Last Month With No Joe
Have I told you yet that I’m going to miss the Grand Opening of the Capital Region’s long awaited Trader Joe’s? I already broke the news to AOA Greg. He’s the one who generally sends me into the swarming masses of humanity on the days when a long-awaited market opens its doors in our region.
When The Fresh Market opened, I was there.
When The Pioneer Market (aka the Troy Co-op) opened, I was there.
When ShopRite opened, I was there.
But on arguably the biggest day in the last decade for Capital Region grocery shoppers, I will be in Pennsylvania. And part of me is a little bit relieved. Because while it’s fun to have an excuse to brave the crowds on opening day, I really wasn’t looking forward to the prospect of spending the wee early hours of the morning in a parking lot on Wolf Road.
Mark my words. People will be sleeping out.
I just hope everyone stays calm, and there aren’t too many fender benders on day one. Still, I will get in there just as soon as I can, even if it’s mobbed. While there are a lot of things at TJs that I love, there is only one that I REALLY NEED RIGHT NOW!
Funny Meat
Humor can be powerful stuff. It breaks through people’s barriers in a way that reasoned, rational and earnest argument cannot.
Dammit. Maybe I should be more funny.
Last week, HuffPo Food ran a piece about a new ad campaign from Applegate Organic & Natural Meat. The spot that they featured included a body-builder dressed in a cow suit. The objective of the spot was to call attention to growth hormones in the beef used for hot dogs.
Applegate is a large national producer of Happy Meat. I’m thrilled to be seeing more products from them around the Capital Region. Price Chopper has some and ShopRite has an extensive selection of their line.
I break from my high ideals about meat all the time. And I don’t eat a lot of hot dogs. When I do, they are generally eaten out at one of the classic institutions around the Capital Region. But these ads are a good reminder that should I decide to buy hot dogs at a grocery store to cook up at home, Applegate’s are probably the best ones for someone like me.
As it turns out, the spot that HuffPo picked to feature may have been the most visually arresting of the bunch. But there are two other commercials from the campaign that actually make me laugh every time I see them.
Sell Out Sunday – All Over the Place
For those who were wondering, the maiden voyage of the grill was a success. I need to get my timing down a bit better. Those grilled vegetables got a little bit more caramelized on the fire than I had intended, but they were not actually burnt. And they did taste delicious with the salsa verde I whipped up from some Roxbury Farm parsley, salted capers, a fat anchovy, garlic, lemon juice, red pepper flakes, salt and plenty of cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil.
But this weekend is taking me all around the region. From as far south as Kingston to the Berkshires and points in between. It’s true what they say about summer in the Northeast. Everyone jams in a year’s worth of events in a few short months. There just isn’t time to do them all.
Nor is there time to write any original content. So instead I leave you with another installment of Sell Out Sunday with a very exciting announcement from Adventure in Food Trading which will hopefully result in further improvements to Albany’s dining scene. But there is something else you should know about, too, that involves free food.
Breaking Out The Grill
If all goes according to plan, today will be the maiden voyage of my new grill.
It has been years since I’ve had a grill to call my own. In fact, I left my old grill in California back in June 2007. You may ask how I could possibly have gone without a grill for so long. The answer probably won’t surprise you: a stubborn unwillingness to compromise.
Gas grills are little more than outside stoves where you cook right on the grates. And while that may appeal to me on hot days when I don’t want to cook inside, that’s not really what I want from my grill.
But a charcoal grill did not really fit into our lives when Little Miss Fussy was born. When she was a toddler it seemed like a bad idea to have such a potentially dangerous cooking implement around. However, now she’s a good bit older, and the kids can be trusted around cauldrons of smoldering carbon.
Still, inertia could have taken hold, and another grilling season could have passed me by. But thanks to Jon In Albany and Burnt My Fingers I’m ready to go.
Kinda Thai Cole Slaw
Technically it’s a salad. Some day soon I will need to write a dedicated post clarifying my stance on this category of dishes. But right now I want to tell you what I did so I don’t forget.
But first a little bit of background.
