Rolled Your Way Into the Semis
Wasn’t there just a pizza post on Tuesday? And another one the week before? Am I seriously going to write another one today?
Maybe you’ve been closely following All Over Albany’s Tournament of Pizza. Or maybe you haven’t. This year it feels a bit more fast and furious than in years past. I’m finding that it’s hard for me to keep up, and I’m judging the darn thing. At this point, I’ve officially eaten twenty-eight slices from sixteen different pizza shops (in this year’s competition), to try and help you determine from where you should order your next pie.
You think you’re sick of pizza? It feels like I’ve been eating the stuff almost non-stop for the past few weeks. Amazingly my weight has remained remarkably stable, but it’s probably time to get my lipids checked soon.
Anyway, the results of the semi-finals were just posted yesterday. And I thought that was worthy of a little bit of behind the scenes analysis.
Cooking Without Thinking
Everyone has their challenging days. During the summer and fall my Tuesdays can be brutal. This is the afternoon of the CSA pickup, which also means doing triage on the vegetables that come into the house, and then figuring out what to put on the table for our nightly family dinner.
Last night I probably could have made better use of the seasonal vegetables, but I was in a rush.
I needed to make some kind of easy dinner, that didn’t require much active time (or thought) so I could bag all the produce and find it a home in our small and crowded fridge. Naturally, my answer was a Thai(ish) yellow curry of tofu and vegetables with brown rice.
Let me tell you how it’s done.
Grr 8 Pepperoni Pizzas
Judging food is a lot of fun, and I love to do it anytime I get a chance. But it’s also hard work, and often you have to put your personal preferences aside.
Like, for example, in judging the All Over Albany Tournament of Pizza.
This year Round Two was the pepperoni round. It just so happens that I find pepperoni to be an abomination. It is a pizza topping I never order, and only rarely will eat. Except over the past few weeks, I found myself sitting down to eight different pepperoni slices from some of the better pizzerias in the Capital Region.
While I wasn’t looking forward to the pepperoni, I was looking forward to the experience. What could I learn about pepperoni from trying so much of it over a short period of time? And might some be better than others?
Rants In My Pants
Maybe it’s a disease.
Today’s Sunday post on breakfast is being pre-empted by what I hope is the rare self-indulgent post about me. Specifically, I’m talking about not being able to let things go.
Because instead of working last night on a post about shirred eggs, the glory of duck-fat fried potatoes, or the brilliance of Jess’s comment requesting a Tour de Egg & Cheese Sandwich, I did something else.
I squandered my time writing long and winding rants. Not rants for the FLB. But rants elsewhere.
These weren’t just mere comments. Comments can be fired off without much consideration at all. These were blog-worthy diatribes that took longer than one might expect to write, and went unedited by Mrs. Fussy’s moderating hand. It’s free-flowing fussy.
Part of getting better is admitting I have a problem and confessing when I’ve gone astray. So here it goes.
The Six Pack
Count this as another post where I try way too hard to suggest wine is more similar to beer than most people suspect. Although for today’s riff on the theme, my tongue is thrust a bit deeper into my cheek.
So before we talk about wine, lets talk about beer. And before we even talk about beer, I’m going to ask a question. How do you buy beer?
I could be wrong, but my suspicion is that most people buy six packs. There may be a beer that you love, and perhaps you’ll buy that by the 12-pack or save a few bucks and buy it by the case. If you like cheap beer in cans, you might even lug home a 30-pack of the stuff.
With so many different options, I find it unlikely that most people are buying beer by the individual bottle, on the day that you plan to drink it. Sure, with large form specialty bottles some of you may occasionally do this, and that’s fine. But for those of you who enjoy beer, even if it’s not a daily drink, I bet you keep at least a few bottles or cans of it around.
Now, here’s the funny part.
Pop Culture
Last night I found myself talking to a bunch of food-focused friends about the cocktail competition going on over at Steve’s Table Hopping blog. Wait, don’t go anywhere, I promise today isn’t another mid-week cocktail post.
However, since we are on the subject of yesterday’s call to action, if you haven’t voted for the #1 New York State of Mind yet the polls are open until 5pm today.
Anyhow, I was getting irrationally angry about just how sweet most the cocktails were. The more I spoke, the shriller my tone, the louder my voice and the more animated my gestures. It wouldn’t surprise me if I started to foam around the corners of my mouth, just a little bit. And that’s when I blurted it out.
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE LIVE IN A SODA CULTURE!
And much like in psychotherapy, sometimes words just seem to fall out of your mouth. But when you hear them spoken for the first time, they stop you in your tracks. You realize that you’ve articulated a problem that’s been bothering you for a while, and just perhaps you might have stumbled on something significant.
Save Our Spirits – Action Required
I have to write quickly. My laptop is dying. So please forgive the few errant typos, misspelling, and grammatical lapses. Hopefully tomorrow I can get to the Apple Store and buy a new power cord for my MacBook.
This is just one emergency.
The other involves our major local food blog, Table Hopping, written by the Albany Times Union’s Steve Barnes. Well, the Table Hopping blog is celebrating its fifth anniversary soon, and there is a cocktail contest. Readers submitted recipes, and four drinks are vying for the top spot.
However, the only bona fide cocktail is loosing. Well, it’s a distant second. But the voting doesn’t close until 5 p.m. on Thursday. The top two contenders will be able to slug it out in a taste-off. Still, there is a chance a lesser cocktail will move into the second place position, in the next 30 hours or so. And that is a chance I’m unwilling to take.
So I’m asking for your help. I don’t ask for much, and I don’t ask often. This should take less than a minute. All you have to do is click here and write a comment that says, “#1 Empire State of Mind.”
But I’ve found my readers really need to be convinced. So let me explain why this is important.
Red Rocket
What’s long and hard and red all over?
Pepperoni.
It turns out the joke is on me. For the past two years, Round Two of All Over Albany’s Tournament of Pizza has been the sausage round. This year the tournament has gone back to its roots and switched to pepperoni.
Here’s a little known fact. I hate the stuff.
The good news is that I still love the Tournament of Pizza, and continue to take my judging duties seriously. I do understand that pepperoni is a popular pizza topping, and it’s important to evaluate what each pizza place does with this cured and smoked industrially produced pork and beef sausage.
So having gone through the first heat of the pepperoni round, and doing a little bit of homework on the matter, I thought it might be interesting to talk a little bit more about this bastardization of an Italian sausage.
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