On June 18, the NY Times published an article entitled "Sweet Rewards for Apricot Explorers", telling the story of one Californian’s journey to find the perfect apricot for an American market.  John Driver’s ripe apricots debut this summer, while here at Peeled Snacks we are excited for the arrival of Apricot-a-lot, which also makes its first appearance nationwide, online and in many stores which currently carry Peeled Snacks varieties. Apricot-a-lot debuts at the summer’s end, right in time for the fall back-to-school craze.

I haven’t yet tasted John Driver’s ripe apricots, but find them interesting considering the catchy sales pitch as CandyCots. According to Driver, these apricots, whose seeds originate in Central Asia, double the sweetness of apricots grown in California. Doubtless, consumers are looking for taste-value, as well as content and health-value. Driver hopes that consumers will readily buy CandyCots, sold in padded packaging to prevent bruising. Here at Peeled Snacks, I am now an apricot fan, ever since I tried the apricots in Apricot-a-lot. Before trying our new organic snack, I never really thought of apricots as all that delicious, either as a snack or a dessert. To me, they never really stood out in the grocery store.

My exposure to the industry has greatly increased both my knowledge and exposure to what I believed was an unusual fruit. This July, Patterson, CA held its annual Apricot Fiesta in honor of the fruit.  Apricots from Patterson are no longer sold at the same volume as they had been in the past, largely due to the fact Driver points to: California apricots are not as sweet as Turkish apricots. However, Patterson continues to celebrate the apricot and continues to find unique ways to fashion the fruit (ie, fried apricots to eat, the title of Little Miss Apricot as winner of the pie-eating contest, etc.). The fruit is something more than a sellable product; it represents a strong connection to the land and is a symbol of a pastime.

Here in NY, I may not have the strong connection to the land on which apricots are grown. Yet, as a consumer, I appreciate eating something which makes my day a bit more enjoyable. Apricots might make a considerable splash this summer to consumers looking for a tasty snack, both full of flavor and beneficial. I'll be following how the American consumer responds to CandyCots, and I will definitely be following and supporting Apricot-a-lot as a yummy snack. As a consumer, I'm concerned with the prices in this market. Will these new apricots be accepted in our current economy?  John Driver's seem a bit expensive at a SRP of $7.99-12.99 for 1 pound a box, but these days everything is increasingly expensive, including a simple gallon of milk. Will consumers be ready-buyers of these new products this summer? We'll see.

-Christina R 

My first entry went in June, 2006, which means that I've put in an entry just about every week for 2 years straight.  I know that some bloggers add several entries a DAY, but I've tried to make each of my entries count, each one say something precise and as fully as I dare.  I've occasionally entered in a quick little throw-away entry, but usually even those revolve around a joke that could keep you laughing for DAYS.

It's been a while since I added one, but I've added to the blogosphere some poems about which I'm particularly proud.  Note my odes to lousy sodas and odios jingos, input from man-eating martians and wayward cowboyd, and that homage to Shel Silverstein in honor of Halloween candy- you won't find any of THAT on Gawker.  One of my poems took a political bent that offended some people so we took it off the website, but I'll remain privately proud of it, ESPECIALLY that it got me in trouble.

Somewhere along the road I hope that I've established a STANCE, a POSITION which I can consistently present to readers where they can hear one clear take on this world of food and factor it in with other perspectives.  When I think about what I generally have to say, I'd call it "Post post-Food", as in, Industrialized food production moved us beyond recognizable ingredients, and I want to move us beyond that ugly paradigm. 

I've had a couple of guest bloggers, some real (Amanda Arrington, last summer's intern) and some semi-imaginary (Johnny Appleseed, one of my personal favorite blogs).  I hope in the coming year to have more such voices chime in, partly because I really want to have a DISCUSSION about food in America, and partly because I'm lazy and LOVE when somebody else does me job for me.

A last little note- over the year I've taken pot-shots at this manufacturer or that food movement, and occasionally I feel as if I've come across as rude.  Usually when I write this way, in my head it all sounds funny.... but I know that I've actually offended a few people.  I'll not apologize for this, exactly.  Rather, I'll say that I'll simply try to be more concientious of others while writing, and to say what I mean without clouding it in Snarkiness.

Here's to another 1000 blog entries, though by the time I get that many written, the medium will surely change and I'll be telepathically casting my brain-waves into the ether.  Can't WAIT till my job gets even EASIER!

