Category: Food

Entries about food, because who doesn’t love to share pictures and stories about the food they’re eating?

Four Packages of Free Archway Cookies

Bradley Farless8 Comments

I’m one of those people that’s terribly unlucky when it comes to games of chance like the lotto or drawings for giveaways.  So, I was really skeptical, but hopeful, when an Archway rep responded to my earlier post about Archway cookies.  I mean, you never know who you’re talking to on the Internet right?  I was sort of thinking it might be a scam.  The PR rep said she was delighted to hear about my love for Archway cookies and offered to send me some.

A Fedex delivery of free Archway cookies.

Within a few days of responding to her email, not one, but four packages of cookies arrived in a Fed-Ex box.  Three of them are new flavors, and I’m very much looking forward to cracking them open and trying them (still eating through the ones I bought before!).  After oatmeal, peanut butter cookies are probably my second favorite, and there was a package of them in the box.  If Archway made them as good as the oatmeal cookies, they should be awesome!

Thanks again Archway!  You’ll always have a place in my cookie jar.

Archway Responded To My Blog Post With An Offer of Cookies

Bradley Farless3 Comments

On Friday, I came across packages of Archway cookies in the A&P on 14th street.  I’d heard they were out of business and had given up on ever having my favorite oatmeal cookies again, so I was really excited to see them up for sale.  I was so excited that I wrote a blog post about it that happened to get the attention of one of the people in their PR department:

Hello!

My name is Katey Clark and I work for the PR agency of record for Archway cookies. I found your blog entry from last week and just wanted to write to say hello!

Archway has been back on store shelves since December 2009, and just last month came out with three new varieties, Shortbread, Triple Chocolate and Peanut Butter. After a vote on Facebook last week, it was almost determined that our Rocky Road cookie would come back for a limited time in 2012! (Frosty Orange was a very close second place, so we hope to bring that back for a limited time as well).

We’d love to send you a few trays of cookies to try out! Find us on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/archwaycookies.

Have a good rest of your weekend!

Katey

katey clark
public relations account executive

GKV
p:  410.234.2531
m: 330.730.8407
katey.clark@gkv.com
gkv.com

I obviously took them up on their offer of free cookies.  Who wouldn’t?  I didn’t specify any flavor in particular, so it’ll be a surprise.  It’s really neat to see Archway taking an active interest in user feedback via blogs and rewarding that feedback with gifts of the cookies that Archway fans love.

I’ll update again when they arrive! =)

Archway Cookies Are Back!

Bradley Farless7 Comments

Iced Oatmeal and Dutch Cocoa Archway cookies.

I don’t remember the first time I had Archway cookies, but I really really love the plain oatmeal flavored ones.  They were, and probably still are, my dad’s favorite cookies too.  That’s how I first tried them.  Sometime after getting back to the US last year, I found out that Archway had gone out of business and I was really upset by it.  It sounds ridiculous to get upset over cookies, but they’re just that good!

I searched around to see if any stores still had packages of the plain oatmeal cookies in stock, but I didn’t have any luck.  Today on my way home I stopped in A&P on 14th street and saw Archway cookies on the shelf.  They didn’t have plain oatmeal, so I got the ones pictured above instead.  On the way out, I stopped to talk to the store manager and he told me that Weiz had bought them and was distributing the cookies again.  I asked him if he could get in some of the plain oatmeal cookies and he said he would talk to the distributor about getting some.

Life just got better.

A Taste of India at Newport Centre

Bradley Farless6 Comments

Taste of India, Authentic Indian Cuisine at Newport Centre Mall.

I went up to the food court at the Newport Centre Mall for the first time last weekend.  I saw some old favorites that I hadn’t been to since before I left the US for Kuwait in 2007 and I was pretty sure I was going to wind up eating at Sarku Japan.  It’s not real Japanese food, but it tastes pretty good.  Then I saw a place called A Taste of India: Authentic Indian Cuisine.  I went over and they were handing out free samples of chicken.  It tasted pretty good, but I wasn’t really convinced.  Then I saw that they had chicken biryani, and I wondered if it was anything like the nasi briyani I’d had in Singapore.  I asked for a sample and while it wasn’t exactly the same, it was really close and really good.  It was really spicy too!

Chicken biryani from A Taste of India at Newport Centre Mall.

I wound up getting a bowl of it, with spicy curry on top.  It doesn’t look too appealing in this photo, but most of the foods I ate in Asia tasted better than they looked anyway.

