Category Archives: food

Jun14

“i’m spicy and i’ve got skills.” – pascal siakam.

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( those of you who know me or read me,

know that flamin’ hot cheetos are my fav snack.)

Eva Longoria makes her film directorial debut with “Flamin’ Hot” — a feel-good story of how a Mexican American janitor rose through the ranks at Frito-Lay and was the brains behind the wildly popular and spicy Flamin’ Hot Cheetos corn snack.

“People think it’s about the Flamin’ Hot Cheeto but it’s about the life of Richard Montañez,” Longoria told the Australian television show “Today.”  “He came up with this brilliant idea to put chili on chips for the Hispanic market and today Flamin’ Hot is the No. 1 snack in the world and it’s a multibillion-dollar industry that transcends snacks.”

The comedy-drama biopic distributed by Searchlight Pictures is based on Montañez’s first memoir, “A Boy, a Burrito, and a Cookie: From Janitor to Executive,” that details his humble beginnings from growing up in a migrant labor camp in Southern California and living in a one-bedroom apartment with his parents and 10 siblings to selling drugs on the streets of East Los Angeles, mopping the floors at Frito-Lay’s Rancho Cucamonga plant and building a career that spanned more than 40 years at PepsiCo.

Longoria admitted she was ashamed of not knowing Montañez’s story until she read the script. “I was like, ‘How do I not know this? He’s Mexican American like me. I love Flamin’ Hot.’ So it was like the flavor you knew, but the story you didn’t, and so I was immediately inspired and I thought, ‘Everybody should know this story. There are so many lessons we can learn from his life.”

Jesse Garcia as Richard Montañez in the movie Flamin' Hot.
Jesse Garcia as Richard Montañez in the movie “Flamin’ Hot.”

While Montañez’s story has become an inspirational tale of Latino entrepreneurial success, Frito-Lay disputed the claims that he created the spicy line of Cheetos, calling his version of the story an “urban legend,” and stating that he “was not involved,” according to an investigation by The Los Angeles Times in 2021.

That same year, Montañez reaffirmed his story with his second memoir “Flamin’ Hot: The Incredible True Story of One Man’s Rise from Janitor to Top Executive.”

The film’s producers were informed by Frito-Lay of these allegations in 2019 before production but moved forward with the project. Longoria’s film does include nods to the possibility of the Flamin’ Hot flavor being developed in the Midwest at the same time. Frito-Lay credits Montañez with playing a “key role in accelerating the growth of our Flamin’ Hot Brand,” according to its website

“Flamin’ Hot” is available to stream on Hulu and Disney+.

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“a good spicy challenge strikes a balance between flavour and fear.”

-adam richman

 

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source credit: edwin flores, NBC Latino. Searchlight Pictures

Feb13

salad snack.

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something about a dehydrated salad in a bag doesn’t really scream either snack or salad to me. 

 

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“one of the benefits of eating salad is that you can eat tons of it and never be satisfied.
-jim gaffigan

Jan25

b.r.

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why is it that my children were shocked

when i told them that i was born ‘before ranch’ (b.r.)?

shock and awe that i was alive when

cap’n crunch, doritos, $100,00 bars, pop tarts, ding dongs, cool whip, count chocula, and more

came to be

back in the day when food fell into the 

quick, easy, greasy, crunchy, sweet, and fun category

and lived to tell.

 

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“my mouth doesn’t want to be quiet.”

-greta, age 4

 

Dec18

big breakfast.

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A Single Giant Froot Loop for $19?

A single serving of Kellog’s Froot Loops cereal clocks in at one and one-third cups, weighs 39 grams, and contains 150 calories, according to the nutrition facts printed on the side of the box. Though we’ve never actually counted how many loops are in that single serving, we assume it’s more than one. Oh, you only want one? OK then. Big Fruit Loop is here to deliver.

