (only one of those is a misconception). We were pleasantly surprised, though, when at the show we recieved oodles of orders.  Usually we shake hands, talk a lot, and the orders come later.  It seems that California was desperately in need of a good snack.

We went out there riding a glorious review courtesy of our friends at The Nibble.  It's always encouraging when a journalist really understand what we're trying to do and conveys it.  Such a sentiment we're hoping to find on this Western shore.  Peeled Snacks, as tasty as they are, just will never be a cheap and disposable as Pringles.  Thank heavens....

After the show ended on Tuesday, the Peeled Snacks team was desperately in need of a good meal, so at the invitation of a delightful and lovely new friend from LaLoo's Goat Milk Ice Cream (you know who you are, DANA), we swept down to the Mission disctrict's "Gratitude" Raw Food restaurant for a truly unique Californian gustatory experience.  The vegan menu is all prepared at temperatures at or below 118 degrees, which must make for a wonderful cool kitchen within to work.

It also made for some wonderful tastes (the cocunut soup was de-LISH), though the meal went terribly with the sake someone foolishly ordered (a fruity white would have been much better suited).  Perhaps due to my unfamiliarity with the rawness of the food, the uncooked nature of it meant that the next day my body was, ahem, "cooking" it (with gas heat, not electric).  Still, it was a marvelous experience, and Dana (you know who you are!) totally rocks.

We'll be out in California for a few weeks getting everything going here, so my next few entries will try to convey what it's like for a New Yorker (and former Southern Californian) to put up with the heat waves of San Francisco in January and February (that's the last dig, I PROMISE).  I'll try to be balanced and fair, but it's tough not to miss New York tremendously and take it out on San Fran.  Luckily, where I'm living has a beautiful dog (Sylvie) and its very own orange tree.  Life could be worse.  Life could, after all, be cold.

Posted by iankusc at 01:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

 

America used to be a great labor pool.  Our nation was founded not on but via cheap labor- look in an original draft of the Constitution and you'll see that slaves were, if not fully American, at least worth two thirds of one.  As citizens slowly woke up to that terrible math, we opened our doors (or, er, ports) to Germans, Jews, Italians, Irish (begrudgingly), Chinese (till 1882), and so on.  We constantly refilled our labor coffers and bred prosperity, if not in the most recent arrivals, at least in the 2nd or third most recent newbies.

Check out this article about labor in agriculture right now, courtesy of the NYT.  It's a fascinating dissection of the breakdown in the US when it comes to dealing with labor woes.  Just how is it that orchard owners in California's Central Valley have come to be so nervous about China's Jiangxi province?  And why should this have SO much to do with kooks like the Minutemen?

By stopping the flow of "illegal" immigration from Mexico, we are indeed upholding the letter of the law.  But by not dealing with the real issue of what those immigrants offer to our workforce, we're shooting ourselves in the foot.  Would you like to pick pears for $100 a day?  If you said yes, then why don't you?  Would you be upset if someone that said "yes" really got an opportunity to do so?

China's might right now lies not in its military or its scientific infrastructure, but rather in its labor force.  They've 4 times the number of citizens that we do, and their political/economic systems allows them to do what they will with said workforce.  It's sad and frustrating to me that we're willing to outsource everything to China, rather than actually compete with it.  But that sure seems to be what's going down...

Posted by iankusc at 09:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This past weekend, in honor of a good friend of mine's impending nuptials, I and several other chums jumped on planes from verious corners of the lower 48 and shuttled ourselves, sans carryon hygenic products, to the strange, fantastic, rococo playland that is Las Vegas, Nevada.  I had never before found my way into Sin City's city limits, thanks mostly to the fact that the last time I extensively travelled the Southwest I was under 21 years old.  That, and I'm cheap.

Well, certainly Vegas has many, ahem, virtues which ought to be extoled- the design is outlandish, the entertainment is suitably over-the-top, the air is (artificially) oxygen rich, and the drinks, thankfully, are free.  Clearly there's something for everyone in Las Vegas, since there's a sign on the way into town that tells you so- "Las Vegas: Something 4 Everyone".

Indeed , there's certainly something for me in Las Vegas, or at least the Las Vegas vicinity- in celebration of my buddy's waning bachelordom, some of us jumped in a minivan and headed West, OUT of the city, towards the surrounding desert.  Our goal was the Red Rocks state park, a beautiful stretch of rusted-iron infused canyons and cliffs that blew our minds, and NOT our wallets.

