One Thousand
We have celebrated a lot of milestones on the FUSSYlittleBLOG. Let’s quickly review a few of them.
300 Posts – Happened to fall on an Ask the Profussor
500 Posts – Technically this was post number 501
600 Posts – Came during Fussy Little Ballot Season
800 Posts – Fell on the anniversary of my grandfather’s passing
900 Posts – Involved significant reflection and heartfelt thanks
All those were big. But today we annex a zero and roll over into quadruple digits. The next time that happens will be at 10,000 posts. If I maintain this current posting schedule of six stories a week, it will take more than 25 years to get there. Let’s all pray I’ve found a more productive use of my time by then.
Specifically, I hope to eventually find a way to turn this food thing into a money-making enterprise. Luckily I don’t have to figure that out right away. Although Young Master Fussy looks like he may need braces, so that might accelerate things. I shudder to think about how much that will cost.
But for now, I’m not going anywhere. Well, besides Pennsylvania for a few weeks. And then I may spend a few days on Long Island, but I plan to keep writing through it all. I can’t tell if this blog is more like a disease or an addiction. Whatever it is, I can’t shake it.
So what’s happened over the last thousand posts since I started blogging on my own?
To the Winners Go the Spoils
I’m guessing most people didn’t realize I had a contest in progress. That would be right up until now. But as of this moment the contest is over. I’ve already picked my winners.
What? Is this part of a new strategy to confuse and annoy readers? Not exactly.
Back in high school I had a brilliant (if sadistic) english teacher. Let’s call him Mr. W. Well, he would give us an unholy amount of Faulkner to read, and the next day we would have ten minutes to write everything we could about four words or phrases from the text. Things like, “Your mother is a fish” or “Caddy smelled like trees.” These were called close reading quizzes.
The contest was snuck in at the end of a recent post about Trader Joe’s. I wasn’t fishing for blog comments. Nor was I looking for people to cross promote the blog on their facebook or twitter feeds. I wanted to reward close reading. So let this be a reminder that good things come to those who read all their fussy every day.
So who are these people and what did they win?
Of Organics Big, Small & Indifferent
Apparently last night was the All-Star game. Presumably this morning people will talk about it over the water cooler. I read that Pablo Sandoval hit a triple from one of Justin Verlander’s pitches at the beginning of the game. But that statement means nothing to me. I wouldn’t know either of these two gentlemen even if they were wearing their jerseys with their names on the back.
In my social circle people are talking about the New York Times story from this past weekend about the weakening of the national organic standards.
Hopefully little of this should have been news to those of you daily readers with keen memories. The NY Times story focuses on a couple of key groups. One is Eden Foods and the other is the Cornucopia Institute. Back in May I linked to an opinion piece from Eden Foods about the eroding organic standards. Their CEO has had issues with the Organic Trade Association for a long time.
And way back in 2010 I mentioned how unhappy the Cornucopia Institute was when they discovered “the dirty little secret of the natural foods business.” This of course referred to hexane-extracted soy protein, which could be used in products labeled “Made from organic soybeans.”
These two groups and the NY Times would have you believe that Big Organic is bad. That the governing bodies are in the pocket of Big Ag and allow for far too many dilutions to the organic standards. While I see their point, I think this is a gross oversimplification of the story. There is an upside to Big Organic. There’s an upside to small organic.
In the end, organic is just a label. It’s more important what farmers, processors, and manufacturers do (or don’t do) with the food they produce than what they call it.
Williamsburg, A Love Story
Hipster is an awful word. For one, it’s too broadly applied across too many subcultures. It’s too easy to dismiss whole groups of people based on the clothes they wear, how they look, or how they smell.
That said, there are just some people who shouldn’t be wearing skinny jeans. Especially in the heat of summer.
If we are going to generalize, I like how Pink Floyd put it many years ago with a lyric from The Wall, “The bleeding-hearts and the artists”. But regardless of how you characterize the wave of residents that transformed Williamsburg into a place that is now drawing Manhattanites over the bridge, they have done a great job. I don’t know how they did it, nor can I figure out why in Albany we can’t have a cute creperie that sells delicious French dinners for $10-15.
My adventure there was brief, but it was long enough to fall in love. Next time I might skip Manhattan entirely, and spend all my time in Brooklyn.
Sweat and the City
See, some people think it’s supposed to be Sweat in the City but they are woefully mistaken.
If you happen to follow me on Twitter, yesterday you were berated by a slew of check-ins throughout Manhattan. But even those don’t fully outline all the things my little sister and I were able to squeeze into a 12 hour day in the city.
And this wasn’t any day either. This was a day when the thermometer was pushing 100 degrees. I’m sure that with the reflective heat of the sidewalk and all that cement that it actually felt even hotter than it was.
Cooling treats were the order of the day. Well, that and pizza cooked in a 1,000 degree oven. But Grimaldi’s was at least air conditioned. Luckily this city is well prepared for a heat wave. As it turns out, my regimen to stay cool was filed with an excess of dairy. Good thing I sweat out all those extra calories.
Eating Alone
My old friend has a new blog. I’ve mentioned Chef Cory in the past, and now with his co-pilot Megan, he’s eating a lot of white pizza in the City of Angels. Yes, it’s ridiculous. That’s kind of the point.
The stories go up on bingeworthy.com and they are worth a read.
Well for some reason, Cory is expanding the editorial mission of the blog to include some op/ed pieces. And very soon he’s going to write one on eating alone. So he asked me for my thoughts. There’s only one problem. I’m no good at giving short answers. Luckily I have a platform where I can expand at length on such matters.
Maybe Cory can find the one interesting thing I have to say on the matter and lift a quotation for his upcoming blog post. Because before I could even think about answering it, I need to clarify one underlying issue, and it has nothing to do with food or eating.
Apple Pie in July
Baking is always something I’ve avoided. You know how many pies I’ve made in my life? None. I’ve made bread in a bread machine, but I can’t recall ever making a loaf by hand.
Sometimes I’ll watch a cooking show, see a cookbook, or read a blog post and say to myself, I could do that. In fact, one of the things I was looking forward to making with my food processor when I first bought it, was tart dough. That was about ten years ago, and I haven’t made a single tart yet.
Part of the problem is seeing how much fat, refined grain and sugar go into many of these recipes. Sure, I know that a slice of pie is a treat. But I find it more enjoyable if I didn’t see all that lard get cut into the dough. I think that’s one of the reasons why the pie crusts from Flying Pigs Farm are so ingenious.
I mention all of this because I’m not nearly qualified to tell you how to make a pie. What I can tell you though, is what not to do.
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