The Big Fruit Loop is just as the name implies: a single massive loop. It’s also a very much unauthorized version of the longtime breakfast cereal, and it’s the latest drop from Brooklyn-based art collective MSCHF.

That one big loop contains 930 calories and weighs around half a pound, or the equivalent of about half a box of regular Froot Loops mashed into one bowl-filling monstrosity. There’s absolutely no reason for it to exist, which seems to be exactly why MSCHF decided to create it.

“With MSCHF, we are always looking at cultural readymades we can play with,” Daniel Greenberg, MSCHF’s co-founder, told Food & Wine via email. “Cereal is, of course, one of those things. When looking at the object and thinking about what we could do with it, enlarging it to fit the size of the box seemed too perfect to pass up.”

Greenberg declined to explain what the production process for the Big Fruit Loop was like, other than to admit that “it was not easy.” He also said that the company had to reverse-engineer its loop to match the flavor of the Kellogg’s originals. To Greenberg, the two kinds of cereal taste “almost identical.” You know, minus one being gigantic and all.

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“you may not know this but it’s impossible to open a box of ‘fruit loops’ and just eat the fruit,

let someone else have the loops”

― neil leckman

 

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credits: food and wine magazine, stacey leasca, photo credit: MSCHF

Dec4

almost edible.

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Almost Edible, 106-Year-Old Fruitcake Found in Antarctica

Even the original owners didn’t want to eat it.

Fruit cake found at Cape Adare thought to be from Scott’s Northern Party (1911)

IT’S NOT THAT UNCOMMON RE-FINDING forgotten holiday fruitcake months after the event. More surprising, though, is when it’s over a century old. Conservators from the New Zealand-run Antarctic Heritage Trust found themselves faced with this kind of a figgy phenomenon while recently excavating an abandoned hut some 2,500 miles from the South Pole. Cape Adare, at Antarctica’s northeastern tip, was an important landing site and base camp used by early Antarctic explorers.

Made by the British brand Huntley & Palmers, which still exists today, the cake was wrapped in its original paper and stored in a tin-plated iron alloy box. While the tin had begun to deteriorate, the cake was in near-perfect condition and, according to the researchers, still looked “almost edible”.

In a statement, Lizzie Meek, the Trust’s Programme Manager-Artefacts, described the cake as “an ideal high-energy food for Antarctic conditions, and still a favorite item on modern trips to the Ice.” Despite that, researchers manage to hold off snacking on their discovery, which apparently smelled like “rancid butter”. In fact, the hut contained the best part of a picnic: sardines, “badly deteriorated” meat and fish and some more appealing “nice looking” jams.

In 1910, the British explorer Robert Falcon Scott made an ill-fated expedition to reach the South Pole and, on the way, explore the continent’s uncharted wastelands. The Heritage Trust believes the cake dates from his endeavor, known as the Terra Nova Expedition after the supply ship.

Conservators from the Trust have been working on restoring and documenting almost 1500 artifacts from the Cape for the past year. Once they’ve finished their conservation efforts, everything will be returned to the Ice for future explorers to find and enjoy—though they may want to avoid sampling the fruitcake.

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“this is true; virtually all edible substances, and many automotive products,

are now marketed as being low-fat or fat- free. americans are obsessed with fat content. 

-dave barry

 

 

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credits: antarctic heritage trust, natasha frost, gastro obscura

Dec1

to raisin, or not to raisin? that is the question.

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on the very first day

of my new and improved

healthy eating and exercise initiative

a rogue chocolate-covered raisin

emerged from hiding

 under a blanket on my sofa

where it had quietly sat

lying in wait

for me to discover it

i stopped

breathless

 knowing this tiny temptation

was a test

 oh, what a test

who would know

just one

 practically a fruit and coffee/cacao product

dark chocolate and fruit are both good for my heart

who cares if there’s a bit of blanket fuzz on it

that’s just added fiber

could this be the gateway

to a slice of triple-layer chocolate cake or velveta-laden nachos?

not today, fuzzy amazing hidden chocolate-covered raisin, not today.

the struggle is real.