Happy Snacking,

Peeled Skinny, at 100 entries

So every year I look for trends of what's growing in food, what's fading, etc.  2005 had too much frickin coffee, 2006 was the year of Jerky (most of which is gone now), and 2007 was a Hummus-a-thon.  Every year there's plenty of dips and hot sauces, and the world will never seem to run out of Tea companies (SHEESH!) and Chocolatiers.  But 2008 is, in my humble opinion, the year of the MIX!!!

Out of no-where, this year's Fancy Food Show boasted about 12 or 15 companies all selling mixes, mostly for cookies (with a glut of "Gluten-Free" promises).  Being the foodie that I am, I like the idea of people being involved in their food creation, but then again, if the whole world dried its own fruit, I'd be out of a job.  Having tasted pre-baked Gluten Free cookies, I see the sense in this trend- Gluten Free stuff just tastes BAD!

One of Peeled Snacks' best friends, codenamed ND, pointed out the moisture problem of taking Gluten out of baking (Gluten holds in a LOT of goo-iness).  So these mixes help the Gluten-challenged amongst us make cookies to their liking that, hopefully, taste better than card-board.  But ND also pointed out that most of the Gluten-challenged likely already know how to make their own food, so how much of a market is there really out there? 

Another, perhaps more encouraging trend is the tendency of companies to donate a portion of their proceeds to this charity or that one.  Part of me wants to say that Peeled Snacks should jump on that bandwagon, but the other part of me says, "woah, we give enough to the causes we like, and we try not to make too big a deal about it."  Inevitably, I want it to be the FOOD that sells our stuff.

Allow me to bang the drum once more- there are TOO MANY FRICKIN TEA COMPANIES right now.  Tea surely makes a large enough profit margin to warrant some competition, but if any Tom/Dick/Harry thinks that he and his packaging designer can compete in a world with Ineeka in is, Tom/Dick/Harry has surely been smoking too much SOMETHING.... 

Greetings from Brooklyn,

Peeled Skinny 

....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 

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 

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. 

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! 

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.... 

The article's author points out that, okay, Africa is starving, and by throwing all that food out we as a nation are being royal pigs, and should feel VERY ashamed.  True, no doubt, but not really representative of the real problem here, nor what's at stake.  Definitely, it's TERRIBLE to waste food, and yes, we SHOULD be feeding the hungry.  But what's stands in the way isn't wasteful habits....

It's oil.

Hunger is NOT a problem of supply- there is anough food in this world to fatten everybody up to nice, portly sloths and still have scraps left over for the dogs.  Nor is it a matter of behavior- America isn't eating more food than their due, thus starving the rest of the world. 

Hunger is a matter of DISTRIBUTION- how do you get the surplus food to a place where there aren't any good roads, and no gas stations on those bad roads?  How do you get past the pirates, the juntas, the corrupt officials?  How do you weed through the international red tape BEFORE the food rots?  Easier said, MUCH easier said, than done.

Food prices are shooting up right now in degrees that don't reflect in any way the somewhat diminished crops of the past year.  Maybe there's 2% less corn in the country- why, then, are prices of corn up 25%?  Keep in mind that, unless you're harvesting corn in your back yard, the corn you're eating had to GET to wherever you are, and that took OIL!

I'm not saying that I enjoy wasting food, or that anybody should take it up as hobby.  Waste obviously sucks, and there's no excuse for it.  But waste in Witchita does not mean famon in Gabon.

I bring this word up because of THIS news in this morning's New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/23/washington/23farm.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=Farm+bill&st=nyt&oref=slogin

Too tired to read it?  After reading it, i'm certainly too tired to THINK about it, but here it is in a nut-shell: Congress (both the Senate and House) passed the Farm Bill by an overwhelming margin, offering a proxy middle-finger to the President, who vetoed the bill on Wednesday.  However, Congress being who they are (insert the plural form of "Doofus"), still managed to screw it up....

They passed the WRONG BILL!!!!

Or, rather, passed the wrong VERSION- what they signed wasn't the right copy- it lacked several portions that were in the Vetoed Bill, thus sending the whole process back to square 1.  Consider....

1: Congress takes an additional 8 months beyond what they were alotted to build this bill...

2: The bill, as it stands, is LOADED with Pork...

3: The bill, as it stands, is likewise chock full of corn-fuel energy padding, just when Corn prices have managed to turn ethanol from a kind-of-funny pipe dream into an un-funny waste of billions of dollars worth in research....

