Can’t Go Home Again
When I was living there, I couldn’t find a decent bagel to save my life in Berkeley. My favorite bagels came from a little bagel shop called the Bagel Hut in Great Neck, New York. This is where my Nana has always gotten her bagels. Let me tell you, she knows what is good.
The only passable place in Berkeley was an operation called Manhattan Bagels, but they weren’t close to the real thing in either texture or flavor.
But it’s funny. After enough time away from the great bagels of Long Island, slowly and surely the memory of what a bagel should be faded. And that wasn’t entirely a bad thing. It meant that I could order a bagel from Manhattan Bagels and be perfectly happy. However as soon as Nana showed up with her carryon baggage filled with freshly baked bagels from the Bagel Hut, I couldn’t so much as look at a Manhattan Bagel for months.
Sometimes absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Other times absence makes the things you miss easier to forget.
I mention this because I’m preparing for a trip back west.
Ask the Profussor – The Boys of Summer
Numbers excite me, but I know they bore most people. So I’ll spare you the details. But I pore over my blog traffic numbers more than I care to admit. And there are lots of numbers to look at: WordPress, Twitter, Bit.ly, and Facebook get the majority of my attention.
But it’s the Facebook ones I find the most concerning. They have been telling me that my male readership has been going down, and it was never that high to begin with. And I understand that cooking and food may tend to skew more female. However, a look at this batch of questions will show you exactly what I’m talking about.
Don’t get me wrong. I love all my female readers, and all these questions. Which, by the way, will all soon get their long-deserved answers. But maybe we can bring your boyfriends, husbands, brothers, or male co-workers into the fold this summer. Let’s get them on board the Fussy express.
However, if this is what it is, I can live with that. I spent most of my career and adult life surrounded by women, attending spa days, getting facials, and dressing up for mom’s night out. So this isn’t new territory. But enough about me, on to the questions.
Ice Cream: Out the Window
Well, this is embarrassing. And if you know anything about me, it’s that when I’m embarrassed about something, I’m compelled to share it.
Just yesterday, I wrote about how when it comes to ice cream, there are no good choices when it comes to national brands. You have to make some kind of tradeoff between food gums, antibiotics and hormones.
I actually do own an ice cream machine. It’s one of those easy Cuisinart ones. My little sister gave it to me as a present years ago. And we use it occasionally. My experience has been that the ice cream is amazing when it’s first mixed, but I’ve never been able to make anything that I’ve liked after it’s sat in the freezer overnight. It just gets hard and chunky.
Don’t you dare tell me I need to use cream with mono and diglycerides or carrageenan.
So the obvious question is, “Well, what kind of ice cream DO you keep in your freezer.” After all, I’m still human, and ice cream is still a food group. I think my friends at Price Chopper will fall off their chairs when they hear the answer.
Ice Cream: No Good Choices
Today is all about conflict of interests. Let me disclose them from the start.
1) Way back yonder in my advertising days I worked on some consumer packaged goods brands. Two of these were ice cream. Haagen Dazs wasn’t so bad to work on, but Edy’s was a nightmare. No small part of that had to do with the fact on the East Coast they are Edy’s, but on the west coast they are Dreyer’s (not to be confused with Breyer’s).
2) I am starting to make some personal connections with people at Price Chopper. We go to the same temple and serve on the same committees. Just yesterday I attended a meeting at Price Chopper’s corporate headquarters, which were surprisingly well appointed.
I mention these because recently I was involved in a little spirited tweet off with @PriceChopperNY about a new kind of ice cream recently made available in America.
It started off playfully before I addressed a more serious concern.
Ultimately it made me think of something that I have probably mentioned in bits and pieces in previous posts, but never combined into one cohesive argument. If you care about the things I care about when it comes to ice cream and dairy, I cannot recommend any national brands.
What I Don’t Know
It all comes back to Noah Sheetz. He’s one of the few chefs working in the Capital Region who passionately cares about local ingredients. But even he and Ric Orlando have their roots down in the Hudson Valley, which boasts a lot of locally inspired dining. So does Saratoga Springs.
The Capital Region sits in the middle of these two enclaves of local dining, with equal access to the same magnificent suppliers, yet remains largely unmoved. Yes, I do know the dining situation here is improving.
I had hoped to meet some more of the local farmers in attendance at A Spring Deliverance this past Saturday, but that didn’t happen. Instead I had some great conversations with new friends and old. I also finally got to meet Kerosena in person for the very first time, and we didn’t even get to talk about her mother’s crimes against food.
