food

Your Piehole…

Your Piehole…: These days, these foods and the lifestyles they are fostering, are making less & less sense in their impact to [and on] land, water, urban-sprawl, the uglification of what our eyes have to look at while out and about, the air, the atmosphere, and our health [of course physically, but mentally too]… so much so, the only real purpose they are serving is Profit, Laziness and the seemingly unending need for Immediate Gratification.
[While Scott’s last coupla posts have seemed a bit bitter to me, that’s prolly in my head, rather than in the words, so I’ll not say more about it. There are many good things about people on bicycles but those of us who ride for recreation and commutation (multi-modal for me) should not be climbing on any high horses. Start at the basics. Where’d that bike come from? Where’s did the steel, scandium, aluminum, carbon fiber, resin, grease, lube, plastic, rubber, cork, paint etc. come from? Who dug it out of the ground, produced a “finished” product and shipped it to be built into that bike? Who again packaged and shipped that bike? How much energy was consumed in the process? How much environmentally harmful stuff was used and discarded? Are the large bike companies any cleaner environmentally than other manufacturing processes? I don’t know how many miles have to be ridden before you offset the debt of the build, but it has got to be more than just a few. I know that the same thing is true for a car or truck with their even higher starting points. And that therefore your impact is lower to start… but it’s still a long way from zero. And therein lies my point. While riding the heck out of that bike now that it’s built, and caring for it so that it lasts a long time, you make the most of the energy spent. However it remains all too easy to climb on a high horse of falsely virtuous eco-righteness. Don’t. You’ve just chosen less, not none. Feel good about that. Help others to do the same. Conservation is a powerful tool. At the same time be understanding of the needs and culture of others. Realize that a bike may be completely foreign to that person, an alien that they have no understanding of or connection to, and remember that we are not outside looking in, but inside, sharing the ride.]
Source: Large Fella on a Bike

More of the Great Clif Mojo bar Taste Test

So a while back, when I started the Great Clif Mojo bar Taste Test and we’ve had a very cold spring. What that means is that the results are taking quite some time to accumulate. Sure the folks are riding and doing, but not the sort of long rides where somehow tastes change in odd ways, or where they need to pack energy along in the first place. (Little known secret, unless you’re a skinny sort, working out all the time etc. you don’t need extra calories (generally) for a two hour bike ride. I tell you three times.)

However some more results were written up a while back, and I never got around to posting. SO without further ado I present the always lovely, impossibly snarky, funny, and joyous Jenni on her Mojo bar experience.

The first thing that I’d add before I move along to the next bit of commentary, is that Jenni didn’t even know these existed… which doesn’t say much for Clif marketing. Sure this seems a bit like biting the hand that fed us (we did get the bars from clearly happening and with it Dean Mayer of Clif Bar Inc. afterall) but one so generous and kind will surely understand that I’m merely trying to point out that they are not achieving nearly the market penetration they should out here in the East, at least with Mojo bars.)

Next up was a partial report from David. Besides being the President of the Rockland Bike Club, he’s also an incredibly talented and created soul who authors columns, reviews, and books on photography, software, and stuff. He travels a lot, seems to find more than his fair share of food poisoning, and has done stuff like biked across Alaska. So without further ado, his rejoinder and first comments.

More comments to come soon… I’m sure. Right? Hello? Seth? David? What’s that? I haven’t finished yet either? Yeah, yeah. It’s coming. Soon. Really. No, seriously.

The Great Mojo Bar Taste Test – Gerry rides, eats, and…

So the Great Mojo Bar Taste Test has been progressing, bars are being consumed and now Gerry, who rode over 22,000 miles last year (um, no, that’s not a typo. He’s a bit of whack job…) weighs in with the following notes. I’ve taken a liberty here or there which Gerry may deign to correct. Or not. He’s got a lot of riding to do after all…

He paused in his pedaling just long enough to jot down these notes:

All were good. My favorites were the Fruit Nut Crunch, Peanut Butter and Jelly (dipped) and the Chocolate Peanut. (dipped)

  • Mixed Nuts: Very nutty taste. Sweet. Good texture and flavor.
  • Fruit Nut Crunch: Fruity and nutty taste. Sweet, good texture.
  • Mountain Mix: Very good.
  • Chocolate Peanut: Excellent.
  • Honey Roasted Peanut: A little sweet for me. Good but not my favorite.
  • Peanut Butter Pretzel: Good but again not my favorite, Not much taste. A little chewy.
  • Peanut Butter and Jelly: Really good!

So there you have it. Gerry liked them all, but clearly went for the Peanut Butter and Jelly. He’s really just a big kid at heart. There was an article in the local Gannet paper about his riding (and another club member), but they suck and have a “pay for” archive and they kill the URL on top of that. Sad.

