Spring Greens
One year I celebrated the arrival of spring by restocking my bar with greenery. That became an annual tradition. There’s nothing quite like the herbal complexity of green Chartreuse, and if you’ve got the four ingredients on hand to make a Last Word cocktail, you can even go through a bottle of the stuff before summer ends.
Some people define the arrival of spring based on the opening of our seasonal soft serve and burger stands. But when it’s snowing at Snowman, that feels a bit early to celebrate.
And there’s a lot about spring which brings people down. There’s the rain for starters. There’s the arrival of ants, bees, mosquitos, and ticks. But for me the worst might be the first mow of the season. Or maybe the second, or the third. Because soon after the first mow, I realize I have a new weekly chore.
However, while I’m using my few square feet of earth to grow some horrible horrible grass, at farms all around the Capital Region rich soil is giving birth to delicious life.
Today is the day I have been patiently awaiting for months. It’s my very first pick up from the Roxbury Farm CSA, and I think I’ve screwed something up. Maybe a couple of things.
A Pile Up of Pine Hills Wings
Buffalo wings. They are everywhere up in these parts. So how do you even begin to tackle the task of tasting all of them to find the very best?
You break the task down into micro regions. And that’s what we’ve been doing on the FLB for the past few years. We went to the downtowns of Albany, Schenectady, and Troy. But those were just for starters.
On June 2, nine rugged individuals signed up to dedicate their bodies to this ongoing project. Divided into two teams, we went to five different places that made it through the nomination process. And on a beautiful spring day, we ate wings and strolled around the student-heavy corridor of Albany’s Pine Hills neighborhood.
Who came out on top?
Goodbye Tony
Woke up this morning to find that Tony Bourdain is dead. He took his own life somewhere in France. Eric Ripert was the poor soul who discovered the body.
Death is complicated.
I’m not going to speculate why this happened, or succumb to the temptation to plot this as another data point on the list of high profile suicides. My own life has been touched directly by suicide at multiple points in the past. There is just too much that is impossible to know.
Depression, mental illness, and psychotherapy are subjects which which I am very familiar. As are the stages of grief and mourning. This morning people are sad. People are angry. People are in disbelief. And the world has lost a passionate soul.
That said, there is one thing that we need to remember, and one thing to do moving forward.
Emily L Says Hello
Don’t think for a second Emily L has been scared away by life in the blogosphere. She’s just been out of the country. What I didn’t know until reading her guest post below was how much of the world she’s seen.
Foreign travel is a funny thing. When I was young, I had no interest in it whatsoever. It was only once I turned on to food that I had any desire to visit other countries. Not so much to see the world, but rather to eat it.
That said, being a stranger in a strange land can have a profound impact on an individual. Hopefully, the lessons one learns while traveling can be applied to everyday life back at home, and you’ll be better for the experience.
Here’s a good example of how that works.
Some Wing Drama From Buffalo
As long as I’m going to tease the results of the Tour de Wing and build drama in their ultimate reveal on Monday (I hope), I might as well entertain you with some more wing drama. Or maybe that will be wing drama overkill.
Sometimes I take things too far.
In a nod to the history of blogs being “web logs” intended to share interesting pages stumbled onto in the bottomless pit of the ever expanding interwebs, today I bring you not one, but two videos out of Buffalo.
Yesterday’s post was on wing basics. Primarily it was about my shock and horror at discovering some people want their side veggies served warmed and steamed in a pool of Frank’s Red Hot, butter, and celery water. But it also included my thoughts on how wet naps can ruin a perfectly good meal.
Well, my old buddy Kate Welshofer, thought that last part deserved more attention. And in catching up with her, I learned that she has been involved with some wing drama of her own.
On Wings, Vegetables, and Dressing
Nope. The results of the Tour de Wing have not been fully tabulated. This might take more time than I had originally anticipated. But fear not, official results will be coming, although they may not be here until Monday.
However, even if the results were ready today, this post would still need to come first. Largely because there seems to be a lot of different opinions that exist about buffalo wings in general and the best practices involving their traditional accompaniments.
I know this to be true because yesterday there was a post on Burnt My Fingers about the wing tour. And for someone who I ordinarily agree with on matters of taste, I’m flummoxed by how many points of disagreement we have over some of the fundamentals.
Fried & Fabulous
Today is National Donut Day. Tomorrow is the Tour de Wing.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. Isn’t every day National Donut Day? That’s like trying to say just one day a year is dedicated to hamburgers, when we eat hamburgers all the time. When the ad says, “America runs on Dunkin” the next word that goes unsaid is “donuts.”
Of course, the chain is a national disgrace and a crime against both food and coffee, but we don’t need to get into that right now.
Fortunately, we have some great independent donut shops, including Cider Belly which will be distributing free doughnuts from the doughnut-mobile in honor of today’s holiday, if you are lucky enough to find it out and about. They will be posting clues on Instagram, so happy hunting.
Here’s the hard part.
One Million Stringbeans
Last night was the May Official Yelp Event, and let me tell you, I’ve never been so caffeinated so late in the evening before. And it wasn’t just because of all the Brewtus Roasting coffee I was drinking. There were also the chocolates from Primo Botanica and the espresso cookies from Sweet Eats.
It’s a good thing that Harvest Spirits got involved with the event and there were little bottles of their farm distilled treats to bring us down. Even still, around eleven o’clock last night I felt like building fences.
What I didn’t feel like doing was writing a blog post. But then something came through on my Facebook Messenger about one million stringbeans. Sometimes the Internet works in mysterious and wonderful ways.
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