Winning Winter
Today starts the second week of winter.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know that the Capital Region had crazy sub zero weather in December. I know because I had to set up a heater for my heater. But technically, December isn’t winter. December is part of “the locking”.
I’ve spoken of this in the past. It’s not my idea. It comes from Kurt Vonnegut in Cat’s Cradle. And he writes about how the seasons in this part of the world need to be redefined. Fall is easy. It’s September and October. It’s gorgeous. But in November and December, the earth gets ready for freezing up into a solid and icy mass. This is the locking. January and February mark the months of winter. It’s bitter, biting, and hostile to all forms of life. It’s so cold that before spring can arrive, the ground must go through two months of unlocking in March and April. Then we get two months of spring and two months of summer.
The good news is that there are only seven more weeks of winter.
Everyone has different strategies for dealing with the extreme cold, piercing winds, and snowy landscapes. Mine involve eating. Obviously. So what do you do when the weather outside seems to want to make you die a slow, terrible death?
How to Eat More Vegetables
Have I mentioned winter? Yep. Because, winter.
Yesterday on All Over Albany, in their story about surviving winter, I saw a picture I recognized. I took it years ago for a post I wrote called Cooking out the cold. It features a ham hock from Rolf’s in Albany, cumin seeds, a can of Coleman’s dry mustard, and a bowl full of black eyed peas. Love that image. Love black eyed peas too.
Black eyed peas are one of those traditional New Year’s dishes. In this house we don’t give any credence to superstition. We didn’t eat grapes. I did not make any resolutions. At the stroke of midnight we even eschewed the traditional Champagne toast.
Still, people make resolutions. And a common one is to eat better. This of course means different things to different people. But yesterday, I stumbled upon a tweet of someone who was specifically trying to eat more vegetables.
My answer may not have been the most helpful, but today I’m hoping to turn that around.
Sandwich, Chips & Soda
One thing is for certain, I am not normal. If there were more people like me, then I would have no complaints about the state of food in our region, our country, and now increasingly the world.
And that’s okay.
I’m fine spending my days trying to win people over to my side in the food wars. Whether it’s trying to convince a local beer lover that he could absolutely tell the difference between real parmesan and pecorino, raising the knowledge of our local Yelp community on natural and local wines, or alerting blog readers to a pop-up dinner with a nationally recognized chef.
When you live most of your life outside the mainstream, there is a lot of normal food experiences that get missed. For example, I couldn’t tell you anything about the best supermarket deli hams for at home sandwich making. Nor could I even begin to explain what makes for a good supermarket deli counter.
I am fairly certain that when normal people get a sandwich, they also will grab a bag of chips and a soda. And that’s something I never do. Well… until recently.
The Two Car Freezer
When the weather dips down below zero degrees, I’ve learned that my heater needs a heater.
This is winter in Albany. It’s what we signed up for when we moved here. There are crazy people in these parts who will jump in a freezing lake. I can’t even begin to comprehend that. I can barely get into a swimming pool if it is 70 degrees.
And it could be worse. It could be snowing buckets. There could be a 100 car pile-up on the highway like there was in Buffalo yesterday. The people who have it worst of all are the ones who live in an area unaccustomed to winter precipitation, and are dealing with the rare snowfall.
Watching snow plows try to clear the roads in Princeton was hilarious.
As much as I don’t enjoy being cold, I really really enjoy cold weather cooking. There is a reason why I don’t make giant pots of chicken stock, soups, or beans during the spring and summer. Actually, there are two.
Surviving Starbucks
Okay. Now it feels like winter.
We drove back from Pennsylvania on New Year’s Eve, and came back to a driveway covered in a few inches of snow and single digit temperatures. Fortunately, none of the pipes froze, and our house was none the worse for wear. Sure, I had to shovel out the driveway after a several hour drive. At least I had the help of my family.
Then I got to warm up with a modified spaghetti carbonara using a smoked pork chop instead of guanciale, because that’s all that was around. I used some extra olive oil to replace the fat that would have rendered off the meat. It felt great to cook a family dinner again.
One of the stops along our holiday road was at Raf’s house. I mention this because we’ve been engaged in a multi-year debate about which one of us is fussier. I’ll give you a hint. He is.
Hey, fussiness isn’t always a bad thing, especially when one of your fellow coffee snobs teaches you a trick that can help you survive in the wilderness of chain espresso.