But what, you ask, does this have to do with Peeled Snacks?  Gambling, debauchery, and free drinks are a regular part of the Peeled Snacks business model, but my interest today doesn't pertain to such crucial fundamental aspects of business.  Furthermore, canyon walls, however beautiful, simply do not apply.  How, then, am I to turn this travel blog into a snack blog, you wonder?

Granted, this is slightly eliptical, but imagine, if you will, a desert.  Not the Sahara style desert of endless dunes, mind you- the American Southwest version, with its rock and dust and heartbreaking, empty vistas.  Through such a landscape we drove while making our way to the literally named Red Rocks Park, and I imagine that throughout most of history, such a landscape remained basically empty, barring the occasional lizard, tumbleweed, or compulsive gambler.  But you know what I found hiding in yon desert, lurking alien in an alien landscape, trying to blend in like a chameleon yet sticking out like the middle-finger buttes of Monument Valley?

 Tract Housing.

Driving out of Vegas, we passed mile after mile of last that should belong to an empty, barren desert basin, but which was filled with little, sand colored houses.  I was shocked to see how many houses there were in a land that spent, oh, 18,000 years devoid of human inhabitants besides a smattering of Paiute indians.  Even freakier to me was that for miles, all the houses were basically the exact same design, as if the urban planners had deemed the outskirts of Vegas to be "tan box country".

What a terrible idea.  What a miserable, awful, foolish, dangerous, disasterous approach to urban planning, for which the city council of Vegas should be vigorously flogged.  Though the name Las Vegas means "the Meadow," it's a DESERT.  The Colorado River, running so close to Las Vegas, would be able to support a population of close to a million people, but the river is now diverted far away- as far as phoenix and California's Imperial Valley.  Between agricultural needs and splitting the Southwestern regional water bill, Vegas has little to no room to grow.

All that housing out there in the desert speaks of the radical growth that Vegas has seen in the last 10 years.  It's the fastest growing large city in America, and thousand of people arrive there every month seeking their fortunes.  But such growth is completely unsustainable.  Babylonia used to be a verdant paradise, but too much growth turned it into the wasteland that is now Iraq.  Vegas' growth could have a similar effect, only the place STARTED OUT as a desert!

Unmanaged growth, be it in urban centers, agriculture, or business, makes for disasters.  However much money may be being made in Vegas now, is that more or less than the cost to fix all the mistakes that are being made?  I suspect that it's much, much less.

Okay, that still had barely anything to do with snacks, but it's what was on my mind.  Sigh...

 An ode to Vegas:

Cha-Ching used to be the war-cry

of Buffalo hunting Apache braves

when they finally sprang from behind boulders

to drive their woolly, wholely useful prey

over the cliffs of the Valley of Las Vegas.

All the bison got bagged and baked,

and the Apache all succumbed to the bugs

brought over by the bug that bit the fleas

that bit the Spanish on their way to Eldorado.

The words Cha-ching still echo loudly

Through the valley of the Meadow,

And somehow the mythical Lost City of Gold

has been made real in an empty desert,

brick by gold brick, 

One rococo Casino at a time. 

Posted by iankusc at 09:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Have you by chance heard the strange news that the New York Health Department is considering imposing a ban on trans fats?  Read about it HERE, then continue reading...  Don't worry, I'll wait for you.  You done yet?  No, no, take your time, I'm not going anywhere.  Through yet?  Okay then...

There's a lot of press about this right now, so if CNN's not your thing, google NYC trans fats and see what comes up.   If you don't google, then I can't help you.

So the article barely covers trans fats, what they are, and what they do.  Thanks to my girl Nina Planck, I got the skinny on all that, and it ain't pretty.  It's a lurid tale of politics, commerce, and bad press, and it cuts to the core of crazy American industrialized agriculture.  Consider for a moment the roughly 10,000 years of mostly-recorded human history... then consider that trans fats have been part of the human diet for about 1% of that time.

No Mesopotamian ever ate a trans fat, nor did any Ancient Roman.  Trans fats arrived on the global dinner table somewhere in the 19th century, when chemists (not, mind you, chefs) found that animal fat could be solidified by simply bombarding it with hydrogen atoms (hydrogenating).  Thanks to the sponsorship of Napolean III, someone in the 1870s figured out that the same process works on vegetable fats (which until then had only been liquid), and thus, courtesy of the FRENCH, margarine was born.

The history and politics behind this fat is fascinating without even bothering to ponder NYC's recent efforts to sully its reputation.  As early as 1873, the US government heavily regulated margarine's sale, basically just to protect the US dairy farmers from some upstart French margarine onslought.  By the 1880s, an expensive tax was put on every tub of margarine.  And all this was instituted long before there was any evidence that trans fats cause heart disease.