Every week we get a lot of produce from Roxbury Farm. Some things Mrs. Fussy will not eat. Other things are challenging to get the Fussy Little Kids to enjoy. And I cannot abide waste. Fortunately, I enjoy trying to come up with ways to use the veggies nobody wants.
Yesterday I was staring down the barrel of not one, but two heads of arrowhead cabbage, a bunch of green onions and a heap of cilantro. All of which needed to get eaten. It was the cilantro that made me think Thai.
So with no recipe, or even a well-established sense of proportions, I set off to create a kinda Thai cole slaw. And I’m happy to say it’s not bad. I’d totally make this again, and I’m sure with a few tweaks this could be great.
Stress Test
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed. But they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love. They had five hundred years of democracy and peace; and what did that produce? …. The cuckoo clock.
– Harry Lime, The Third Man (1949)
You can see and hear Orson Wells delivering this line on YouTube. But if you’ve never seen The Third Man, I strongly suggest you avoid the temptation to click. Instead, find it on DVD, turn off your cell phone, put away your computer and watch it uninterrupted. It’s one of the best films ever, and most people have never heard of it.
Be warned, it’s in glorious black and white. And your widescreen television will be of no use, since it was shot for a different aspect ratio.
The idea is that stress and anxiety can produce things of greatness. Winemakers routinely stress their vines, depriving them of water and spacing plants so they have to compete for precious natural resources. This produces fruit with better flavor and intensity. Shows like Iron Chef work the same way.
Some of you were concerned that my CSA was causing me an undue amount of stress. On some level that’s true. But it is also one of my great joys of summer. Yes, I know it may not have sounded so joyful the other day, but there are some good reasons for that.
Vegetables of Doom
Egads! It’s Monday, and there are a ton of vegetables left to eat before a whole new crop arrives tomorrow from my CSA. What happened? Well, I went away for a few days on yet another vacation and didn’t take any of the produce with me.
Mrs. Fussy did a valiant job at home whipping up a handful of purple basil into purple “pesto”. Although it would have been just a bit better if she remembered to add two garlic scapes instead of actual garlic. Still, the vegetables are my responsibility, so anything she does to help me use them up is a happy bonus. And the Fussys did also eat the snow peas, broccoli, zucchini, lettuce, and cucumber while I was gone.
Last night I found myself making a whole separate meal just for me, to make sure the delicious turnip greens didn’t go to waste. Now all I have to do is make it through 1.5 bunches of kale (that includes half of last week’s too), a head of cabbage, two garlic scapes, a bunch of green onions, a bit of parsley, and some cilantro.
Luckily, I’ve got a plan.
Eleven
Mrs. Fussy never reads the blog. She copyedits almost every single post in the morning as she eats her cereal. But during those rare occasions when one of us is away, she will never go online to check out what I’ve posted.
A year ago today, I wrote of our tenth anniversary, and told the story of our wedding. It’s a post filled with cheese and brunch and cake. But there were also friends and loved ones. And Mrs. Fussy was compelled to read that story because she proofread it.
Today I’m still in Providence and Mrs. Fussy is looking after our children back in Albany. I have no idea what she’ll be reading this morning over cereal. But maybe I can convince her to take a peek. Because eleven is a big number. And you know what the traditional gift is for eleven years of marriage? Steel.
Stunningly Bad Cocktails
Greetings again from Providence, Rhode Island. If it seems like I’m doing an awful lot of traveling in June, that’s because I am. But once again Mrs. Fussy isn’t here to protect me from making gramatical errors nor to temper my harsh decrees on local area businesses.
So you are going to have to believe me on this one. I did not seek out this cocktail menu. No. It came to me. For some reason, it popped up in my Facebook feed. And after being scarred by its existence, I couldn’t pretend to un-see it. It’s almost like Mark Zuckerburg wanted to get me all riled up about bad cocktails, so he made sure this restaurant’s post made it through all the algorithms.
The reason not to write today’s story is that I’ve been critical of this restaurant in the past. So yet another dedicated post to its shortcomings, might feel like I’m singling this place out and picking on it when it’s down. After all, they just recently lost their highly esteemed executive chef.
Given that, I’m going to start by saying something nice about MezzaNotte.
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