Something about the restaurant was kind of jarring.  They all seemed to be first generation immigrants, judging by their accents, possibly from the same family.  The way they were working the crowd and cajoling people into taking samples and then buying food from them reminded me of street vendors in the Asian countries I’d visited.  They could have just as easily been on a street in Kuala Lumpur or a food court in Singapore.  The weird part is that they were all wearing cheesy looking, brightly colored, standard uniforms.  I guess it was something about the authentic taste of the food and the authentic behavior of the employees clashing with the American franchise store and uniform designs that threw me off.  I suppose it doesn’t matter though.  I paid for good food and that’s what I got.

Boka: Bon Chon on St. Mark’s

Bradley Farless6 Comments

Last Sunday was Mother’s Day.  It’s been years since I’ve lived near my mom on Mother’s Day, so I wanted to take her somewhere to get a nice lunch.  My mom has lived in the city for years, so I wasn’t sure what would be appropriate (some place she hasn’t eaten at quite a bit already), but I settled on a place called Boka: Bon Chon.  It turned out to be a good thing too.  Boka is a Korean food place and my mom had never had Korean food before, so besides lunch she got the gift of a new experience for Mother’s Day this year.

Boka: Bon Chon on St. Mark's

As for the restaurant itself, I was a little skeptical at first, because when you first walk up to it, it looks more like a bar than a place you’d go for a good meal.  From the outside, it’s pretty unassuming.  You would hardly know it’s there.  There’s no large sign or store front to speak of.  It occupies just the bottom level of the building seen above.  There’s a karaoke bar above it, a Japanese noodle place to the right and another restaurant that I didn’t really pay much attention to on the left.

Interior of Boka: Bon Chon on St. Mark's

The interior was a surprise.  It’s really nice and really clean and the décor was classy, if not something I’d think of when I think ‘Korean’.  The place gives more of an English pub impression, to me at least.

We got there at around 2 PM, between lunch and dinner, so the place was empty.  By the time we left, it was starting to fill up.  It looked like the crowd was mostly younger people, which makes sense since NYU has dorms in the area.

Pork bibimbap from Boka: Bon Chon on St. Mark's

I chose the pork bibimbap.

Beef bulgogi from Boka: Bon Chon on St. Mark's

I helped my mom pick something from the menu, since she wasn’t familiar with the food choices.  She got beef bulgogi, which is pretty tame and a good first taste of Korean.  I think that’s what I had, the first time I ate at a Korean place.

The lady that served us seemed to be the only server working at the time, but it wasn’t busy.  She seemed a little unsure of herself and I got the impression that English was still a bit of a struggle for her, but she was very friendly.  Our food and drinks came to the table quickly, though she seemed a bit surprised that we just wanted water and Coke, rather than soju, sake, or beer.

Overall, the place is pretty cool.  The atmosphere is comfortable, the food is good, the prices are reasonable and the service was good.  I’m looking forward to visiting again.  I think next time I’ll try the Korean style fried chicken.  I saw a tip on Foursquare, after we’d ordered of course, that the Korean style fried chicken there kicks ass.

Filipino Food in Lower East Manhattan–Johnny Air Mart

Bradley Farless10 Comments

Johnny Air Mart on Avenue A, between 13th and 14th Street.

The name of the place is a little odd, but it makes sense.  This little store on Avenue A between 13th and 14th street carries Filipino goods, most of which I assume are shipped in by air.  It’s not a very large store, but it has a lot of the food products that I came to enjoy while living in the Philippines, and earlier by buying them at import stores in Singapore.

Since I’ve been back in New York City, I haven’t had the opportunity to really look around for a place to get Filipino foods, so I was happy, and surprised, to see that there is a shop just a few blocks from where I live, located in a spot I pass by almost every day.  I never saw it before because it’s halfway up the block, and I pass Avenue A on 14th street.

Some of the goods on the shelf at Johnny Air Mart.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find my favorite flavor of Lucky Me noodles, Chilimansi, and they didn’t have the Calamansi flavored Century Tuna.  The owner was pretty friendly though.  He told me the Lucky Me Chilimansi is usually stocked but he’d run out, and that he’d never carried the Calamansi Century Tuna, but he’d check with his distributor to see if he could get some in.  They also had Sky Flakes, Ligo sardines, Milo, sinigang mix, the nasty shrimp paste my wife enjoys, and many other goodies.

Turon, purchased from Johnny Air Mart.

I didn’t stock up, but I did pick up some turon on the way out the door.  It’s tastier than it looks.  It’s a sweet dessert with a crusty outside and banana inside.  The shop owner warned me that it wasn’t exactly the same as the kind you get from the Philippines though, since it’s made fresh and the type of banana used isn’t quite the same.

I’m glad to see that Filipino foods will be readily available when I’m ready to do some cooking, or when my wife is.  I think it’ll help her to adjust, having some foods from home available.

