Fact Finding
I’m getting old. Maybe I’ve mentioned this already. But I feel myself slipping. I played pinball with ADS recently and for the most part he trounced me. Perhaps I’m recalling incorrectly (which would also be a sign of aging), however I think we used to be more evenly matched.
Not only that, but after a couple hours of working the flippers, my wrists were sore. Plus the flashing lights seemed a whole lot brighter and much more distracting.
For further proof, Raf is starting to come up with good ideas. Although at the same time, he’s also committing unspeakable atrocities against food, which I never thought he would be capable of perpetrating. But that’s another story.
Today, I want to share one of Raf’s very simple but most excellent ideas.
Butter and Optimism
Eventually I’m coming back to Albany. Really I still have four more full days in California. Mrs. Fussy is a saint for letting me take such an extended journey. Today, I’m reporting from San Carlos where I am visiting my cousin and his children (who are also apparently my cousins).
Blogging on the road isn’t easy. But it’s necessary. Just because I’m traveling doesn’t stop food from being interesting. However, it does sometimes get in the way of me being able to fully engage on a topic.
Really over the past week, there are a couple of things that have come to light. So today, I’m going to take a few minutes and try to weigh in on these issues.
The Best of The Best
There is only one thing on my mind today, and that’s the Times Union’s Best of the Capital Region 2012 reader’s choice poll results. We collectively did a lot of work to try and make these results better than they were a year ago.
And the good news is that some of my wildest dreams came true.
Sure, there were plenty of places on the FUSSYlittleBALLOT 3.0 that failed to crack the top three. But your votes helped to propel one place into the number one slot in its category. And honestly, if I could only pick one category for us to rally around it would have been this one.
Ask the Profussor – Back in the Bay
Yesterday I finally had my first great macchiato out here. It’s wonderful being on vacation and enjoying the temperate Northern California air. There aren’t any mosquitos. It’s not oppressively hot. And you can buy wine in the grocery store.
But more important than any of that, it’s great to see old friends. For the most part they have jobs, which gives me some small amount of time to take care of my blogging responsibilities during the week. That includes, but is not limited to, answering your questions that have gone unanswered over the last two weeks.
Burnt My Fingers wins for being the most prolific question asker over the last fourteen days. Maybe next time you can get the prize. Remember, I’ve committed to answering any question that you ask of me, provided you use proper punctuation. And there are some great ones this time around.
Now let’s get to it.
Menu Selections
Do you remember how I laid out my plan for this week? Well, transcribing yesterday’s interview took much longer than expected, and the USDA report continues to make a slow & tedious reading assignment. The gin book is really interesting, but there is no way I’ll be finished with it by the end of this week.
So, instead of those regularly scheduled posts, today I have to bring you something on the fly. And since I don’t find travel logs all that interesting, I’m going to try and take some of my recent California experiences and attempt to find a common theme.
Ordering.
Sometimes it’s easy. Other times it’s hard. But making choices can be challenging. Do you go for a standard dish, or do you try something unusual? Do you get something that’s recommended, or find something that looks appealing? Or do you just sit back, relax and let other people worry about it? There isn’t one answer, but I do have some examples of successes and failures from the past few days.
Love Fish Hate Seafood
Fish is hard. It’s really really hard to wrap your head around this subject. Some farmed fish is very very bad. Other farmed fish is very very good. Salmon has good fatty acids, but the vast majority of it is unsustainably farmed. Some fish you can eat with reckless abandon, and other things like bluefish isn’t advised at all for women and children because of all the pollutants it has absorbed in our dying oceans. Sometimes fish caught from trawling are great, other times the trawling lines tear up sensitive habitats.
How is a fish lover supposed to enjoy seafood when it takes so much work to find stuff that is actually good?
Well, last week Hannaford came out with a new policy on seafood sustainability that was being implemented across 100% of its stores. And not just in the seafood counter, but throughout the store. I was invited to talk with George Parmenter and Jen Levin. He’s the Sustainability Manager for Hannaford Supermarkets and she’s the Sustainable Seafood Program Manager from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. Eric Blom the External Communications Manager from Hannaford Supermarkets was also there.
What follows is a very very lightly edited transcription of our conversation.
It’s a bit long. And I may come off a bit like an a-hole. But fundamentally, I support what Hannaford is doing, and think it’s a good first step. Really, I could probably spend a solid week just on this policy. Maybe a month. But we’ve got other fish to fry.
The Circle Game
We can’t return we can only look
Behind from where we came
– Joni Mitchell
This is an appropriate sentiment given my current situation. Here I am, back in California. I’m visiting ADS who I have been best friends with for over thirty years. And I’m feeling old.
Recently Sundays have been about press releases. They aren’t exactly about new content anymore, but I still post things that I hope will be interesting to you. So with that in mind, and given my current mood, I’m going to take a rare look back at the FLB.
And what gives me a little hope, is that by taking looking back, I’ve got something to look forward to in the future.
I’m On a Plane
Have I mentioned the backlog? It’s hard to imagine that with a post every day that there are things I just don’t have time to write about. Well, there are. Actually, there’s a lot of stories that falls through the cracks.
For example, I never got to write about Tuna Scrape, and now it feels like the moment has passed, and it’s just too late.
There are other subjects that are waiting in the wings because they just take a lot of reading, research or other kinds of preparation. And not only do these posts take time, they also take uninterrupted concentration. Too few of us ever have moments like this anymore. That’s why I’m really excited about today’s cross country flight. I have way too much to do even over the course of several hours, but I at least hope to make a dent in the workload.
My hope is that if I tell you today what I want to accomplish, I may actually have a chance of accomplishing it. Because next week would be a big week even if I wasn’t on the wrong coast.
The Veggies Are Coming
Seasons are still confusing to me. Part of this is spending 14 years living in Florida and another 12 years living in California. Now that Memorial Day has come and gone Summer has unofficially begun. And thanks to an early thaw, plenty of rain and sunshine my CSA is going to start delivering the first produce of the season next week.
Unfortunately, I’m going to miss it since I’ll be in California.
However summertime produce is already in stores. I got a watermelon last weekend and have seen what’s being billed as “The first corn of the season” in stores as well. Now I’m not sure when to expect the first corn from Roxbury, but I do know that in rural Pennsylvania when Mrs. Fussy was growing up, they had a saying about corn. If it was growing well, they expected it to be, “Knee high by Fourth of July.”
Some quick poking around the Internet saw mention of an early harvest way down south in Louisina as early as July. But this gardener didn’t get their first corn harvest until August. Still, restaurants are releasing their spring and summer menus. And it just leaves me scratching my head.
Here in the Fussy household, we are shaking off winter with some brighter flavors, including a new trinity of ingredients I’m particularly enamored with right now.
Have It Your Way
Friday I’m going to be in California. I can’t believe it either. As it turns out Mrs. Fussy will be there too, although we are going separately and have completely different itineraries. Still, we will get to have one dinner together with old friends and drink the one last bottle of wedding wine we’ve been saving for just such an occasion.
Although she mentioned to me her desire to have a Cactus burrito.
That’s not one filled with nopales. Rather, it’s a burrito from Cactus Taqueria in our old hood. It’s not a traditional kind of place. It’s a more dressed up version of a traditional taqueria that uses happy meat and has some delicious moles on the menu to boot. If I recall correctly, her order was pollo mole rojo with black beans and no salsa.
I bring this up not to make you hunger for some of the inexpensive, delicious, and sustainable food options that are missing from our neck of the woods. Rather, I’ve been having a private discussion over on Yelp with an individual who had a bad experience at Capital Q, and I was reminded of a very valuable lesson I learned at Cactus a long time ago.
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