Unresolved
Happy New Year! I know in the past I’ve made some grand resolutions about the upcoming twelve months. There was the one year I started the meat sheet. Then there was the other year I wanted to try and catalogue the first year of the FLB.
This year, there will be none of that. I’m just going to keep chipping away at this ongoing project, and do my best at coming up with fresh content every day. Ideally, I’ll be able to get back into the rhythm of having posts up before 9am every morning. But no promises.
There is one thing that I know for certain I will begin to undertake in 2018, but I have some serious doubts about seeing it through. So today, I thought I’d tell you about it.
The Best Dozen of 2017
Give me this one. One listicle to end the year. Because while there have been good things that happened over the past twelve months, 2017 was a stinker. So who can blame me for wanting to look back at the posts that people enjoyed the most?
Heck. It’s a good exercise for me too. Maybe by writing today’s post, I might remember what it’s like to write stories that people actually want to read.
What I’m going to leave out of the rankings are the Fussy Little Tour announcements, nominations, and results posts. Because those always get a lot of attention. And I’m also going to leave out those evergreen posts that continue to get read years and years after they’ve been written.
This is all about the content from 2017 that connected. Are you a FLB super fan? How many of these posts did you read when they were first published? I’m sure even my own mother hasn’t read them all.
Okay. Let’s see.
A Remarkably Delicious 2017
Burnt My Fingers seems to be yanking my chain, but actually, he provided me for a great segue into today’s post. Yesterday he asked a series of questions just after I had cleared the question queue. Specifically, he wanted to know:
Why do all the mystery links go to the same place? Wouldn’t it be better to answer the questions directly? Also, if I ask a question in 2017 are you still going to answer it in 2017?
Really, he’s been around long enough to know why all the mystery links go to the same spot. They perform two key functions. One is to visually break up the page. The other is to promote some other story that I think deserves attention.
I do a little dance of joy whenever a conversations about food happens in the comments section. I love how blogs can create dialogue. But my belief is that the comments section is primarily for readers. As the editor of this blog, I get to write my own headlines and elevate my responses to the level of dedicated posts. Only every now and again will I jump into the fray.
Often, a reader question will inspire a greater idea, and demand its own post. Like this one.
Because yesterday’s Mystery Link of the Day went to All Over Albany’s Favorite local foods 2017.
Burnt My Fingers was in the round up. So was the Profussor. And looking back at what was said, I wanted to provide a bit more context for my answer.
AskTP – The Last Answers of 2017
This is it. The last round of questions and answers for 2017. The new year will be here soon, and so will the hope that I’ll get better about answering reader questions in a more timely way.
Things get busy. Sometimes there’s a lot to say. And sometimes there really just aren’t enough accumulated questions to make a dedicated post. Occasionally, one of the questions is really hard, and that can cause delays. On the flip side, sometimes once the pile gets too long, it can be hard to face the backlog.
But yesterday I cleared out most of the cobwebs from the Ask the Profussor queue. So today, I’m going to answer the rest and put this feature to bed for the year. After all, I did make a commitment a long time ago, to answer every question submitted to the comments section of the blog… just so long as it included proper punctuation.
Before we get down to the nitty gritty, please remember that the links embedded before every question all go to the same place. I like to call that the mystery link of the day. If you this will be frustrating for you, just don’t click on them.
Finding the original post that generated the comment is just a quick Google search away. Now without any further ado, onto the questions. Read more…
AskTP – The Better Half
What does everyone do between Christmas and New Years? A lot of times, writers will look back over the past year. They will create best of lists. They will summarize the year. Some might attempt to predict the future.
Looking back I’ve noticed, it has been a long long time since I answered any reader questions on the blog. How long? The better half of a year. How many days will it take to catch up with six months of accumulated questions? I don’t know. But we’re going to find out.
After all, many years ago I committed to making sure that every question posted to the comments section of this blog received an answer. My only stipulation was that questions needed to include proper punctuation.
Never did I say those answers would be timely. I never even made a claim that those answers would be correct. Heck, the answers don’t even have to come from the Profussor. But there are unanswered questions, which need to be resolved. Before we get to them however, please remember that the links embedded before every question all go to the same place. I like to call it the mystery link of the day. If this is frustrating for you, just don’t click on them.
Finding the original post that generated the comment is just a quick Google search away. Now without any further ado, onto the questions.
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