Time to go prompt some of the other taste testers… including myself.

Mojo: Fruit Nut Dipped and Crunch

The Great Mojo bar Taste Test continues…

In our last episode our intrepid hero had delivered Mojo bars to fellow cyclists of taste, breeding, and class. Or maybe not. Hard for me to say. Anyway, they’re busy crunching their way through the bars and will be posting about them shortly. More were delivered Sunday, and the final batch are going out this week.

As for me, I’ve been enjoying the fruit/nut combos. There are two different bars, one of the new “dipped” flavors and and one of the original recipe. On comment I should make which is familiar to all who eat food in the outdoors during the winter. Be careful to warm the product as best you can (inside pocket, close to something warm etc.) because almost any food that doesn’t freeze solid still turns into a rock. Some flavors are better than others… but still. You gots to be careful or, well… you may lose a tooth.

That said, I’ve always loved dried fruit and nuts, so these flavors should kinda be a natural for me. Unfortunately, I find them a bit sweet and since the part of the Clif Mojo thing that I dig is that they are salty… at least saltier, this is not a good thing. I disclaim that I cook with very little salt, and eat almost no processed sugar and very few sugary sweets, candy bars, and the like. These bars are about as close as I come. No big philosophical thing here, simply what I need to do to stay healthy. YMMV. Anyway, I find dried fruit very sweet, and so these Mojo flavors are especially sweet tasting to me. I wish they were saltier. I do. But they’re not. Sigh.

So while I like them, they fall into the “everything” else category of sweetish tasting power bars. Fine for what they are, but missing the essence of Mojoness for me.

We’re getting our Mojo on…

The first of the Clif Mojo bars have been delivered for the Great Mojo bar Taste Test. More deliveries soon! Testers, start your buds.

The instant hit in my household was the new dipped peanut butter and jelly flavor Mojo bar. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that peanut butter and jelly is one of the great flavor combinations of all time. In fact, one could argue that it should be elevated to an essential nutrient combination that absolutely no one should live without. I here so nominate it as such. Sadly, I live for long periods of time without enjoying the essence of life that is PB&J because in sandwich form it packs an awful lot of stuff (calories, grams of this and that) into a fairly dense package. Not a good general choice for me. So once in a great while, as a treat, an indulgence, a gustatory extremism of the highest caliber, a lark even, I break out this extremely important flavor combination and have at it.

Now, however, courtesy of the new dipped Mojo bar, this flavor combo is far more available to me. I can budget for it far more simply. I can eat half a bar, and still get a huge thrill. It’s nirvana in a small package.

Wow, you’re thinking, the Great Mojo bar Taste Test is over! Nah. I said it was a hit. Not the winner. Possibly not even my favorite, never mind the favorite of the other participants. So more Mojo coming soon…

The Great Mojo bar Taste Test!

So a while back I mentioned that I came across new flavors of Mojo bar, one of my favorite treats, and couldn’t believe that there was no information on the web, and no adverts that I had seen about the new flavors. C’mon! In this day and age?

So I’m now organizing The Great Mojo bar Taste Test. They’ve sent me a box of each flavor including the new ones, and I’m in the midst of distributing the stuff to my friends who blog and ride and eat energy bars, with a request that they in turn write about their likes and dislikes, comments, notes, what-have-you. Ya know, blog stuff.

If you think you should be included in the Great Mojo bar Taste Test feel free to write me daniel at circumtech dot com and we’ll discuss it.

More as I think of it!

Raising the (Clif) bar

The folks that make Clif bars and other somewhat organic snack/energy foods have a cool program running where they ask that you ride your bike for errands within 2 miles of your house, since a lot of the miles we collectively put on our cars are for these short trips. Unfortuantely there are only two trips I make in a car that are within 2 miles of my house. Food shopping and gasoline. Sad.

Anyway, I was in a local organic produce store and saw some new flavors of their Mojo bars. Surprised in this day and age of blogging and tweeting that a new flavor of a product could be released without seeing some mention of it. I wrote to the PR department asking why they don’t send some stuff out to the bloggers (in this case me) and at least try to get some word of mouth out there. As of yesterday, there wasn’t a single Google entry for their new stuff and no mention on their own website except buried in the press release section of a very search engine unfriendly site.

I’m curious to see if they write back.

[Update: They did. More news as it develops.]

McDonald’s Is Doing Coffee? The rule of opposites

McDonald’s Is Doing Coffee?: I can’t quite process the idea that McDonalds is getting into the latte biz. After living in the PacNW for a while, Starbucks is already my version of slumming for coffee. I can’t image going lower than that. PC load letter? Say what?[As Seth has pointed out it’s about what you are really competing against. McDonalds isn’t the opposite of Starbucks, but it might become one for Duncan Donuts.]
Source: James Duncan Davidson