Marcie’s Ice Cream Sandwich Adventure
Yesterday was a windy and rain filled day at the Saratoga Wine & Food and Fall Ferrari Festival. It was great. Thankfully, they had a tent and I got to weather the storm with a bunch of amazing food people, including but not limited to Albany Jane, The Cheese Traveler, Druthers Brewing and Garnish Marketing.
The Chefs Consortium wasn’t so lucky. Their event was postponed to the rain date which is later today. The original winner could not make the rain date, so others have been contacted. Apologies if there has been any confusion.
Anyway, last night I was tired as all get out from spending the better part of twelve hours talking about wine and food, and experiencing some of these things first hand. You’ll hear the complete rundown in the days and weeks to come. But in the meantime, I’m going to hand over the reins to Marcie who attended a killer event at Adventure in Food Trading on my behalf. The gang there was really excited about the ice cream sandwich throwdown. While they couldn’t compete, that didn’t mean they weren’t inspired. Here’s how it all went down from Marcie’s perspective.
Bacon and Bannerman
How is it Friday already? Yesterday was a madhouse with so many of you lurkers coming out of the woodwork to try and win the tickets to the Chefs Consortium Bannerman Island dinner. It was wonderful. Thanks for finally deciding to show yourselves. It’s a pleasure to meet you.
Hopefully now you will feel more comfortable posting comments on a regular basis and lend your voice to the conversation. Seriously. The time for being shy is over.
Anyway in all the excitement I almost forgot about the Bacon Fest giveaway from earlier this week. That one officially ended at midnight on Wednesday, so I just decided to do all my Random.org drawings at the same time.
There were seventeen qualifying comments for the big bacon prize and sixty-four qualifying comments for the big Bannerman prize. So, who is feeling lucky?
Heading North for Donut Picking
Apparently, I’m all about the long game. This will be year three for the Tour de Cider Donut. I’ve long promised to make it up to Saratoga Apple, and now I’m all out of excuses. So this year we are headed north of the Mohawk. Maybe even far north.
Yeah, it’s going to be a lot of driving. And while five donuts doesn’t sound like much, believe me, that’s a lot of fat and sugar. But it’s for science.
Over the last two years we have cataloged ten of the region’s most beloved apple cider donuts. By month’s end we’ll add five more to that tally, and I’m hoping you can come with me and participate in this seriously fun annual tradition. Maybe next year we can head south. Eventually, I want to conduct a tour of champions. But that’s still years off.
Today, however, is the day I open up the floor to nominations. All the details will follow later. But I am looking at one of two potential dates.
Arbiter of Bacon
Happy Labor Day. I’ve got nothing new to say on the matter that I haven’t said before. Hopefully you get to take the day off work and use the time to reflect on the past few months of summer, which are rapidly coming to a close.
I’m off to Pennsylvania, again. There’s apparently a Wegmans just off the highway in Wilkes-Barre that will make a glorious place to pick up my children. The first half of the drive will be lovely, peaceful and quiet. The second half will bring the past few days of childless living to a crashing halt.
Luckily I got to enjoy the hell out of my time without the kids. And that included serving as one of the three judges for the Bacon Cook-Off at the first annual Bacon Fest. If you came down to Hudson yesterday to participate in this event, you probably relearned a hard lesson: the early bird gets the bacon.
Fall Cleaning
Shortly, I’ll be headed down to Hudson for the first annual Bacon Fest. Hope I’ll see you down there. It promises to be a beautiful day. The high is 75 degrees and partly cloudy with only a 20% chance of a thunderstorm. I have faith it won’t rain. And if it does, I’ll have the bacon to keep me dry. Fat repels water.
If you are not going to Bacon Fest, perhaps you are headed to Scotia to take part in Jumpin’ Jack’s final day of the 2012 season. On September 3, they will be closed until the spring.
Speaking of September 3, that’s Labor Day. To some that signals the final day of summer. Tell that to the college students who have already started classes. But even still, summer doesn’t officially end until September 22, which is the Autumnal Equinox a.k.a. the first day of fall.
All the signs are here. Fall is coming. But while there are still a few days when the sun’s intense light can still cause a forehead to glisten, I have something important for you to do.
Cheese Store Wars
If all goes according to plan, later today I’m going to pop into All Good Bakers and finally try their semifreddo. While I’m there, I hope to poke my head into The Cheese Traveler next door and see how Eric Paul is progressing in setting up his shop. Of course, he may be taking care of things off site, so I may be out of luck.
It feels like forever since I’ve seen some of my favorite food people. I’m blaming summer. But as summer is ending, I’m catching up on lost time.
Just yesterday was my first visit to Adventure in Food Trading since the summer began. I was excited to find that they have finally finished the second giant walk-in refrigerator. However, it’s been that way for months now. Like I said, I’ve been quite delinquent. There are new people working there too, like Danielle Gagner and Jason Baker. And it was great to see them both.
Still, I was most excited about the cheese.
Dates
Back in the Berkeley days, one of my favorite things to get at the farmers market was dates. There was a table from Flying Disc Ranch and they had something called a Barhi. On the sweetness scale, they were not quite as candied as the more popular Medjool, but its texture was unbeatable. These demure dates were soft and unctuous, with a rich and honeyed sweetness underneath a thin and brittle papery skin. The didn’t quite melt in the mouth, but it was pretty darn close.
In theory, I could still mail order these amazing morsels direct from the farm. But I’m not quite able to justify the exorbitant expense to myself.
The same is true about the other kind of dates. Those would be the ones with Mrs. Fussy. It seems like before we had kids we would go out and do things. Not dates exactly. Mostly we would hang out with friends. Dinners alone just kind of happened. Sometimes they would be fancy, other times they would be simple.
Now, any time alone is a rare treat. And I suppose like the other kind of date, with some additional effort and expense we could try to recapture the joys of the past. But we don’t. Usually.
Except yesterday something magnificent happened.
Ask the Profussor – Still Summer
Despite a temperate day, and a bit of a cooling in the evenings, summer is still holding on. I will continue to ignore the leaves on the grass, so long as it means I continue to get peaches from my CSA instead of pears or apples.
It’s been a busy two weeks, and the next few weeks are jam packed with food things too. Plus school starts next week for the children. It’s a mixed blessing. I’ll have some more time for food adventures on my hands. That includes, but is not limited to, trips to Adventure in Food Trading. But it also means waking up early. Really early. And that’s something I haven’t really done all summer.
The only upside to that is that FLB posts will consistently be posted before 9 o’clock in the morning. You all have been very patient this summer as my relaxed summer has caused new posts to go up as late as 11 a.m.
Today is about a different commitment, however. Today is about answering your questions. And while many questions over the past two weeks ended up being answered in other forums, there are still a few that were left unheeded. Not ignored, just tabled. As long as a question is asked with proper punctuation in the comment threads of the FLB it will always be answered. That’s my commitment to you. And these are your answers:
FUSSYlittleBLOG 