Find the Profussor
We played Find the Profussor in the beer bottle challenge not too long ago. By the way, congrats to Bob W. for being the winner of that game. Now I owe him a beer. Hopefully, he reaches out to me so I can make good on that. You know, once the beer is actually in the bottles.
But now we can play Find the Profussor in real life.
With the late season snowpocalypse, I’ve been told that some people are at their wits end. Me? I’m doing fine with the winter and the snow. I keep on telling myself, “This is the unlocking. This is the unlocking.” And that helps me keep my head on straight.
I’m doing less fine with this new range. The appliance itself fully meets expectations. I just forgot that before you can cook with a new oven, there is an initial “burn-in” period, where all the manufacturing residue is cooked off. And a half hour isn’t sufficient. The vapors were awful even with the windows and doors open during the entire process. I’m sure I’ve reduced the lifespan of everyone in the house and possibly the neighbors.
Next time, I’m buying something used. Or spending the same amount of money to fix something old. New stuff is terrible.
But I digress. Now that I’m properly worked up into a tizzy, maybe we can go to a happy place together. Fortunately, there are lots of moments of joy on my calendar coming up down the road. I thought perhaps I could share those with you, and maybe, just maybe, you might be able to join me at one of them.
Surviving Without a Stove
Thank you all for the suggestions of what I might do in order to eat while the Fussy family awaited the delivery of our new stove. The call from Sears came yesterday, and I fully expect to be back to cooking tonight.
The ideas were all fantastic. And it’s really kind of amazing that I never thought of using the slow cooker on its own. Typically, I use it in conjunction with the stove. But often it’s just a tool to bring hot food to potlucks and have it stay warm and toasty.
Ultimately, none of the ideas really panned out.
There’s a good reason for that, which probably deserves further scrutiny. Habit and routine are very strong forces. And when you have to approach new tasks, as simple as it may be, these forces can work against you in strange and unexpected ways.
Let’s take Friday night for an example.
Close Reading & Crazy People
It can be a struggle to get someone to try new things. This is especially the case with children.
Last night, we had to go to the Empire State Plaza for Little Miss Fussy. One of her paintings was selected to be in an installation in the concourse. But since that event was at 5:30pm and since our range was out of commission, it seemed like a perfect night to go out to dinner.
The kids wanted Taiwan Noodle. It’s one of their favorite places. But I remembered that we would actually be closer to Timmy’s which is one of our newer Chinese restaurants. The place has an incredible amount of buzz within the Yelp community, including from people who I trust.
Plus, I remembered seeing some beautiful pictures of their soup dumplings. So I convinced the children to step out of their comfort zone and try a new place. My argument is that I wouldn’t take them someplace that wasn’t great.
Tempting fate with hubris is never a good idea.
Out Of Range
[NB: Maybe it was International Women’s Day, but yes, I was thinking about this song when I came up with the title for today’s post.]
There I was, standing in the kitchen, minding my own business. I had gathered all the random ends of foodstuffs from the refrigerator, and I was preparing to make some kind of smorgasbord of leftovers.
Mrs. Fussy was going to have the split pea soup.
The kids were going to eat the black beans.
I was going for the rotini with tomato sauce.
It was going to be a multi-pot meal that would push the limits of the four burners on the stovetop. Mostly because I was running late and was using two burners to bring fresh, cold water to a boil at an accelerated rate.
Then I caught a flash out of the corner of my eye, and heard a loud pop. Apparently, the range had some kind of short circuit. It had been on its last legs for a while. It was the original stove from this house that was built sometime in the early 80’s. Appliances don’t last forever.
Anyhow, do you know that scene in every movie where the father gets something totally wrong?
A Good Man Is Hard To Find
Happy International Women’s Day!
On January 21 I joined the Women’s March in Albany, and it was a powerful force. I’m one of those rare men who has pretty much always worked for women. I was working in San Francisco, so I had a smattering of gay male bosses too. But I’ve worked for precious few straight white men. So I suppose that makes me an outlier of sorts.
Honestly, I’m not sure where my deep respect of women comes from. But I’ve long felt more comfortable hanging out with a group of women talking about cooking and children than I have in a group of men talking about sports and work.
And none of it threatens my masculinity. Not one little bit.
I do wish this was the case for more people of my gender.
Just recently I saw some of Young Master Fussy’s friends referring to girls as bitches in an online chatroom. And honestly, it breaks my heart. These boys are kids. Kids. Most likely they are getting it from TV, or music, or the Internet. But I’m wondering if these children have anyone around who is going to sit them down and explain how wrong it is to stereotype and dehumanize their classmates with words.
That’s not to say that I am perfect either, but I try to be my best. Which brings us back to today.
