Graze Box #29

Cinnamon Pretzel: This consists of pretzels and cinnamon honey almonds and has 120 calories. The pretzels are nothing special, but the almonds are fabulous. Those almonds are something I could easily imagine eating by the bushelful, which is why portion control is a good thing.

Raspberry & Coconut Muffin: This is a mixture of raspberry-infused cranberries, almond slivers, amaretti drops, and coconut flakes. It has 140 calories. As long as you don’t expect it to be very muffin-like, it’s a nice sweet snack. Tasty, without being cloyingly sweet. I do recommend eating the various components together, as the coconut flakes and almond slivers aren’t as interesting as the berries and amaretti drops.

Creamy Ranch Kern Pops: These are half-popped corn kernels with sour cream and onion seasoning. They have 140 calories. They have lots of both crunch and flavor. In particular, I appreciate that the flavoring doesn’t have that artificial dairy feeling that is common in so many ranch-flavored products.

Thai Sweet Chili Dippers: This consists of soy rice crackers with a sweet chili sauce for dipping. It has 80 calories. It’s not bad, but the dipping sauce is too sweet and not hot enough.

Chocolate Pretzel Dipper: This consists of pretzel sticks with a chocolate hazelnut spread to dip them in. It has 140 calories. I get this fairly often and continue to like it a lot. It’s another one of those snacks that makes me appreciate portion control.

Active Nutrient Blend (new): This is a mixture of chopped dates, pumpkin seeds, and walnuts. It has 170 calories. I really liked this, which isn’t surprising because all three ingredients are things I like, though only walnuts are something I normally eat. My one quibble is that it works best if you eat all of the ingredients together, but the walnut pieces are too big to really do that. I’d like this even better if I didn’t run out of walnuts while still having plenty of the other ingredients left.

Vitamin E Defense: This is a mixture of hazelnuts, red-skinned peanuts, raisins, and dried cranberries. It has 190 calories. At some level, this is right along the lines of any trail mix combination. It works well enough, but is not especially interesting.

Chinese Shiitake: This is a mushroom broth, with dried shiitake mushrooms, corn, and rice noodles. It has 100 calories. This is nicely spicy, though the corn adds a bit of sweetness, too. It’s a good sort of thing to eat when you have a meeting that will lead to a late lunch.

Three Fringe Shows

I went to three Capital Fringe Festival shows over the weekend. (I had previously seen Mr. Taken.) Here’s the run-down, plus a note about the neighborhood.

NoMa: All three shows I saw this weekend were at Gallaudet University, which is at the edge of the NoMa (North of Massachusetts Avenue) area. Since I hadn’t been over that way before and had heard that it’s the hot and trendy neighborhoods, I took advantage of good metro connections to walk around a bit before the first show I went to. Unfortunately, a couple of friends saw me walking in the wrong direction (i.e. away from Gallaudet) and called me, panicked that I was horribly lost. Now, to be fair, I do spend a good percentage of my time horribly lost, but I probably should have answered the phone and reassured them.

The highlight of the area is allegedly Union Market, which is pretty much hipster central. I wasn’t all that impressed with it, though it did provide good ice cream. There is a promising looking coffee place there. There are also some charming row houses along M Street Northeast. And the newish REI in the Uline Arena, which was the site of the first concert The Beatles played in the United States. Still, there isn’t really a lot to draw me into the neighborhood.


Ready to Serve: Ellouise Schoettler’s story is about a group of nurses from Johns Hopkins who volunteered to serve in France during World War I. Her research was extensive, based largely on letters from the nurses themselves. There was no shortage of drama, with descriptions of the nurses having to wear every bit of clothing they had to cope with the cold and mud, as well as patients with horrifying injuries that they could do little for. It’s important to tell the stories of women’s history and Ellouise does this splendidly.


Constructive Fictions: This play tells the story of Rabbi Barry Freundel, who is serving a 6 and a half year prison term after pleading guilty to peeping on and filming women in the bathroom of the mikveh. The set is his jail cell, which is rotated (without much real point, in my opinion) by four women, who comment on his explanation of his actions. They outline their stories, and, while they are supposed to be composites of his victims, there is a lot that seems identifiable to anybody who followed the media coverage. That’s a concern, since the playwright, A. J. Campbell, apparently didn’t talk to any of the victims. A bigger problem with the play is that Matty Griffiths, who played Freundel, didn’t seem to know his lines very well. That was obvious partly due to closed captioning, but also had the effect of throwing off the timing of the women.

Despite those problems, the play was interesting, with a shocking ending. Even more interesting was listening to people discussing it afterwards.

Life: A Comic Opera in Three Short Acts: Neal Learner’s light opera was the highlight of this year’s Fringe for me. Act One dealt with birth, as Joan is screaming in agony and Charles tries to reassure her everything will be fine. They reminisce about their meeting and reflect on how their lives will change. And then the twins show up, in a very cleverly staged way. Act Two has the kids growing up and asserting their personalities. Act Three dealt with death. This doesn’t sound particularly interesting, but it was well-written and well-performed. There were some questionable rhymes here and there, but I can forgive this in what was otherwise a quite charming and enjoyable show. This has been selected for the Fringe Extension, by the way, so you still have a chance to see it. I will definitely look for other works by the writer / composer, Neal Learner, in the future.