4: After all that, the DOOFI of Congress can't even get straight just what they're supposed to sign!!!!

With the House minority crying foul, and the President laughing his lame-duck butt off, and the Democrats looking like they can't even alphabetize the first names of the American Idol judges, I have a stinking suspiscion that the Farm Bill Is CURSED!  A murky cloud of DOOM hangs over it, and as Americans and non-Americans starve and grumble, nothing, Nothing, NOTHING gets done.  It's enough to make a Foodie cry.... 

The history of food can easily be filtered through what makes food sanitary and palatable.  For thousands of years, whole economies and histories were built around the Spice trade.  Populations started exploding after the invention of refrigeration.  And Sugar, that cheapest, most efficient form of a carbohydrate, has driven the American diet since WAY back in the day.

Picture Ben Franklin and George Washington chewing the fat after their victory against the British in 1783.  When Martha served cake for dessert, it was baked with sugar from Sugar Beets.  Same thing with the beer Mr. Franklin so famously brewed.  After the Louisiana Purchase, production of cane sugar exploded, and Louisiana grew 90% of the nation's sugar for well over 100 years.

Now why, tell me, did the entire US agricultural economy shift away from sugar to Corn?  Look on most packaged food's ingredient lists (outside of your local Whole Foods, that is), and you'll find High Fructose Corn Syrup in the top 3 ingredients.  Sugar can't be found anywhere but in "Hippie Food" these days.  After checking out a Sugar Cane plantation, I now know why....

Most of the world's sugar comes from Brazil, which has no Winter.  Almost all of the sugar in the US comes from Louisana, which, contrary to typical Yankee belief, DOES have a Winter, or at least enough of one to curb any chance of a growing season.  Brazil plants sugar cane in August and harvests in May.  Louisiana plants in September and harvests in November....

November, 14 months LATER!!!!

Long have I wondered why US corn-sugar production has "kicked sugar cane's butt" (to quote the cane sugar plantation tour guide), and now I get it- American sugar cane takes TWICE as long to grow, and time is money.  Corn grows tall and bounteous every year, particularly since the feds have subsidized it so heavily.  That's twice the production, which can be seen as half the cost.

There's plenty of other factors, like the fact that Corn can be grown in 40 American states, while Cane can be grown in 4 states or so.  There's the multiple uses of Corn, whereas Cane really only has one use.  And there's the very recent pipe dream of corn-based fuel, but that's hardly a factor to corn's proliferation (and I bet will hardly be a factor in future energy policy, in spite of the hype).

Cane Sugar, as sweet and wonderful as it is, turns out to be a pain to grow in the Northern Hemisphere.  All that American Heritage turns out to come from deep knowledge of the soils and season, lots of hard work, and PATIENCE.  It's that last one that turns out to be bad for business, at least for Sugar's sake (and, therefore, for the sake of the State of Louisiana)....

That's right, we're moving to the County of Kings!  Why, you ask?  Is it for the cheaper rent?  Is it for the hipper attitude?  Is it for the parking spaces?

Thank you for playing, you don't win our grand prize but you DO get a copy of our home-version board-game.  No, we're moving for the LIGHT.  Our Tribeca office has basically no natural light, where as our new Brooklyn home has a 900 square foot Sun Deck, and LOTS of that fun, sun-spun illumination.  We're giving up a fashionable zip code in order to process vitamin D.  And we couldn't be happier about it.

Here's our new address- look it up on Google Maps for a funky picture of the hood....

530 3rd Ave. suite 2R

Brooklyn, NY 11215

See you in the Hood,

Peeled Skinny, MOVING!!! 

I don't get this- most dried fruit, especially the generic varieties (Whole Foods' 360 and Trader Joes brands being chief perpetrators) gets sold to you coated in oil- canola oil or safflower oil, some kind of vegetable oil.  When you buy a candy bar, okay, you expect to get some oil in it.  When you buy a Greek salad, okay, there's be some olive oil in there.  But dried fruit?  Oil? Huh?

I don't get it- who ever expected food manufacturers to coat raw ingredients in oil?  This is NOT based on demand- your average dried fruit purchaser does no chew on a prune and think to him or herself, "you know what this needs?  More COTTONseed oil!".  No, they just don't think of it at all, because if they did, they'd have to think to themself, "oh gross, oil, where's an appropriate place to vomit?"