Veteran’s Day Free Food and Somewhat Free Food Adventure

Bradley Farless7 Comments

veterans_day_2009

Veterans Day is a day for honoring veterans of the armed forces in the US.  This morning, there was a parade to honor the federal holiday.  Unfortunately, I didn’t know about it or I’d have been there taking photos.  I guess I’ll have to make sure to go there next year to check it out.

For those of you that don’t know, I’m a veteran myself.  I served in the US Army for 8 years, and I’ll take this opportunity to brag about some of my achievements.  I served in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.  I was part of the initial force that moved into Iraq, right after the Iraqi Republican Guard was bombed on the border.  I was deployed again in 2007 for an Air Defense Artillery operation.  While I was in, I racked up a stack of certificates of appreciation and certificates of achievement, as well as more notable awards like 3 Army Achievement Medals and a Good Conduct Medal.  I also had the opportunity to participate in a German weapons qualification range and scored a Silver.  I missed Gold by 1 round from a 9mm.  There’s plenty more that I did, including community service projects like assisting kindergarten teachers with classes in El Paso, but you get the point.  I did service to the country, and today was a day to celebrate that service, and get some free food!

Quite a few food chains had specials today, offering free or discounted meals to veterans, and I took the opportunity to meet up with a guy I served with in Kuwait at Applebee’s on 50th Street, near Times Square.  It was the first time we’d seen each other since we left Kuwait in early 2008.  We were greeted warmly, treated well, and the food was good.  I had to pay for my drink, but with the dish being free, I couldn’t complain.  It was interesting seeing veterans and active duty members of various branches of the service in the Applebee’s.  Some showed up in uniform, some didn’t, but you could almost always tell who was military or a veteran at a glance.  I guess something of the culture stays with you.

After my friend and I left Applebee’s we decided to avail ourselves of another offer we’d seen posted around the Internet: the free six inch sub from Subway.  So, I pulled out my phone, looked up Subway on Google Maps, and away we went.  We walked into the Subway at 136 W 44th Street and asked about the offer.  We were told that Subway didn’t have any offer like that, and they couldn’t do anything for us.  So, we walked out and we decided we’d try a different location.  First, I looked up Subway again on Google Maps and then decided to call ahead, before we wasted a bunch of time walking all over the city.  I decided to call the 126 West 41st Street location, since it was the next closest, and the woman that answered said she’d never heard of what I was talking about either.  However, she said she would make an exception and honor the deal we told her was posted all over the Internet, but we’d have to buy a drink along with the free sandwiches.  It was better than nothing, so we went ahead and took her up on it.  While we were there, other veterans came through the door asking about the deal.  According to them, they’d tried to avail of the offer earlier at a Subway near Port Authority but had been turned down there as well.

Later, when I got home, I looked up the offer online and saw that it was marked specifically as being at only certain locations, but based on my experience and hearing from those other vets, I get the feeling that none of the Subways in New York City were honoring the Veterans Day deal, except the one where I talked the girl into partially fulfilling it.  Maybe we’d all just had bad luck in which locations we’d walked into though.

I think it’s a shame that any Subway wouldn’t fully honor the agreement as advertised.  It is Veterans Day after all!  One day a year to say thank you to the people who make sure that places like Subway can remain operating in a free country.  One day a year to give out a sandwich to say thanks.  Oh well.  I’ll just remember that for next year.

Overall, it was a great evening, catching up with an old buddy, getting a free meal, and walking around Times Square.  I’m looking forward to doing the same again next year.  Maybe more people I used to serve with will be in the area and we can arrange to meet up!

A Pepsi Throwback That Should Stay Back

Bradley Farless10 Comments

Pepsi Throwback, Made with real sugar.

When I was in Singapore, maybe two years ago, I remember hearing about a movie called “Food, Inc.”, which is about the food industry in the US.  It covers a lot of ground, but one of the areas it really hits on is the prevalence of corn products and byproducts in almost everything we consume in the US.  It’s our staple food and is heavily subsidized by the government.  One of those byproducts is called ‘high fructose corn syrup’.  I’m sure you’ve heard of it.  It’s been in the news a lot recently.

So, what’s the problem with high fructose corn syrup?  Well, first of all, it’s a sweetener that’s meant to replace sugar.  Supposedly it was a better alternative to sugar, because it was cheaper for the companies, lowering the cost of the product, and tastes about the same.  That’s all good right?  Well, there’s a problem.  I’m sure everyone has realized by now that Americans as a whole are getting pretty fat.  I think we’re the fattest country in the world.  It’s disgusting, and high fructose corn syrup is one of the reasons for it.