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i looked to the writers to seek their wisdom

they have a difference of opinion on this.

are you on team wilde or team emerson when it comes to temptation?

“i can resist everything except temptation.”

-oscar wilde

“we gain the strength of the temptation we resist.”

-ralph waldo emerson

Nov24

today, as you gather.

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“the table is a meeting place, a gathering ground,

the source of sustenance and nourishment, festivity, safety, and satisfaction.

a person cooking is a person giving; the simplest food is a gift.”

-laurie colwyn

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may you gather today with those you love to share your gifts.

 

Nov21

freerice.

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during this time of year, when we are so lucky for our bounty, why not help to feed someone else

and maybe learn something along the way?

freericetrivia by the U.N.’s World Food Programme

Want to test your knowledge while helping end world hunger? freerice can make it happen. For every question you answer correctly in the trivia quiz, 10 grains of rice are donated to those in need. Since 2010, freerice has raised more than 214 billion grains of rice (equivalent to $1.5 million) for people around the world.

Play “Freerice”

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“poverty’s child – he starts to grind the rice, and gazes at the moon.”

-matuso basho

Nov13

why not fry a year-old leaf?

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What does a year-old, salted maple leaf taste like? Nothing much, apparently. Instead, merchants use the leaf as an attractive frame for the sweet coating, which is drier and crispier than the tempura surrounding, say, a shrimp. Some cooks also add sesame seeds for an extra pop of flavor.

Vendors first commercialized tempura-fried leaves after a train station opened near Minoh’s most notable waterfall in 1910. Outdoorsy tourists visiting the Osaka prefecture flocked to the site, taking the tasty, iconically-shaped souvenir with them when they left. (The salt preserves the young maple leaves, making them a year-round snack.) The novel delicacy became a symbol of the region, and it remains difficult to find in other parts of the country.

You’ll hear locals refer to maples as momiji, which means “becomes crimson-leaved.” The word also translates literally to “baby’s hands,” but don’t be alarmed: No human babies were harmed in the making of this unusual snack. Baby maple leaves, on the other hand, were not so lucky.


“my first semester i had only nine students.

hoping they might view me as professional and well prepared,

i arrived bearing name tags fashioned in the shape of maple leaves.”

-david sedaris

 

 

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credits: bert kimura, gastro obscura

Oct13

cheetle.

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Giant roadside Cheeto

The Cheetos brand erected the statue of a hand holding a massive Cheeto, immortalizing the sticky orange residue that Cheetos leave on your fingertips, in Cheadle, Alberta. The community was chosen because of its name’s similarity to “cheetle,” the company’s official name for Cheeto dust.

“Cheetos fans have always known that the delicious, cheesy dust on their fingertips is an unmistakably delicious part of the Cheetos experience, but now it officially has a name: Cheetle,” said Lisa Allie, the senior marketing director at PepsiCo Foods Canada, which distributes Cheetos in the country.

“We’re excited to be celebrating Cheetle and Canadians’ cheesy, Cheetle-dusted fingertips on such a grand scale, (17-feet tall), and in such a uniquely mischievous way.”

The unique piece of art won’t stay in Cheadle forever, however, according to Cheetos’ news release. Cheadle residents and visitors can check out the big, cheesy fingers until Nov. 4. Then, the monument will embark on a tour of other locations in Canada.

Cheadle is a hamlet located in Alberta’s Wheatland County. Its population is tiny: Just 83 people lived there in 2021, according to the Canadian census.

*note – as a huge fan of ‘flamin’ hot cheetos,’ i fully endorse this artistic endeavor

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“I love Cheetos, those hot, spicy kind. And chocolate.
Every time I’m in the airport I’m buying Cheetos and eating them on the airplane.”
-Alessandra Amrbrosio
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credits: zoe sottile, cnn, cheetos