Tour de Burger: Nominations
Winter may still be trying to make a stand, but it’s a losing proposition at this point. No, it’s not quite spring. But we are firmly in the unlocking. So yes, we may still get a day in the single digits, or some mornings that are below freezing. But we’re in the home stretch.
That wasn’t so bad, was it?
In the past, spring has been the time for the Tour de Soft Serve, or some other frozen-confection-themed FUSSYlittleTOUR. We did FroYo, gelato, and homemade hard ice cream over the years as well. The logic behind the spring ice cream tours was that it could inform all your ice cream eating decisions for the entire summer. And that made a certain amount of sense.
The downside was that in the heat of summer, I was venturing out to eat some kind of savory dish just dripping in sweat. It takes the hardest of the hardcore to tackle a tour of Italian subs in 90-plus degree heat.
So this year, we’ve learned our lesson. Winter and Spring will be our savory tours. Summer and Fall will be the seasons for sweets, ice cream and cider donuts respectively.
And now, we’re launching the planning phase of the tour that I never thought would happen.
AskTP – Marching Orders
Maybe Ask the Profussor turns into a quarterly feature? I don’t know. What I do know is that I still enjoy answering reader questions. I also know that it does take more time than just venting about whatever issue du jour strikes my fancy. And these days, I’m finding that I have less time to pursue blog related activities with my Yelp and family responsibilities.
The struggle is real. As is the struggle of writing a food blog in an increasingly unsettling world. The latest outrage from this weekend was regarding the Sikh man who was reportedly told “go home to your country,” before being shot in his own driveway.
At the very least, authorities have caught one of the people they think is responsible for some of the bomb threats against America’s Jewish Community Centers. So that’s something. And the FBI is investigating the murder of an Indian man in a Kansas bar as a hate crime.
None of this changes the fact that I’m sitting on a heap of questions that I’ve committed to answer. And I’m not going back on my commitments. Just so long as a question is submitted with proper punctuation, it will eventually get answered. The answer may not be timely. It may not even be accurate. But the loop will be closed. Also, don’t forget to check out the mystery link of the day. Yes, I know all the links go to the same place.
Now, without further ado, onto the questions.
Movie Going
When I was a kid, there was a time that it wasn’t just enough to see a movie on opening weekend. I simply had to see the sneak preview premiere. Thankfully, most of these happened in the summer, so it wasn’t out of the question to stay out late on a Wednesday or Thursday night.
But these were in the days before DVDs. So even though home theater screens could be large, the best video quality you could get came on VHS tapes. Actually, that’s not true. A few of my friends had those giant laser disk players too.
It seems, these days, that movie theaters are suffering the death of a thousand cuts. There are more and more reasons that people are reluctant to go out to the theater.
Nowhere was this more striking than in Saratoga Springs last Saturday. After the Beer Summit, I decided to catch a 10pm showing of Moonlight at the fancy newish theater just off Broadway. And it was like a ghost town in there. Seriously, it was so slow that the theater wasn’t running ticket sales from the concession stand.
But people were out in droves. The bar was so packed at Druthers I couldn’t get a seat. So it wasn’t as if people weren’t out having a good time. It’s just that their good time didn’t include the movies.
What does any of this have to do with food? I’m getting to that.
The Freshmaker
Nobody comes to a food blog looking for diet advice. Nor do they come to hear the crazy rantings of a completely non-certified consumer about miracle diet cures.
“Great Abs In Six Minutes a Day” might sell more books, but I actually reduced my cholesterol and avoided going on a lifetime of meds by just making some simple changes to my diet. And I did it without exercise.
Exercise is great. It is. I joke about the subject a lot, but the truth is that I love the effects on the body. But in today’s modern world, who has the time? Apparently, a lot of people. I wish I knew their secret, because for me it seems next to impossible. I can barely manage to squeeze in six hours of sleep every night, and the idea of sitting down to a two hour movie feels as decadent as taking a week long holiday.
Let’s put the time management issues aside for today, and instead let’s go back to what did last time around that was so effective.
Fat Tuesday
Yes, I know it’s Wednesday. But today is the first of many no fun days. It’s really just a coincidence that my diet plan lined up with Lent. In actuality, the plan was simply for March 1. Because according to Kurt Vonnegut, this is the first day of the unlocking.
The unlocking isn’t to be confused with spring. Spring comes later. The unlocking is simply an acknowledgement that the coldest part of winter is over. And as such, I thought that would be a perfect time to give up my comfort eating.
Just in time too. I’m about ten pounds overweight, which isn’t the end of the world. But I wouldn’t want to keep eating the way I’ve been eating.
Yesterday was both a day of decadence and restraint. Restraint on Fat Tuesday? That doesn’t sound right. Well, I’ll tell you what I didn’t do.
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