Affordable Happy Chicken?
The amount of driving I have in front of me over the next several days is daunting.
Saturday I drive to Providence, RI. After spending the night, Sunday morning I will drive to Boston and then back to Albany in the later afternoon with a stopover in Worcester. Monday I pack up the car again for a brief trip down to D.C. only to return again on Wednesday. Those last two seven hour trips will be broken up with extended stopovers in Philadelphia for some regional sandwiches and coffee.
I’d stay in D.C. longer, but Mrs. Fussy would miss the kids. Besides, I allegedly have a dinner date on Thursday with some fine local food folks that I am super excited about.
Why bore you with my travel plans, when I’m not even telling you about all the marvelous things I plan to eat while I’m away? Well, because I’m going to miss something very important, and I want you to go in my place. And take notes.
How does local, sustainable, ethical, free-range and affordable chicken sound to you?
When Pigs Fly
I tried reaching out to chefs. Well, at the very least I opened myself up to the opportunity. Truth be told, I could and should be doing more to create lines of communication between the FLB and the professional kitchens around the Capital Region.
Maybe I should be reaching out to farmers too.
Just this week I stumbled onto a really exciting local pork producer. They are called Flying Pigs Farm. They are saving rare heritage breeds of pigs so that we can continue to eat them. And the farm seems to do just about everything right, which is no small feat. Food & Wine magazine even said they produce “Stunningly rich, moist, heritage pork.”
Flying Pigs Farm is about an hour away by car, northeast of Albany, across the river in Washington County. There is just one problem.
Sometimes I Cook Slow
Sometimes I cook slow, sometimes I cook quick.
More people should cook. They should. The truth is that it’s not hard. Really. It’s easy. But it does take time. And time is something a lot of people either do not have, or if they have it, they chose to spend it on other activities besides cooking. Because truthfully, cooking is more than cooking: it’s shopping for fresh food, prepping ingredients, cooking, sitting down to eat, clearing dishes and cleaning up.
For those of us who do cook, it is easy to forget just how daunting some of the simplest dishes are to make. Just this past Friday I was at a potluck, and I made a baked polenta. While I didn’t know for sure, I suspected Leah the Nosher might be there, so I wanted to make something nice. Not that I thought other food bloggers would be judging everything and everyone all the time (most of us don’t). It’s just that I’m fiercely competitive, and I wanted her to like it.
Even going the extra mile, I really thought this was a simple dish.
That was, until I stopped to think about it.
Kids Icing Kids
My kids are not going to grow up normal. It’s a statistical fact. Young Master Fussy doesn’t watch movies, commercial television or listen to popular music. Instead this past weekend he read the entirety of James and the Giant Peach, watched a couple hours of old Fat Albert episodes and listened to some very early Talking Heads albums.
It was a good weekend.
Today, he’s going into school and it’s Valentines Day. Naturally there will be a Valentines Day party in his classroom. Being a fan of consumable gifts, we bought a mess of cards from Friendly’s that will entitle his school chums to a free double-shot cone apiece. And even though she doesn’t go to his school, he earmarked one of them for Albany Jane.
But let’s talk about this party for just a minute or two. They are going to decorate cookies with icing and sprinkles. There will be red juice and perhaps some other festive treats. All of the parents volunteered to bring in something. And more than anything else, I wanted to bring the icing.
Wine Share
I sincerely hope you have not been celebrating Valentine’s Day this weekend. Valentine’s Day is tomorrow. Which means I should really be writing about pink Champagne today. Pink Champagne is one of those great things that has gotten a bum rap.
The only problem is that I’m really not much of an expert on this tinted variation of sparkling wine. And even if I did a little bit of research for you on some of the better and more widely available bottlings of the stuff, if you live outside of a major metropolitan area it would still be unlikely that you would be able to buy some in time for the holiday.
Perhaps you could find this, but it’s a pretty penny.
Instead, I’m actually going to ask you a wine question. Now don’t panic, because ultimately it’s not a question about wine, but rather one about etiquette. Let’s just say Mrs. Fussy and I aren’t quite on the same page, and I’m looking for a ruling. I will try to be as impartial in asking the question as possible.
Your help is greatly appreciated.
Pop Quiz #1
Hope you are ready. Hope you studied. Because the first ever pop quiz on the FLB starts now.
At stake is a $45 gift code to CSN Stores.
To win it, you need to be the first person to email danielb [at] fussylittleblog [dot] com with all the correct answers. Please keep your answer sheet private – do not post your answers in the comments. In the off chance that nobody does this within 48 hours, the winner will be the person who got the most correct answers. In the case of a tie, the winner will be the person who submitted their answers first.
I will do my very best to stay on top of my email and let you all know as soon as we have a winner.
UPDATE: Pencils down. We have a winner. Congratulations to Stanford Steph.
Good luck.
Cappuccino Commotion
Taste evolves. As a kid you discover chocolate, and it is good. At some point you discover better chocolate. Should chocolate become a driving passion, you may get immersed in couvertures, single-origin cocoa beans, and the finer points of tempering.
I have been nurturing a love affair with cappuccino for a long time.
And in the almost two years that I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve had some taste-changing experiences. I discovered the deep dark realm of double ristrettos. But more importantly, I’ve learned a lot more about steamed milk. After all, by volume a cappuccino is more dairy than coffee.
Yesterday I revisited one of Albany’s newest espresso bars, and I was struck by something disturbing. I really, really like the place. In fact, I think it could possibly be the best café in Albany County. What’s disturbing is that I feel this way despite the fact that every single cappuccino they’ve made for me has more closely resembled a latte.
Ask the Profussor – Deep Winter (pt. 2)
Even if you don’t follow my tweets or Facebook status updates, the savvy amongst you knew that I’d be back today with the second half of AskTP. It’s not often that my posts come in parts, but rest assured this is part two of two.
Speaking of my tweets and Facebook page, now would be the time to start following me, liking me, becoming a fan, or whatever the lingo of the moment is. After all, the pop quiz is right around the corner, and speed counts. You’ll want to jump on it as soon as it’s posted, since the person with the first complete and correct answer sheet will be the one who walks away with a $45 gift certificate to CSN Stores. It should be fun, and I suspect relatively easy for long-time readers. All the details are here.
But you probably already knew that.
Anyhow, I really did save the best for last. These questions were a hoot to answer, although if you are easily grossed out, you may want to skip the very last one. I hope you find these answers half as amusing to read as I did to write. Now on with the show.
Ask the Profussor – Deep Winter (pt. 1)
When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn’t imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter.
– Phil Connors, Groundhog Day (1993)
The situation isn’t as dire as I had feared in the fall. The creeping dread of the impending winter never materialized into anything nearly as dark and sinister as I suspected. And we have clearly turned a corner since now it is no longer pitch black at five o’clock in the afternoon.
Still, the fatigue of the season is starting to wear on me. A trip to Florida would be nice right around now, but everyone goes to Florida in February and I hate crowds. Instead, I’ll head south to see one of my oldest Florida friends in D.C. You know him as ADS. This will be book-ended with a couple of pit stops in Philadelphia to hopefully spread some cousinly love.
In the meantime, there is the business of the everyday to contend with. Over the course of the past three weeks, there have been some great questions. And dammit, today is the day you are going to get some answers. Because that’s what I do, provided you use a question mark when asking them.
Thank you yet again for your continued participation, and for even just coming here to see what I’ve written. I hope you are excited about the pop quiz that’s coming. But for now, and without any further ado, it’s time for your questions.
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