I can give you some "industry" reasons for the oil- it lengthens the product's shelf-life, it makes it easier to pack in a plastic bag, it gives it a shiny sheen, and the penultimate reason, that homosapiens think fat tastes GOOD.  But 2 seconds of thought about this "fat fruit" thing and, whoosh, all advantages fly out the window like so much regurgitated apricot....

I should mention that Peeled Snacks doesn't add oil to its fruit, but that's not a shameless plug.  It's just common sense- you don't add ketchup to breakfast cereal because it makes it easier to eat, and you don't add salt to tea because it makes it boil faster.  You don't add oil to fruit because, well.....

....because that's really disgusting....

Yours, disgusted,

Peeled Skinny 

 The housing "crisis" demonstrates the flexibility of the American economic engine and its willingness to milk a trend till its dry as a bone.  But to me, the housing bubble demonstrates a disturbing trend in American culture.  For the sake of argument, let's start with a couple of postulates....

1: The Housing industry requires home-owners to regularly inject money into their homes

2: For home-owners to inject money into their homes, the home-owners need jobs

3: Home-owners in America live on fixed, finite incomes

4: Whatever home-owners are spending on their homes, they are NOT spending elsewhere....

Argue any one of these statements on your own- I accept them as truisms, and have never heard any arguments that convince me otherwise.  These 4 postulates tell me that, no matter how hot the market, no matter how hyped the housing development, no matter how fast the turn-over of housing in America, the Housing market is only as solvent as the rest of the economy....

....Which right now is crap, THANKS to the housing market.  I believe that the Housing bubble stems from the dissolving of the Dot-Com bubble, whose demise drove investors flock to whatever other market seemed hot, which at the time was housing.  I'm not convinced of that origin, but doubtless, starting in about 1999 housing prices started rising at STUPID rates, and you can hardly blame investors for wanting to jump on-board.

I don't give a hoot about high-risk loans to shady borrowers or unethical practices on the parts of shifty banks.  I don't care about grift-life business models making margins off of trading mortgages, a couldn't give a rat's hienie about artificial hype for developer's faulty housing schemes, all of which have made a lot of headlines lately.  People keep looking for scapegoats, and all these goofy practices on the various players' parts make easy targets.

Forget all that.  To me, all that matters is that, in America, everyone needs housing, and whatever people spend on housing, they DON'T SPEND ELSEWHERE.  If we make a market where people spend 35%, 40%, 50% of their incomes on their homes (more than that here in New York City), that means that they AREN'T spending on their businesses, on their savings, on buying American made goods (or, as is more often the case, Chinese made goods), on education....

That means that they aren't spending enough on food!

Unless productivity is way up in America, there cannot be a booming housing market.  That's that.  Try to make a counter argument, I dare you.  I would take it a step further and say that, if productivity is up, and people spend more on their homes, then you get inflation, but that's a different, longer argument. 

I've heard arguments of positives outcomes from the housing bubble, like the rejuvenation of old housing stock (which is good), and the accumulated value of middle-income families' homes (which is a dangerous assumption).  But these, to me, are micro-climates, and rooted in the foolish assumption that people can just pump money into their houses forever.

If we have no manufacturing economy, if as a culture we don't MAKE anything, then we are not entitled to our housing bubble.  This is not me speaking from hind-sight.  I figured this one out back in 2001.  Ticks me off, because SINCE then I became an American manufacturer, and now fewer people can afford our tasty snacks because everybody's busy paying off their userous loans!

-a ticked off Peeled Skinny, who thinks you should spend less on housing and more on ANYTHING else....

 Boy, is being a manufacturer in this day and age hard.  How do you do the math of environmental impact right now?  Sure, plastic has its problems, but glass has terrible impact as well.  It may well be easier to recycle, but it's a LOT heavier, and therefore more costly to ship (i.e. it burns more gas getting places).  And a recyclable bottle's only recyclable if someone actually, you know, RECYCLES it...

I'm humbled by the difficulty of making good choices in a world full of lesser evils.  We use plastic bags in hopes of encouraging better eating, hopefully leading to more productive people, less health care expenses, and higher quality of life for our customers.  But it's still plastic.  Will the "end" result, calculated 1,000 or 1,000,000 years from now, add up to an over-all benefit?

This is one thing that keeps the progressive minded manufacturer awake at night.  Sigh....