Then on Sunday, I was surprised to see Noah had written a piece on All Over Albany about local fast food. Sure, these businesses are local, and indeed they are a regional treasure that breaks beyond the sameness of national chains. However, I’d be floored to learn the hotdogs served at Famous Lunch are made with locally produced happy pork. I wish they were.
But these are the things that I do know.
Seriously Scrambled
A long time ago I wrote a post about my sliding scale. I will hold to task restaurants that are aspiring to be more than they are. However, a modest diner that produces better than average diner food will be given the highest accolades.
That is not to say that I have low standards for diners, nor that these humble greasy spoons can do no wrong.
In fact, today I’m very grumpy. You may even say that I’m irrationally angry. Some of that is surely due to my head cold. But today my ire is pointed directly at scrambled eggs. Given the level of my overreaction, I am not going to be naming any names. I don’t think it would be productive.
Sometimes, especially when I’m sick, I just need to get a few things off my chest.
Beer Season
Don’t think for a moment that I don’t love good beer (you know, just because I barely write about the stuff). There are some wine people who only drink wine, and some beer people who only drink beer. I think that’s madness.
Why close yourself off to great taste sensations?
That was meant to be a rhetorical question, but I actually have an answer to that. You close yourself off to some taste sensations because absence makes the heart grow fonder. Too much of a good thing ultimately leads to fatigue. And it’s the saddest thing in the world when something amazing becomes commonplace, and ceases to be special.
These days things like strawberries are available at the supermarket twelve months a year. The fact that winter strawberries barely resemble the best local ones at the height of the season helps many people resist the urge to eat them in December. Committing yourself to eating strawberries only in the summer ensures that when they arrive, they will be celebrated and cherished.
Beer is a bit different, because many seasonal styles do not deteriorate when they are “out of season.” But still I support the notion of using the climate to help choose what to drink.
I mention this because recently I went out to celebrate the two-year anniversary of the FUSSYlittleBLOG, and I enjoyed a lovely spring day with some delicious beers on the back deck of a local tavern. However, I was drinking way out of season. And someone asked exactly what that meant, when it came to beer.
So I thought I’d expand on the topic a bit.
Cold Cocktails
This may not make sense to anyone living in more temperate climates. But I’m finally ready for cocktails that are shaken or stirred with ice. Now I recognize that this describes most cocktails. But drinks like pink gin, gin and it, and the rusty nail are staples of my winter repertoire mainly because they can be consumed at room temperature.
Mrs. Fussy even goes so far as to drink her Manhattans that way.
On one hand that is unthinkable, but then remember this: the winters here get so cold that no amount of furnace heat or layers of clothing can warm the frozen core of one’s being. Seriously, it gets really cold. And it’s cold for a long, long time. It’s not just a figure of speech to say that it chills you to the bone.
My own personal thaw started about a month ago on an unseasonably warm day, when I sat on a park bench and just soaked up the sun’s radiance. But now I’m fully defrosted, and I’m ready for my favorite cocktails.
Giveaway: A Spring Deliverance
I’m going! And I hope you will join me.
When I first wrote about A Spring Deliverance, I wasn’t sure if my schedule would permit me to go out on a school night. Yes, here in the Fussy household there is school six days a week. Just another data point on why it sucks to be my kid.
But I’m coming out to St. Joseph’s Saturday, May 14 from 6-9 p.m. for this celebration of local food, wines, music, art, and history. And thanks to the generosity of Noah Sheetz there is another pair of tickets that could have your name on it.
Now I don’t play favorites, so we’re going to keep this fair. These tickets are non-transferable. They are for you and a guest, and are yours alone. Please do not enter if you are not able to come to the event. It would be great if those of you who read this across the country and from the far corners of the earth could make it out to Albany, but I ask that you check flight availability before entering this giveaway.
Oh, you probably want to know how to enter.
A Falafel Isn’t a Sandwich
It looks like I forgot Israeli Independence Day. This makes me think of two things right off the bat.
1) Crap! I was probably supposed to dress Little Miss Fussy in blue and white. Oops.
2) I had no idea I could take care of this politically charged topic with falafel.
There’s nothing that can be done about the first thing. I’ll leave living in the past to Walter Sobchak. But I’ve got lot of thoughts on falafel. And given that I’m not in the midst of any ongoing campaign, now is as good a time as any to share them.
First and foremost, we should be clear that a falafel isn’t a sandwich. You wouldn’t call a burrito a sandwich. Well, let’s hold the line on falafel too.
Falafel holds a place near and dear to my heart. It was a staple of my diet in high school.
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