AskTP – Year End
2014 is almost done. It’s time to tie up loose ends. Tomorrow there will be the obligatory looking back post. The day after I’ll dedicate to looking forward. And then it’s 2015. I can’t believe it. Hopefully, you’ve already been to the liquor store and secured your bottles of Champagne and gin.
That means today is the last day to answer questions submitted over the past few weeks that have languished in the comments.
Fortunately, I have this fairly regular feature called Ask the Profussor (or AskTP for short) that does just that. At the very beginning of this project, I made a commitment to make sure every question received some kind of answer. It won’t always be from me. It may not always be right. But just so long as you use a question mark in your comment, it will find its way here.
And just to make these posts easy on the eyes, each question gets a one line introduction. If you click on any of these links, they will all bring you to the mystery link of the day. No without any further ado, onto the questions.
Read more…
The Spirit of New Year’s Eve
File this one under bad ideas.
Now that Christmas is over, we have precious little time to prepare for New Year’s Eve. Saturday is already tomorrow, and that’s the only weekend between now and the saying goodbye to 2014.
So while I’m sure most of you will want to avoid shopping like the plague, I’m sorry to say that if you plan to have a New Year’s Eve party, it’s time to get moving. For the record, having a party at home is a much more sensible option than going out. Making dinner reservations or attempting to enjoy a bar on December 31 is madness. It’s like going to a restaurant on Valentine’s Day, but surrounded by throngs of sloppy drunk people.
Seemingly, there are some people who find this to be fun. But I am not one of them.
At this point you may be wondering about that bad idea I had mentioned. Well, I’ve been thinking about easy and delicious cocktails that would be appropriate for Wednesday night’s festivities. And as fate would have it, there is a great one that works with my three-bottle bar.
The Ghost of Christmas Present
Merry Christmas. I still say the best kinds of presents are the ones that money can’t buy. Sure, there is joy in the giving. There is joy on the receiving end too. But these joys are ultimately fleeting. True joy comes from something deeper.
Some say the best kinds of gifts are experiences instead of things. Me? I like to give and receive presents that are consumable, figuring that those gifts really offer the best of both worlds. There’s the thing and the experience of eating or drinking the thing. But as we know too well, fancy bottles of wine tend to stay unopened for some grand occasion that almost never comes. At least now we have Open That Bottle Night to help solve that problem.
But here, there is no pile of presents. All of our conifer trees are outside, so gathering around one would not be a cozy experience. The chanukiot have been cleaned and put away for the season. The last latke has been fried. And we’re now on to the thank you note writing portion of the holiday.
I’ll tell you something. It is a little strange to find most things closed in honor of a holiday you don’t observe. Not that I begrudge anyone time off on this important holiday, I don’t. It’s just usually the Fussies find ourselves in motion on Christmas day, but this year we’re stuck at home.
So today, we’ll do what almost every Jew in America does on Christmas.
The Ghost of Christmas Eve Past
Tomorrow Jews around the world will be making Chinese restaurants feel like it’s Christmas. Many will opt for take out, but the Fussies are going to brave the crowds and head out into the world. I can’t say I’m too fond of Chinese take-out.
Today, however, you couldn’t get me outside. It’s madness out there. Even Monday was a disaster. You should have seen the Trader Joe’s parking lot. The situation was made worse given the increase of business the HoneyBaked Ham store experiences this time of year.
I found myself driving over the grass from one parking lot to the next in order to snag an empty parking spot. Somehow the collective hysteria is contagious. Maybe next year I’ll set up a table outside the HoneyBaked Ham store and wage a public awareness campaign to alert people of the consequences that come from heating up one of those lovely hams.
So Christmas is tomorrow. And since I’m having a lazy day, I’ve got a lazy post to match.
Cake to Cure a Broken Heart
Crisan isn’t closing. That’s the silver lining. Even after January first, you will still be able to order one of their cakes, a platter of treats, or a dozen croissants. All Over Albany has the full story and grabbed a quick interview with the bakery’s owners.
But at the start of the new year, their Lark Street cafe will be no more. That front parlor will be converted into a cake decorating space and private tasting area.
