Prime Pizzas of the Past
There are all kinds of ways to evaluate food. Each has its pros and cons. And I do not think there is one perfect approach. Sometimes the food dictates the method, like soft serve ice cream. There is no good way to transport it to a central destination, thus it requires a tour.
Things like donuts, fudge fancies, or even the dreaded cupcakes are much more flexible. They do not significantly degrade in transit, and can be brought to a central location for a formal judging.
If someone has a good recommendation for a tasting venue, let me know, and we can work on setting up the Fudge Fancy Faceoff.
Pizza is more of a gray area. Yes, pizza is best hot from the oven. Yes, pizza degrades significantly in transit. But it’s also true that most people get pizza for takeout and suffer through the ill effects of a hot baked pie steaming in a cardboard sarcophagus for up to the better part of an hour. And this is why I support the method of evaluation used in All Over Albany’s Tournament of Pizza.
But I always wonder how much better the pizza would be at the source.
Bread and Oil
How I could be blogging about food for two years and not have gotten around to this major and long-held pet peeve of mine is a mystery.
Bread is the staff of life. Bread is great. I love it.
One of the best things I’ve ever eaten was a pain d’epi hot from the oven at Acme bakery in Berkeley, smeared with a generous mound of Pamplie butter. Because while bread is great on its own, it is even better with a little bit of fat and salt. But not everybody is on board with the whole butter thing. And that’s fine.
Good olive oil makes a perfectly suitable companion for bread. And there are plenty of restaurants that have adopted the practice of putting out a dish of dipping oil. In theory, I have no problem with this. However, in practice it doesn’t always work out very well.
Mother’s Day Brunch
The competitive streak comes from my father. And that side of me looks back at last year’s Mother’s Day post and trembles in fear, because it was a damn great post. Sure, I got some of the details wrong. Like, for example, many of the dishes weren’t my mother’s but my paternal grandmother’s. But still, the sentiment was there.
I attribute the entire right side of my brain to my mom. She is an art educator by training, and sometimes the thing that you do becomes the thing that you are. As a result I had a childhood filled with music and visits to museums.
Now my adulthood is filled with guilt for not exposing my own children to such enriching activities. Instead they are treated to donut tastings and detailed explanations about artificial ingredients.
But Mother’s Day isn’t about creativity, it’s about brunch.
Tequila
For some this will be the last thing they will want to read today. Perhaps this post is a day late and a dime short. But I don’t think so.
Because I’m not going to tell you which tequila you should buy. Nor am I going to tell you what cocktails you should make with it. Instead, I want to simply talk about the spirit, since I have a feeling that this is one of the most misunderstood and often maligned spirits in the marketplace.
I have no idea how it happened, but somehow tequila got a bad reputation.
Maybe it had something to do with the movies.
But tequila is far too often thought of as something you drink to get wasted. It’s considered to be a spirit so foul that one must prep the palate with salt, knock back a shot, and chase the flavor away with a mouth puckering lime wedge.
Let me just say, this is not the tequila that I know.
Oh Baby, I Was Bound For Mexico
First, I would like to offer thanks to the Residual Ninja for offering the soundtrack to today’s post. Mostly the song makes me want to drench myself in tequila. And although I have a sneaking suspicion that is not what this holiday is all about, it’s a start.
Obviously, my next stop is to pick up some tequila.
Then it’s back home for a full day in the kitchen. Because it’s cold out there today, and dammit, I still have some winter cooking left in me. Also, when you have kids, it really cuts into your going out on major drinking holidays. So all my festivities will happen within these four walls this evening.
But all is not lost, for a few simple reasons. I know my tequila cocktails will not be sullied by the dreaded sweet and sour mix. Should I make margaritas at home they will be a simple and perfect mixture of tequila, citrus and Cointreau. And while my food will be far from authentic, it will be replete with two of the principle flavors and aromas of a true Mexican kitchen: corn and beans.
Spring Cleaning
My spring cleaning looks a lot different than your spring cleaning. In fact, the careful observer would have a difficult time recognizing that any spring cleaning was going on at all.
The yard is a wreck, with sticks and branches still to pick up from winter. There are even significant quantities of last fall’s leaves that emerged from the thaw. Hedges need to be trimmed. The garage needs to be swept out. Our screens and windows are dirty. And soon the grass will need a mow.
But I’ve been busy doing my own spring chores.
Before I know it, June will be here and I’ll be up to my neck in fresh produce from my CSA. That is, if last year’s harvest was any indication. And that means it’s time to empty the freezers and the pantry of those things that have been accumulating over the winter.
The Good Way vs. The Subway
In time I will get around to talking more about the great sandwiches around the region. And there is a lot to tell. Seriously, I could probably have a dedicated blog just to the sandwiches of the Capital District.
Despite that, the draw of Subway here is strong. Holy hell, is it strong.
It’s so strong that year after year this chain that promotes itself as a healthy alternative to fast food rises to the top of the Times Union’s Best of the Capital District reader’s choice poll. And that gets me worked up.
I’ve tried rallying support around one of the better local sandwich joints, but for some reason our local citizens are loath to stuff the ballot box even in pursuit of this greater good. Well, now it’s time for a different approach.
I’m going on the offensive.
Splendid Events
My old friends and I used to have a terrible birthday tradition. Whoever was celebrating their birthday would get to pick the major activity for the day. Which is fine. However, everyone was expected to come along, regardless of how much they might hate that thing.
Somehow this turned into an ongoing series of events, each more onerous than the last, for one or more members of our close circle of friends. The apex of this might have been the trip we all took to Disneyland.
I mention this not because today is my birthday. It’s not. Nor is it the birthday of any of my friends. But it is the birthday of my baby, the FUSSYlittleBLOG. The blog’s birthday festivities are up in the air. If you follow my tweets, there may be some impromptu celebrating later today. So keep your eyes open.
However, there are a few better-organized but no less significant events on the horizon that I think you should know about.
Spring Spirit Surprise
What do you look for in a good wine and spirits store? And how do you know when you’ve found one?
For me it’s generally a combination of selection, price and service, where service means knowledgeable, helpful and friendly clerks who know how to listen. And price plays a bigger role than it should. After all, the bottle of Macallan 12-year-old single malt Scotch whisky is virtually identical from shop to shop.
But recently I was in Providence, Rhode Island for a few hours and found myself in a relatively new store there called Bottles. In addition to wine and spirits, they can also sell beer. However, there is only one Bottles location, so at least in that regard one could imagine a similar type of store (minus the beer) existing in upstate New York.
There was one remarkable thing I saw in Bottles that let me know I was in a good store.
FUSSYlittleBLOG 