When in the early 20th century the US department of agriculture started promoting margarine, it certainly wasn't for health reasons- it was to promote farms in the face of the slowly growing industrialized agriculture sector.  This of course kicked into high gear around WWII, but the dairy industry in the US and abroad had some interesting ways to fight the fake fat front- they made sure that margarine stayed ugly!

Sounds weird, I know, but when vegetable oils are hydrogenated, they turn a pale white color typically associated with the skintones of certain zombies.  It's unflattering, and clearly chemical.  To assuage the flinching eyes of doubting consumers, margarine manufacturers started adding yellow dyes to make their goop look more like butter.  But the dairy cabals all over the world fought to make such dyes illegal.  They only became legal in Australia in 1980.  In Quebec, they're STILL illegal, and accordingly, the Quebecoise eat a lot of butter.

Round about the 1980s, as industrialized agriculture in the US insured that, as an employer, agriculture accounted for less than 1% of the workforce (down from 50% in 1861) , the margarine boosters out there tried to ridea health kick and position of margarine as a HEALTHIER alternative to butter.  I recall floods of commercials from back in those days as "I can't believe it's not butter" tried to demonize what it wasn't, and cholesteral was zoomed in as the future end of civilization lest something were done about it.

Flash forward to today, when the tables have been turned, and now margarine is being given treatment as cruel as cigarettes garnered in the late 90s.  Health and food trends flow a buck, and us poor consumers find it ever more difficult to know what to eat, much less who to trust.  But this legislation of diets seems rather extreme, whatever the health implications of eating margarine.  More on this next week, because there's so much to cover...

Margarine, butter...

My biscuit needs moistening.

Better go with jam.

Hydrogenate me.

Bombard me with your atoms.

Soon, I'll nuke your heart.

Time was, health made sense.

Once men ate meat, and loved it.

Now, each bite is fear.

EN "Peel'en" K 

Posted by iankusc at 08:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Weather's supposed to be a dull, but safe topic, but for the past few years it's been an ever more interesting one.  If you haven't caught Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth, he really shows just how wildly entertaining weather can be when in the hands of the right screenplay writers (Shane Black?  Steven E. DeSouza?  Joe Estherhaz??).  Of course, thanks to Katrina (and the Bush camp's review of that film, "I fell asleep during this movie") weather's not just blockbuster material, but Oscar worthy.

And in the category of best supporting actor, we have George W. Bush for Hurricane Katrina?  I think not...

Weather obviously affects more than just box-office results. Agriculture in the Midwest took a huge hit this summer, what with all those degrees going around, and the housing market in the New Mexico hills has been, shall we say, blackened a bit.  As I wrote in an earlier entry, we snack magnates compete with the seasons too, and this Summer has been punishing.  The big problem?  Chocolate!

Of course, I have no right to call chocolate a problem.  After all, were it not for chocolate, there'd be no Camp David Accord, and the builders of the Brooklyn Bridge ate chocolate EXCLUSIVELY.  But chocolate has its downsides, or rather, its downSIDE- it melts.  That's about as much bad-mouthing as I can lend chocolate, but this summer, that miserable trait alone has caused us terrible agony.

Imagine one of those classic, classy UPS vans- you know, the brown ones than seem as if they were imagined, designed, and engineered by a 1920s Quaker farmer from Iowa.  Now imagine them at high noon on a mid-July day, barreling through Dallas on their way to a Forth Worth suburb.  Imagine the temperature in the belly of that brown beast.  Now imagine what it does to chocolate.

Oh, how I wish I could steal a look at the Hershey playbook, or the Mars Bar Bible, and see just how they handle chocolate distribution in the summertime.  I remember that on a trip to India a couple of years ago, I was simply flabbergasted that chocolate could not be found anywhere but in the high hill stations.  Somehow I'd just never imagined a world without chocolate, but those worlds do exist.  Right there's reason enough to, with all our heart and political will, fight global warming.

We've compensated this summer by trying to ship our Shock-olate overnight, and/or with ice packs, but we've still lost a dreadful amount of chocolate to Helion/Ra/Imti/whatever you wanna call the sun.  But, at last, summer seems to be finally relenting a little, and allowing some cooling air, be it Canadian or Hurricanian air, to come down and spare our chocolate a little.  I love my summertime living- swim holes, camping, long days and big waves... but I like chocolate even more.

