Revisionist History

This is not a case of writer’s block. Perhaps it’s more a story of competing interests. Or maybe there’s a feeling like I’ve already said everything I have to say about food, and now I’m just repeating myself. But also, if you haven’t noticed, blogs are slowly dying.

Still, the FLB persists. And for the time being, it isn’t going anywhere.

Thanks to all of you regular readers who have been patiently suffering through the delay in getting the daily posts published. For years, the goal was fresh content daily, and you could be sure a new post would be up by 9am. And 96% of the time, that post had been proofread by Mrs. Fussy to make sure that in addition to making sense, all the commas were in the right place.

Today’s post, on the other hand, will be up closer to noon. And if we’re lucky, I’ll give it a quick once over before sharing it with the world. Part of the problem is that my day job with Yelp continues to take up more of my time. But the challenges I’m facing aren’t unique to the blog.

Of course, there are still more stories to tell. There are more restaurants to visit, more foods to eat, more beverages to drink, more farms to visit, more recipes to cook. You get the idea.

Time. Time is always the critical factor. But more than time, the enemy of exploration is one’s regular routine. And routine is one of those handy things that helps save time. In some ways the two together create a horrible feedback loop of monotony. Interestingly enough, there is nothing monotonous at all about my work life. There is always a new adventure around every corner.

Which is why daily readers may have noticed that over the past several months the FLB has been leaning a bit heavier on what I’ve been doing with Yelp. Although, today’s post recalls a time in the past when I was unsure about the direction of the blog.

After completing the first year of the FLB, I briefly considered going back and simply rewriting and improving upon the posts I had already written.

It’s true what they say, writing is rewriting. And I was also inspired by the movie The Evil Dead. When director Sam Raimi was actually given the budget to create a sequel, he simply remade The Evil Dead with a bigger budget and called it Evil Dead 2.

Where am I going with this? Well, as it turns out, I’ve also been struggling to write new Yelp reviews. So, my answer has been to look back and update what I’ve written in the past. In part inspired by Emily’s guest post, I went a wrote a much kinder post for Prinzo’s than I had after my first visit to this beloved Albany bakery almost twelve years ago.

It turns out that I simply didn’t understand the place and how it fit into the culinary landscape of the region. At the time, the phrase, “egg and cheese on a hardroll” wasn’t even in my lexicon.

When you look back, it can be amazing to see how far you have traveled. Of course, there will be new reviews and blog posts coming. These little navel-gazing sessions can be fertile ground for new ideas as well.

For example, I’ve come to realize that perhaps the Capital Region hardroll is its own thing, and maybe we need to explore it more fully. Perhaps on something like a tour? Or maybe on exactly something like a Tour de Hardroll. Let me think on that a bit. I mean, are these bakeries even open on the weekend?

In the meantime, if any of you are inspired by Emily L’s guest posts and want to give writing for the FLB a shot, give me a shout. Cheers.