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Matthew Schniper on Muck Rack

Matthew Schniper

Colorado Springs
As seen in: Side Dish with Schniper, Apple Podcasts, The Atlantic, Substack, Miami New Times, Westword, East Bay Express, Salt Lake City Weekly, Boulder Weekly, SoCo Insider, Rochester City Newspaper and
Covers:  food and drink of every kind
Food Critic • Journalist • Former Food & Drink Editor for the Colorado Springs Independent • Podcaster: State of Plate / Vulnerable Creatures
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Operation Peter Pan offered Cuban refugee kids a home in Colorado, but life was no fairy tale

Operation Peter Pan offered Cuban refugee kids a home in Colorado, but life was no fairy tale

Colorado Springs Independent — Hector and Ada were just two of the 14,000 unaccompanied minors who fled Cuba between Dec. 26, 1960, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, in October 1962. This particular migration, organized largely by Miami's Catholic Welfare Bureau (CWB), involved aid agencies across 35 states plus intervention from the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. Hundreds of people in the U.S. and Cuba, but also Jamaica and elsewhere, colluded to help these children. The clandestine operation was called Operación Pedro Pan, or Operation Peter Pan.
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In 'Fight Club 2,' Tyler Durden Returns-In Comic-Book Form

In 'Fight Club 2,' Tyler Durden Returns-In Comic-Book Form

The Atlantic — Sixteen years after the novel's release, Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club antagonist is back-in comic-book form. An exclusive first review of Fight Club 2.
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Raising the barista

Raising the barista

Colorado Springs Independent — So many variables stand between a barista and the perfect espresso, perhaps the single purest expression of a coffee bean. For instance, there's where the beans were grown and how they were treated each step of the way from farm to cup. There's the fineness of the grind, which may vary based on temperature and humidity; the pressure at which the grinds are tamped in portafilters (the porous handles through which hot water flows), so they're packed neither too loose nor too tight. Then there is the timing of the shot, which for optimal volume and quality should pour in somewhere between 25 and 32 seconds.
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Trading places

Trading places

Colorado Springs Independent — Colorado Springs' Yobel International combats world poverty with fair trade, but that's only half the mission. "Trading places" follows the nonprofit to Darjeeling, India for a business training aimed at creating local economies and keeping women from disappearing into the sex trade. It also ventures into the red light district of Kolkata to speak with those freeing woman from the trade by establishing craft industries. An extensive photo gallery as well as audio slideshows accompanies the feature story.
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Mr. Rogers' neighborhood

Mr. Rogers' neighborhood

Colorado Springs Independent — Jermaine Rogers is an elusive rock-poster artist who has fostered a diehard base of collectors across the world. He's produced artwork for hundreds of popular artists, from Henry Rollins, Morrissey, Ween, The Flaming Lips and Tool to Radiohead, David Bowie, The Shins, Built to Spill, Queens of the Stone Age and the Deftones. He's created symbol-rich narratives played out in his works by iconic, 7-foot tall teddy bears with vacant stares and leering grins, and a mythic, cherub-faced, pig-bodied boy. He agrees with his contemporary, New York-based artist Alex Grey, who says artists "are like the modern-day shaman," interpreting events for the tribe and ultimately establishing a historical record of how we feel about our world.
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Sit. Stay. Start over.

Sit. Stay. Start over.

Colorado Springs Independent — Because of its success in many arenas, Colorado Correctional Industries, a non-tax-supported division of the DOC, has essentially franchised its dog training program. What began in October 2002 with five dogs and five handlers at the women's facility has grown into a program of 130 inmates spread across the nine minimum- and medium-security facilities. "This program saves dogs' lives, and it changes inmates' lives," says founder Debi Stevens. "It teaches them new life skills."
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Meal plan

Meal plan

Colorado Springs Independent — If Christian radio personality Harold Camping has his math right - this time - we've all got exactly one month until the end of the world begins. (Huzzah!) If he's wrong, the Mayans' 2012 death knell will be here soon enough to usher us into the Rapture, or Armageddon, or whatever hellish wasteland that the Cold War, Y2K and all those terrorists have thus far failed to deliver. And all else aside, if The Walking Dead and its ilk have taught us anything, it's that we can't rule out a zombie apocalypse. The point is, this Earth Day, we should all be scared.
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Kitchen consequential

Kitchen consequential

Colorado Springs Independent — Bobby Couch has been prepping and cooking for almost 16 consecutive hours when his bubbling garlic and olive oil consommé sloshes up his left sleeve and pools inside his left shoe. His scream and curses echo across the mostly empty royal ballroom at Paragon Culinary School, prompting a few of the faculty, acting as judges tonight, to rush into the kitchen. Someone had placed the wrong type of baking rack in the oven, and when Couch went to remove his tray, it slid entirely out instead of catching on a lip. After a few minutes, school dean Victor Matthews returns to the bar with a nonchalant expression and announces that Couch probably has second-degree burns. "I told him he could retake the test later," Matthews says. "He said, 'Fuck that, I'm finishing.'''
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Look what the Cat Dragged Out

Look what the Cat Dragged Out

Colorado Springs Independent — A young man with autism stands accused of harming a kitten, but contradictions and discrepancies abound. ... The burden of bringing forward those discrepancies, however, falls on Christian, now compelled into the legal system — one which locally lacks any special considerations or processes for persons with autism. It requires his lawyer to either convince the prosecutor that the discrepancies are problematic enough to drop the charges outright or go to trial and cross-examine Corporal Cheney. But trial means facing conviction on both counts; bloody animal photos might stir emotion and non-neurotypical behaviors could be interpreted as signs of guilt. That’s a big risk when there’s a plea deal with a guaranteed dismissal on the table.
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