A study done by Princeton University last March showed that rats who consume high fructose corn syrup “gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.”  That’s a problem.  The things we find high fructose corn syrup in are usually not that healthy anyway, and now we find out that the cheap stuff they’re using instead of sugar is even worse for us than the real thing.  Of course, they probably knew that was the case when they started using it.  That sort of thing has to go through testing before it’s approved for human consumption.  It wouldn’t be the first time a corporation has put profit before the well being of their consumers though.

In response to this, and I’m going to be vague here because I don’t remember the details, the corn growers association is lobbying to have the official name of high fructose corn syrup rebranded as ‘corn sugar’.  Their reasoning is that this will more accurately convey to consumers what they’re eating and where it comes from.  I guess they think we’re all stupid though.  Just changing the name of something doesn’t change what it does to you.  If we started calling gasoline ‘light oil derivative’, it would still power our cars and empty our wallets.  The real reason they want to call it corn sugar is because the word ‘corn’ sounds healthy.  It’s a vegetable right?  That has to be healthy!  So, new consumers who hadn’t heard of high fructose corn syrup before will be duped into believing that what they’re eating is actually a healthier alternative to natural sugar, that comes out of the ground and not out of a laboratory.

I was really unhappy with the idea that I’d have to give in to consuming high fructose corn syrup back here in the US.  It’s just not healthy, but there aren’t many alternatives when you like to eat sweets or drink soda.  The bottle above is a limited run product from Pepsi that uses real sugar.  I wish they’d make it a permanent run item, but that might not happen.  I was told that people had petitioned for Coke to use real sugar and that petition had been flat out denied.  Again, not surprising, but definitely disappointing.

Fake Chinese Food

Bradley Farless19 Comments

Once upon a time, before I actually visited a mostly Chinese ethnic country, I thought I knew what Chinese food was, and it looks like this:

American Chinese food.

Imagine my surprise to not find egg rolls over there.  No one knew what an egg roll was, unless they’d been here.  There’s something similar called lumpia, but it’s not quite the same.

Chinese food in the US has been thoroughly Americanized, to make it more appealing to the local palate.  The Chinese food I ate in Singapore was a lot blander in most cases, with most of the flavor coming from dumping lots of chili sauce on everything.  That or eating green chilies along with each bite of food.  There’s also a lot of MSG used.  (Just a note, I’m basing this on the common Chinese food found in food stalls that a person would eat at on a daily basis, not expensive restaurants.)

Chinese food in Singapore.

Chinese food in Singapore.

[Update: It was very rudely brought to my attention by some piece of shit Singaporeans that I accidentally uploaded the wrong photo from my folder.  I’m quite aware that this is ramen, a Japanese dish, most likely from that Japanese food court in Tampines 1.  I can’t remember its name.]

That’s not to say that the food there, the ‘real’ Chinese food, was bad.  On the contrary, a lot of it was awesome, and thankfully I did read about a place in NYC where I can get chicken rice and pork rice.  The pictures looked similar to the dishes I grew to love in Singapore.  I’ll blog about it when I find it and try it out myself.

One other thing, the orange duck sauce that you can find at most Chinese restaurants in the US?  Ya, that’s nowhere to be found in Singapore that I saw.

Re-used Commercial Soda Bottles, Philippines Style

Bradley Farless2 Comments

Re-used coke bottles in the US, Philippines style.

This is a photo I forgot to add onto the end of yesterday’s post.  I found these in The Fresh Market.  If you look at the Sprite bottles and the Coke Light bottle, you’ll notice there are white rings around them in the middle and at the bottom.  The reason they have those rings is because the bottles have been reused.

I don’t know how they do it exactly in Mexico, but bottles in the Philippines look exactly the same way if you buy them from the many ‘sari-sari’ stores, which are mini-convenience stores.  The factory ships out bottles of drinks and the shop owner either makes you stand at the store and finish it, or pours the drink into a plastic bag, sticks a straw in it, and hands it to you.  This is because the bottles have a deposit on them that they can’t get back until they ship them back to the factory when the truck next arrives.

So, the empty bottles go back to the plant, run through the machines, are refilled and sent back out.  Being run through the factory over and over is what gives them the distinctive white rings.  So, if you’re ever in a 3rd world country and you see that on the bottles, keep that in mind.  It’s not unsafe to consume, or at least I never got sick from it, but I did one time find a candy wrapper inside the bottle, luckily before I had taken a drink from it.

As for why they’re selling them here in the US at an upscale grocery chain, I have no clue.  I can only guess that it appeals to some people’s sense of living more simply, though the fact they’re getting imported bottles of cheap soda from a poor country at a high price in a high end grocery store is a bit … ridiculous.