 An Ode to Chocolate

Pitty Buddha, for he never tasted a Mars Bar.

Jesus and Muhammed too- no Snickers for them either.

Maybe if they'd tasted Godiva, we'd never have invaded Iraq,

Or maybe Torquemada would've been a sweetheart.

Perhaps Caesar could have conquered Gaul,

If only he'd have had Hot Cocoa to tempt them out of the woods.

They say that Microwaves were invented by Chocolate

Melting in the shirt pocket of some engineer

standing too close to a microwave antenna.

Lucky shirt. 

Would that my fingers each had their own tongues,

for when I daudle, and my chocolate runneth over;

that my shirt could taste you the stains

of that last dropped dollop of chocolate ice cream.

Would that chocolate grew on trees,

not as gooey cocoa nuts, but, you know,

as Hershey's Kisses, or Almond Joy.

Yeah.  Yeah.

That'd be sweet. 

Posted by iankusc at 08:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday whilst browsing trough New York's famous Strand Bookstore, Peeled Snacks founder and president (and my gorgeous wife) Noha Waibsnaider stumbled upon Real Food- What to Eat and Why by Nina Planck, a food thinker and enjoyer who actually is speaking tonight at the Strand.  Noha picked up Ms. Planck's book, plowed through it, and then passed it to me to peruse.

I'd be slightly understating it if I were to say that we agree with Ms. Planck.  If I may be so bold as to summarize her thesis, the way in which we grow, raise, and plan for the foodstuffs we eat greatly determines how healthy or unhealthy those foods turn out (much more so even than the actual preparation of a meal).  Today's food industry undercuts nutrition for the sake of a quick buck, but the long-term health and environmental costs of how most food is raised makes for a long-term disaster.

Check out her website: www.ninaplanck.com

She pays a great bit of attention to the science of farming, which we in our nice little Consumer-Packaged-Goods Society don't bother to mess with much.  In one juicy bit, she dissects the interplay between grass, flies, cows, and the chickens that peck at the cow patties.  It's a fascinating look through a microscope that we rarely tarry with, and I recommend her highly.

These days it feels like a lot of the sort of "Peeled Snacks Mission" is about consumer education- we're trying to impress upon potential customers why spending 3 dollars for 2.6 oz. of dried fruit and nuts is better than spending half that for twice as much weight in pringles.  So many people are trained to think that cheaper is better.  Since when did "Cheap" stand for American values?  Why is it so difficult for people to get past price to get to quality?

But I'll banter about that another time.  Poem for the Day:

The sun shines down onto dirt,

on the little clover seeds,

which grow into, you know, clover.

The gravely cow tongues pull up the grass,

and all those churning stomachs,

mull over every little grain,

grabbing all the good stuff, so much good stuff to grab.

The poop comes out- yeah, I said POOP!

and flies buzz around,

doing fly business (don't laugh- everybody's got business),

making little baby flies in the POOP.

Along comes the chickens, pecking pecking pecking,

eating up the baby flies, making their own

happy happy baby chicks.

All of this, and the sun, and the raindrops, and the poop,

falls back to the dirt.

We eat all the glory grown from this stuff,

then we fall, too, to the clover. 

Posted by iankusc at 12:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Are you a New York Times reader?  If so, if not, check out Sunday's NYT Business section page on for a lovely little big of smoke screening about high fructose corn syrup.  In case you need a link, try...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/02/business/yourmoney/02syrup.html?_r=1&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fW%2fWarner%2c%20Melanie&oref=slogin

The article, courtesy of NYT Business section staff writer Melanie Warner, proposes that the recent demonization of high fructose corn syrup is based on bunk science, and that it's really no more harmful than good old refined sugar.  Ms. Warner takes care to cite many a scientist and food expert about the health effects of HFCS, constantly correlating them to the rise in obesity, but insisting that the chemical makeup of HFCS just can't be the cause for such a, ahem, ballooning.

Hats off, Ms. Warner, for utterly, completely, pathetically missing the point.  I'll get right out and admit to having enjoyed MANY of Ms. Warner's articles lately (her Wal-Mart organic article is a stitch).  When I saw that she was taking on HFCS, I thought that there might be much to learn from her, or entertainment value at the least.  What I read was a 2,933 word explanation about how corn syrup is our sweet, processed friend, and we shouldn't give it such a hard time for being so sweet.

Forget the sweet.  Real critics of HFCS don't waste their time with such nonsense.  Sweet is sweet, however you get it, and sometimes it's too sweet, sometimes not sweet enough, and sometimes, oh yeah, it's just the sweetest sweet ever.

