Giving Thanks
Milestones are important.
Life has a way of getting away from us. Maybe not all of us, but certainly from me. Days fly by. Weeks are over as soon as they’ve begun. Months come and go. Years quickly add up into decades.
It may sound corny until a person asks you a question about when something happened in the past, and your answer is off by ten years. Yeah, that’s happened to me. And then you realize that life events both large and small help provide landmarks in time. So it is wise to celebrate the joys, and take time to mourn the losses.
Today there is a little of both. First the joy.
Angels, Unicorns and Elves
Thanksgiving is only two days away. If you are cooking the holiday meal, you are most likely locked and loaded. You know what you are making, and except for a few last minute details, you likely have all the ingredients you need. Even if you are bringing a side dish, dessert or some hors d’oeuvres you should be squared away.
Right now my advice is limited to two subjects.
One. Should you be throwing convention to the wind this year and eschewing the holiday turkey for a HoneyBaked Ham – DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES PUT THAT HAM IN AN OVEN.
Two. Everyone, and I mean everyone, comes out of the woodwork on Thanksgiving looking for the perfect wine to pair with the traditional holiday meal. I do have some thoughts on pairing in general. But when it comes to turkey, gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce, forget about it.
The perfect pairing does not exist and I’m going to tell you why.
Hungry Like the Wolf
Why am I not 300 pounds?
I would like to say exercise. But that would be a bald-faced lie. One day I’m sure Mrs. Fussy will fit me with an odometer to count my steps over the course of a normal day. Naturally, I argue that I’m plenty active just taking care of the business of everyday life. I go up and down the stairs at home countless times every day. But largely my life is sedentary. So the answer is not exercise.
Clearly it’s not diet either. I just bought a big one-pound bag of the lard chips Mr. Dave found recently in a local area market. Pizza slices and dim sum on the go make up a frighteningly large percentage of my lunches. And dinners, while mostly nutritious and lower on the food chain, aren’t exactly light in calories. Think black-eyed peas, cooked with ham hocks on 100% whole wheat toast (with Crystal hot sauce).
Genetics probably play some role in it. I’ve been blessed with a speedy metabolism. But I think there is something else at play, which you may want to consider as the Thanksgiving table approaches in just a few days.
The Exceptions to Pancakes
There is a lot I don’t know about you. Every now and again, I’ll meet a lurker, and I LOVE it. I do really wish more of you would speak up, but I understand. Comments take time. I know, because I obsess over even short pithy comments I write on other blogs.
Who am I kidding, none of my comments are short or pithy.
But surely there are some people here who only read the FLB and do not follow my shenanigans on Twitter or Facebook. And that’s fine. There may even be those among you who don’t know when to visit All Over Albany to catch my posts on the best local things to eat in the region. I only mention this because last Tuesday, AOA published a piece I wrote on the pancakes at the Jonesville Store.
Yes. I recommended pancakes. Yes, less than a month after claiming that I never order them out at restaurants. And do you know why? Because Kerosena taunted me in my own comments section. Well that, and they were delicious.
But are they really pancakes?
Cooking Whine
I’m bleeding and I’m grumpy. Mrs. Fussy is off at another conference, and I’m left with nobody to remind me that starting a multi-hour cooking project late at night is a bad idea. In trying to rush through the prep work, I cut a small chunk out of the pad of a fingertip and a slightly bigger chunk out of what I think is called the middle phalanx.
Both cuts are on my index finger. And let me tell you, it’s no fun to type.
Yet, type I must, because as I write this, I have a pot of split pea soup on the burner and it’s going to be hours before I can go to sleep. So as a rare treat to myself, I’m going to just let it all out. Whining never solves anything. It doesn’t get you what you want. But sometimes it just feels good.
So how did I get myself to this point? I blame AOA Greg, and his irrational need for pretty photographs of food.
Getting Ahead of Thanksgiving
There are some people who think Thanksgiving is about doing something new. They flip through magazines, and pore over cookbooks. They might even get desperate enough to go online and start reading blogs. I’m not opposed to trying new things. I’m not closed off to new experiences. In fact, I delight in venturing out into the unknown and embracing the weird.
But not on Thanksgiving.
It’s important to have traditions. It’s important to have rituals. Sometimes these things take on the form of holiday meals. Granted, this is easy for me to say since I get to go to my aunt’s house every year, and she’s a great cook. But if she ever changed stuffing recipes or neglected to make her creamed onions, something would feel uncomfortably out of place.
All the same, there are people out there who may be making Thanksgiving dinner for the very first time. Young families, just starting out, who are trying to make new traditions for themselves. Anyhow, in the past I’ve given my holiday advice in the days leading up to the holiday.
Today is different.
Beat my Beets
Maybe everyone is just being polite. It’s hard to tell, because I don’t gush. But I do know that there are many other people who will tell you something you made is simply fantastic, even if it’s not.
My mother-in-law is one of those people.
In fact I recently took her to a local pizza shop that I thought looked promising. I had never been, and really wanted to see what they did with slices. Well, my mother-in-law loved it. She thought the pizza was just delicious. Me? Let’s just say I have no reason to ever return. But I’m a much tougher critic.
Still, it’s not just my mother-in-law who loves my beets. I served them to Albany Jane, and she spoke well of them. Plus recently I brought them to a potluck where they got rave reviews.
Regardless of whether you trust any of these people, my technique for cooking beets is super easy, and produces sweet, tender results every time. And that alone is worth sharing.
Back to the Market
Last year my CSA did not get hit by a hurricane. Nor did it get flooded a second time as a tropical storm dumped rain on already sodden land. Given the conditions Roxbury had to deal with this year, it’s amazing we got as much gorgeous food as we did.
Even after the floods we were getting tomatoes, beets, potatoes, winter squash, turnips, sweet potatoes, onions, carrots and more. And while I may have missed a repeat performance of last year’s cabbage bounty, Mrs. Fussy was dancing a little happy jig that the cabbage crop was destroyed.
Okay, that’s not exactly true. But she really doesn’t like cabbage.
Anyhow, last year we got weekly deliveries into December. And then on top of it all, I ordered a forty-pound storage box of winter root vegetables. All of that produce kept me happy at home well into January without venturing into the local farmers markets. Well, let me rephrase that. I would venture, but I wasn’t there for groceries. I do like to browse.
This year is different.
Morning for Bacon
Just in time for Sunday brunch is a post about bacon. Yay, bacon!
Very few ingredients inspire such irrational exuberance as slices of this cured and smoked pork belly. And on one level I can totally understand it; bacon is delicious. It’s smoky, salty, meaty, crispy and chewy all at the same time. It’s been the downfall of many once-vegetarians. Some have even labeled it a gateway meat.
But you know what? I like my bacon as bacon. It was very clever when fat-washing infusions were developed and one could have bacon-flavored bourbon (and a host of other interesting spirits), but now it’s feeling a bit played out. I have no interest in baconnaise, bacon-flavored popcorn or bacon air either. When it’s disembodied from its physical form, I have little love for the stuff.
Well, that is, except for one thing.
FUSSYlittleBLOG 