Fussy Little Giveaway: Cookware Edition
Well, this is getting interesting. CSN Stores approached me about sponsoring a giveaway on the FUSSYlittleBLOG. They are an online retailer with over 200 stores, so if you are considering bar furniture to contain your expanding liquor collection or cookware for your kitchen, they will likely have what you are looking for. I haven’t counted to see exactly how many stores they have, but you can check them all out here.
But giveaways can be disappointing, since they generally have only one winner.
And do you really need one more thing cluttering your home?
I think I came up with a solution for both of those problems. Because this giveaway will have three winners, and the prize (while modest) is an indispensable piece of cookware that you will use all the time, and that will last you the rest of your life.
Rum Starts with an Arrr!
If it were me, I’d schedule Talk Like a Pirate Day for the Saturday before Memorial Day rather than September 19th. Because the onset of warm weather puts me in the mood for rum drinks. And drinking rum always makes me feel like a pirate. I have been led to believe that pirates love to sing.
Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest–
…Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest–
…Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
– Robert Louis Stevenson
Rum isn’t a popular spirit. It is often not taken seriously. And that is a crime. But there is an upside to this. You can get some of the world’s best rums at a pittance in comparison to say, the world’s best whiskeys or brandies.
You just need to know what to look for.
Knocking Down Dominos
First, you all are amazing. I’m still digesting all of the input from yesterday, and hope to continue this conversation. All of these perspectives have been very helpful in wrapping my head around the local culinary landscape. But for today I want to talk about something a bit lighter.
If you live around Albany, you know that it’s been hot.
Last night we didn’t feel like cooking dinner, didn’t feel like loading up the family in the car, and didn’t feel like eating cereal. And while I could have ordered Capital Q through Mealeo again, I did something for the sake of science.
I finally decided to try the new Domino’s pizza.
Why I continue to ignore my instincts is a mystery.
Things Lost
How can I turn my melancholy from the series conclusion of Lost into something about food?
Officially, I’m a big softie, and it’s good that Mrs. Fussy was up in bed leaving me alone, free to get choked up at all the mushy parts. She bailed out on the series in the first season, finding the graphic depiction of airline disaster and the suspense and terror of the smoke monster too much to handle.
I stuck with it.
Season One, I watched in Berkeley on Netflix in a little under a week. I missed the first run since it happened right after Young Master Fussy was born.
Season Two, I downloaded on iTunes the day each episode came available and viewed the episodes on my BART commute to and from San Francisco.
Season Three I stopped paying for the content and primarily watched on ABC.com.
Season Four I continued to watch on ABC.com, but now I found myself living in Albany.
Season Five started soon after Little Miss Fussy appeared on the scene. I began to watch the show over broadcast television on our new fancy high definition screen in our very first house.
This final season, Lost was appointment viewing, and has been the only thing that I actually watch over broadcast television. In the rare instance I missed an episode, I would catch it the next day on Hulu.com.
A lot has changed in my life since Lost came on the air, and now that it is gone, I’m thinking about some of the other things that are gone now too.
Speaking in Tongues
After talking with me, some people are surprised that I am a native speaker of English. It’s a long story that has to do with growing up in Brooklyn Heights and developing a thick New York accent at an early age. Here is the short version.
At five years old, I sounded like a dockworker. With maybe just a little less swearing. But after only a few years of speech therapy I got my R’s, L’s and Th’s back. The only drawback is that now I speak like nobody else. It just so happens that I laugh like nobody else, but that is a separate matter entirely.
Perhaps as a result of this experience, I butcher the pronunciation of words. Sometimes I do it for fun. Other times it is purely accidental. Wines and cheeses offer some of the greatest challenges, especially the French ones. But menus are no walk in the park either.
Cocktail Confession Number One
I love summertime cocktails. That’s not the confession.
There is a lot to love. They are bright and refreshing, don’t take too much work, and have been relieving the hot and thirsty for generations. These are brilliant classic cocktails that do justice to finely crafted spirits.
Last year I wrote about the Tom Collins. As the weather continues to warm up, I should post more on these seasonal beverages.
By far the most popular summer quencher is the margarita. The most defamed is the daiquiri.
Yes, crimes are committed to classic cocktails on an almost daily basis. I question if the damage done to the Martini can ever be corrected. But before all manner of “martinis” could be had, the daiquiri had its artificial sugary-sweet moment in the sun.
The classic daiquiri is a simple mixture of rum, lime and sugar. It is shaken and strained into a cocktail glass. And it’s lovely.
Now here comes the confession.
A Food Journey in Nine Parts
Since today I will be taking a less metaphorical journey (heading back to Albany from Tempe), I thought I would post the story of how I got so obsessed with food in the first place. It has to do with cheese. And it is long.
So long in fact, that when I originally wrote it, I needed to publish the story as nine separate posts.
Over the past year, the FUSSYlittleBLOG has picked up some new readers who may not have dug deep into the archive. And I also realized that at no point were all nine posts ever assembled in one place, which understandably would be a barrier to reading the story in its entirety.
Well here they are.
Eyes on the Prize
Most restaurants don’t let you look at the food before you order it. Sure, there are a handful of places with picture menus, but that’s not looking at the food, that’s looking at a glorified version of the food. I once worked with a guy who spent two weeks taking pictures of frozen lasagna to get one image for its packaging.
Your eyes cannot tell you if something is super-delicious, but they can give you clues to help you make good decisions.
Recently I was in a taqueria here in Tempe, and before even deciding on which kinds of beans to get in my burrito, I asked to see the different meat fillings. The carne asada looked fairly pale and gray. The al pastor looked underseasoned. The chicken looked like chicken. But the carnitas looked divine.
They glistened with fat, and had plenty of browned edges. Large and meaty pieces of pork appeared to have easily torn with the grain. And I hadn’t seen carnitas that good-looking for a long, long time.
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