The seating itself was always very limited to just a small handful of tables and chairs. I never knew if there would be an open table when I wandered through the bakery’s doors. And a trip down there meant I had to deal with Lark Street parking. For big city standards, the parking is painless. But for our small town, its lack of readily open spots and long, bumpy one-way streets can be particularly infuriating.
Plus one has to deal with the sometimes unpleasant smell of Lark Street itself. This wasn’t my observation, but rather it came to me from one of my children.
I know it was a hard decision for the owners to turn away from the cafe and focus on cakes. One can only spread oneself so thin before the strain starts to make tears in the fabric of life. And while I’m quite relieved I will still have access to these marvelous cakes, I do think it’s important to mourn the loss of the cafe.
And it’s a terrible, terrible loss.
Holiday Drinking
Let’s talk about the reason for the season. And let’s go back. Let’s go way, way, way back. All winter solstice holidays are effectively the same. You know why? Well, take a long hard look at the season itself. It’s dark. It’s cold. It’s depressing.
So, let’s gather with people who we trust, light some lights, and eat a festive meal.
Huzzah! Problem solved. Except for the part that more often than not, those people who you trust tend to be the exact people who make you crazy. They’re not going to kill you, so that’s good. But they’ll probably drive you to drink.
The FLB has been oddly silent on the subject of cocktails lately. But there are a few things that have been percolating recently, which may all come together in today’s post. Then again, maybe they won’t.
But let’s start with family.
Rocking Breakfast – Recipe #3
Only a very small handful of people may have noticed the FLB change over the years. Readers come and readers go. And even those of you who have been around from the very beginning may not have been hyper analyzing the blog’s daily tone and content.
In the beginning, I was clearly an outsider, keeping an arm’s breadth away from those behind the scenes. But then I realized (with help from some commenters) that our local chefs weren’t the problem. And that began the process of reaching out to chefs directly and building closer relationships with the local culinary community.
One chef that I’m particularly fond of is Josh Coletto. He’s part of the Chefs’ Consortium, and when I first interviewed him at The Flying Chicken, it was clear that we shared many similar notions about what makes food good.
These days he’s mostly working at Local 111 in Philmont, but he does come back to Albany once a month to cook brunch at The Low Beat. Josh and I have worked out a little deal. He’s agreed to share some of his recipes with readers of the FLB, and I’ve agreed to remind people to check out this monthly labor of love.
Here’s what he has to say about this recipe from last month’s menu:
Late for Latkes
Happy Chanukah!
For some people this is a confusing time of the year. Today is officially the first day of Chanukah. But yesterday was the first night. Which means that even though today is the first day of the festival, tonight is the second night.
Got it? Good. These are just some of the hijinks we get by subscribing to a lunar calendar.
Yesterday included the traditional holiday tradition where I run around frantically trying to buy presents for the kids. This is one of those great moments to be Jewish. Even though there are plenty of people who find themselves in the same predicament, we’re such a small population that it’s nothing even close to the crush of last minute shoppers the day before Christmas.
The other lucky thing is that we don’t have to gather for a big festive meal any night of the holiday. Which isn’t to say there aren’t holiday foods. My temple has a great latke fest and I’m looking forward to eating the food of my people with the people of my people.
All I wanted last night was a taste of the holiday. And I’m a little ashamed about how I got it.
Snacks on a Plane
Airplane food used to be a tired joke. Dry and and flavorless pieces of chicken breast were served on mushy rice with overcooked vegetables and some kind of salty creamy sauce. The food was mostly terrible to be sure. But at least the airline fed its passengers something resembling food on a multi-hour flight.
The food loving flyer always had clever ways around the crap food. Vegetarian meals were often solid. Hindu meals rocked. I had some great indian bean dishes and even discovered Amy’s veggie loaf for the first time on a plane. Actually, that last in-flight meal was the best preparation of the frozen convenience dish I ever ate.
These days you may have to fly internationally to actually be fed. And hopefully the airline packed enough meals for all those who want them. I recall one flight being totally out of food by the time they got to my seat towards the back of the cabin.
Usually, I’ll eat before or after a flight. Occasionally, I’ll bring something on board. But on my latest journey, I wasn’t expecting to be stuck in the plane waiting for the plows to dig us out, and then waiting even longer in the de-icing queue. By the time the flight attendants were selling snacks, I was famished. I needed food.
As it would turn out, food on a plane is mighty hard to find.
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