 The beef with corn syrup isn't the sweet, it's the CHEAP.  The United States government in a bid to prop up our agricultural sector heavily subsidizes corn and its byproducts.  Between 1995 and 2004, corn subsidies in the U.S. totaled $41.9 billion.  That's hardly chump-change.  This year congress passed a $190 billion farm subsidy package, over a fifth of which is targeted at corn subsidies (and yet somehow the democrats are considered fiscally irresponsible?).  That money is all aimed at supporting what was until the civil war 70% of our economy, and now represents less than 1%- agriculture.

Our proud heritage of agrarianism, however, has its costs when super-processed products like HFCS are the most supported output- products with HFCS become CHEAP.  REAL cheap.  So cheap that there's really no reason to buy anything else.  The ever-swelling poor masses of our great country end up buying goodies loaded with HFCS because it's all that they can afford.  They eat it, they get NOTHING from it (no satisfaction, no nutrition) except calories, and they go out and buy more.

High Fructose Corn Syrup is not food poisoning- it's social and economic poisoning.  I won't even bother with the wastefulness behind processing the heck out of any given product- others' arguments are surely more sound.  Consider, though, that in the 1930s Americans spent as much as  22% of their money on food.  Today, we spend less than 6%. That money I assume has been reallocated into places like housing, automobile expenses, and body armor.  It's certainly not going into the very fabric of one's body, and it's certainly not doing much for the American farmer.

Ms. Warner wasted an opportunity to open up an argument by taking advantage of an opportunity to close an argument.  I expect better from the writers and editors of the New York Times.  They aren't supposed to put the lid on things; they're supposed to blow the lids off!

 Poem for the day

Black and white summer smear

inching down my chin like a snail,

half chocolate, have vanilla,

like 1859 Virginia, 

all good, guaranteed by the sweaty man

smiling in the ice cream truck,

oh smear, of what are you made?

From the churned white nectar

of satisfied bovines humming and cooing

amongst the tall grasses of summer?

Or are you made from the mashed, dashed,

split, ruined, pulped, spun, dunked, thrashed,

spoiled, soiled, flushed, smushed remnants

of ears of corn long gone? 

Posted by iankusc at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Have you checked out Al Gore’s latest sonorously delivered dose of buzz-kill, “An Inconvenient Truth”?  Well, neither have I, but I GUARANTEE that come its arrival in Netflix, it’ll be #4 in my queue… for a while, probably.  For those of you in the Netflix know, the #4 spot is reserved for that movie that you really think you should see, but which you keep bumping in order to catch Jim Carrey’s latest bit of goofery.

Anyway, were I to have seen “An Inconvenient Truth,” I’m certain that I’d right now be well armed with dozens of reasons why the world is falling apart and it’s all George Dubya’s fault, but seeing as I haven’t caught it (better add it to my Netflix queue now while I’m thinking of it), I have to rely on first-hand experience with which to extol the current administration’s environmental “policy.”  Of late, I get to look at record temperatures across the Rockies, Sedona’s burning Mc-Mansions, and oodles of melted Peeled Snacks Shock-olate.

I’m given to understand by people in-the-know that the term “Global Warming” gives the wrong impression about what’s REALLY going on, and that “Global Climate Change” is a more apt term.  I hardly know the difference, given that the sweltering weather waiting outside my air-conditioned apartment seems to be “changed” only so far as it has been “warmed,” but as the Republican Intelligentsia repeatedly reminds me, I’m no scientist.  I’m just part of a business that has to ship a lot of chocolate to Arizona, and let me tell you, it’s truly a miracle that any chocolate whatsoever is eaten in the American southwest between April and October.  We can safely assume that Arizonans take responsibility for some or all of the Ice Cream manufacturing to satisfy its summertime population of cone lovers, but Arizona remains a LONG way away from Peeled Snacks’ upstate New York plant, nearly as far from Hershey, Pennsylvania, is separated via at least one ocean from Nestlé’s hidden alpine chocolate lairs, and via an astronomical distance from, well, Mars.

Peeled Snacks obviously is painfully new to the trials and travails of distributing chocolate, that sweetest stuff on Earth (invented, no doubt, at 11:58 PM on the 6^th day in heavy anticipation of the 7^th), and we’re right now concocting some radical strategies to meet our customers’ ample Shock-olate demands.  If anyone somehow has a copy of the M&M-Mars playbook, or at least the pages in the playbook that talk about summertime Snickers distribution, I’d be forever in your debt for five minutes alone with the pages and a photocopier…