The 900 Posts of Dr. F
I could wait another four months and get all misty-eyed at the milestone of reaching 1,000 posts. Or I could wait just a few weeks to do the same at the third birthday of the FLB. But for some reason, 900 still feels significant enough to take a pause and reflect. And in this case I quite literally mean taking a pause, as I pushed publishing today’s post from Sunday to Monday, lest the story get lost over the St. Patrick’s Day holiday weekend.
The blog has come a long, long way from where it started off almost three years ago. Part of me is tempted to go back to some of the short pithy posts on food and wine from the early days. Occasionally I look back on those first posts, including the original Fussy Manifesto, and smile.
Today, it’s much different. Today the blog is as much a community as it is bunch of words on the screen. Today I’m keenly aware of that fact, especially coming off of this weekend’s super-top-secret cupcake tasting. The results of that tasting will be coming soon. However, I want to take this opportunity to thank just a few of the people who have helped to grow and transform the FLB.
To Me It’s Just Food
It’s been a long time, but a while back I wrote about the soda of my people. Then, there is the chocolate syrup of my people: Fox’s U-Bet. And let us not forget the smoked meat of my people, Pastrami.
But my favorite Jewish food is challah.
For those who might be reading from someplace that has no Jews, this is the soft and rich loaf of braided bread that is served with Friday night dinners every week – some compare it to brioche. The idea is that on the Sabbath we are supposed to treat ourselves well, and thus I like to honor that tradition by serving the bread with copious amounts of great butter. Recently, though, I’ve replaced that butter with similarly fantastic olive oil.
So when I have the opportunity to share a tasting table at the ninth annual Jewish Food Festival with fellow Jewish food blogger Leah the Nosher (who herself is a talented baker), challah is going to be involved.
Let me tell you what’s in store for this year.
Supermarket Secrets
I love grocery stores. I do. I love just walking in, strolling down the lanes, and scanning the shelves. What I’m lacking is Mr. Dave’s eagle eye for the truly bizarre, but I do pretty well at spotting the occasional treasure.
Just recently on my first outing to Aldi I found an 8.5 ounce bottle of Canadian Grade A maple syrup for just $3.99. For the record, Aldi is nothing like Trader Joe’s, even though they may be owned by the same company. Well, maybe they share the same love of private label brands, but the ones in Aldi are filled with dreck.
Plus Aldi has a strange smell, and the lighting makes everyone look sickly. Yet even here there was something worthwhile to buy.
Savvy shoppers know that some supermarkets have special features that may not be readily apparent to the naked eye. These are not simply interesting or hard to find products. No, these are better.
Tasting Fair Trade Chocolate Bars
The best part about keeping 85% cocoa chocolate bars in the house is that nobody else wants anything to do with them. I can have a carton of ice cream in the freezer that I’ve been nursing for weeks, and all of a sudden one day it may be gone, the victim of a savage attack by Mrs. Fussy.
Little Miss Fussy, who continuously demands sweets, calls my favorite treat “the bitter bars.”
Recently I’ve been denying myself a lot of things. Most notable are hamburgers, ice cream, butter, fried foods and chicken skin. Believe it or not, I’m not suffering, because I’ve been finding other things to add to my diet. Frozen wild blueberries with organic yogurt and granola only go so far.
That’s where the dark chocolate comes in. But recently I’ve tuned into the dark side of dark chocolate. So, in a shallow attempt to do my small part, or at least to do less harm, I’ve decided to buy and eat fair trade chocolate bars.
Amazingly, you can find one brand of these at Walmart. The local co-op has many more. Here’s a rundown on some of the bars I was able to pick up, and I’ll tell you which one I think is best.
Building the Ballot – Irony
Confession time. I think, write, talk, and learn about food far more than I actively engage in actually eating the stuff. And as a result there are vast swaths of the local culinary landscape of which I don’t actually have direct knowledge.
One of these blind spots is sandwich shops.
A big reason I continue to promote the FUSSYlittleBALLOT initiative is because Subway perpetually is ranked the region’s best sandwich. So the irony isn’t lost on me that I cannot definitively give you my thoughts on the best sandwich shop.
What I do know is that we have scads of places that beat the pants of Subway and Panera combined. But choosing the best is a daunting challenge. And for some categories, like Italian restaurant, I feel one must have resided in the area for a minimum of two decades to even remotely have the possibility of understanding the landscape of Italian-American red sauce joints that populate the region.
So today I’m lumping all the categories that I feel completely ill equipped to comment upon together. These are categories that I’ll gladly surrender to external forces. But I will suggest a few things to think about, and I will continue to insist that you offer up three choices that if push came to shove you would be happy to vote for on the FUSSYlittleBALLOT 3.0.
The Lazy Lassi
Smoothies can be kind of like breakfast, right? I’m still trying to hold onto the Sunday breakfast feature instead of boring you all to tears with a wine analogy that came up in conversation with my father-in-law. For those of you who are curious it involves baseball cards. But while I found the discussion to be fascinating it almost put Mrs. Fussy to sleep.
For a while in the late ’90s I’d have a Jamba Juice smoothie in the mornings on the way to work. Granted, it was a significant modification from the one on the menu board, as even then I was concerned about organic produce and how much sugar they snuck into my cup. The order involved doubling some ingredients, leaving out others, and substituting sorbet for frozen yogurt. Oh yes, and adding fiber.
I’ve been an old man for a long long time.
Maybe it’s the hippie in me, but a smoothie needs to contain both fruit and yogurt. What passes for a smoothie these days is simply stunning. But I’m going to advocate for the mango lassi as an often overlooked version of the form. The thing is that these are so easy to make, it’s almost criminal. And now I’m at the point where I just cannot justify buying one at a restaurant.
It’s So Delicious and Moist
Young Master Fussy has a new favorite song. And coincidentally it’s kind of about cake.
I say coincidentally because yesterday I had the chance to pop into Crisan, one of the best bakeries in the region and the wellspring of birthday cakes for the Fussy household. Really I was there because I had a little bit of time to kill in between a late breakfast at Sam’s Home Cooking and a coffee date across the street at Daily Grind.
So I thought, “What better way to pass the time than munching on something delightful?” And while cake isn’t exactly on my new diet, I had just finished a big bowl of hearty and heart-healthy oatmeal, and figured I could find something small that was on the more healthful side of decadent.
What I found exceeded all expectations, and made me recall why eating here is such a joy.
Ask The Profussor – Closing in on 900
It’s time for another installment of Ask the Profussor. Who is excited?
Can I tell you a little secret? Maybe it’s not such a secret by now. But I really don’t like responding to questions as they are asked, and much prefer to tackle them in this forum. Naturally, I have a ridiculous reason. If I were to respond to all the questions as they came in, my ugly mug would be plastered all over the comment feed.
I totally need to try and get over that, because after three weeks the questions that need answers have really piled up. For those who do not know, I am committed to answering every question that is asked on the FLB, provided it includes a question mark.
We’ve got some doozeys today. So buckle up and get ready for the wildest ride in the wilderness.
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