The Civil War
It’s the North versus the South. Except this time, the battlefield is in Texas.
Naturally, I’m talking about Sunday’s Super Bowl. It’s my favorite day of the year. This is the day that I get to turn on the television, and watch it for hours on end, without any responsibilities. That means I can eat greasy foods on the couch, drink a little too much beer, and start screaming at the TV set.
Displaying anger and frustration at glowing screens has become far too common in our house. Lately there has been a lot of screaming and cursing at Twitter and Facebook. But while Twitter and Facebook may be part of the problem, the real issue is the message. The internet might ve the thing that save us all. I became hopeful with possibility when I saw the size and scope of the Google walkout and protest yesterday.
It was also a hopeful moment to read John McCain’s stand against the executive order on immigration. Of course, the Boss is with us. But every day the resistance grows.
That’s enough about politics. Let’s talk football. Or rather, the celebration of American sport.
Hard To Resist
Food blog. Must. Remember. This. Is. A. Food. Blog.
Sometimes change comes slow. Other times, change comes fast. Today, I feel like we’re starting the week in an entirely different country than last Friday. It’s not that Donald Trump is doing anything other than what he said he intended to do. It’s just that I always had faith in a system of checks and balances that would soften some of the bat shit crazy ideas he presented on the campaign trail.
And you know what, I bet a lot of people who actually voted for Trump felt the same way.
Thank God for the activists. Thank God for the ACLU. And thank God for the immigration lawyers who showed up to airports around the country to fight for the rights of legal green-card carrying residents of the United States who had the misfortune of being born in countries where the President holds no business interests.
You know what I was doing when all of this was going on? I was eating soup. Actually, I was eating all of the soup in Schenectady. Thankfully, that required my full attention and I was off social media for the day. Saturday evening was my recovery period, and I caught up on some of The Walking Dead.
It used to be that watching a compelling drama about a zombie apocalypse would make me feel better about the current state of the world around me. Now, even that isn’t helping.
So how do I get through this week as a food blogger and still feel like part of the resistance?
Comparing Apples to Oranges
Tomorrow is the Schenectady Soup Stroll, and man am I excited. The whole affair starts at noon, and there will be twenty five different samples of soup to try from restaurants throughout downtown. You can find the map with all the different soups online, but there will be hard copies at participating restaurants tomorrow.
The deal is pretty standard. For every soup you want to try, you pay a buck. They give you a three ounce cup, and then you hoof it to the next stop.
What’s really special about this event is that it’s not just chowder. Hey, I love chowder as much as the next guy. But I love that Schenectady is comfortable mixing it up with all kinds of soup styles. That means you have Taj Mahal presenting an Indian lentil soup, Pho Queen sampling a Tom Yom soup, and More Perreca’s ladling out an Italian Wedding Soup.
One might think that the task of deciding which soup is the very best would be an impossible task given the diversity of the playing field. Luckily, the Soup Stroll has partnered with the Yelp Albany Community Ambassador, and he’s got some strong feelings about how to make this work.
The Special Sauce
It’s become part of our culture. The things that stand out, well, they often have some “special sauce.”
Just to prove the point, here’s an article about the Special Sauce for University Innovation, here’s one on the Special Sauce of Real Time Customer Feedback, and an NIH report that suggests comprehensiveness is the “special sauce” of the patient-centered medical home.
That’s education, business, and government. I rest my case.
Jeffrey Steingarten and his research assistant would be far better equipped to research the origins of special sauce in the food world. Lacking his resources, and the time to actually conduct the groundwork, I’m going to lazily attribute the phenomenon to McDonald’s. Because even if they weren’t the first brand to market with a “special sauce” the old ditty about the Big Mac build solidified the notion in the American psyche.
What’s the special sauce of the FLB? I have no idea. My best guess is that I just keep on keeping on. Like clockwork I’m here every weekday with a few hundred more words about thoughts on food. Although maybe the blog’s special sauce has something to do with tone, attitude, and content. It’s hard to say.
The reality of the situation is that the FLB has no “special sauce”. However, that’s something that will be corrected very soon.
Delicate Dim Sum
One of the things I miss from my San Francisco days are the long dim sum lunches. By observing those lifelong dim sum lovers, I was able to figure out a bit of the proper protocol, and the rituals of the meal.
Don’t order any food until the tea arrives. Use the tea to “clean” the plates, cups, chopsticks, and table. Pull out some reading material. Bide your time, sipping tea and reading, until something appealing comes along. Linger over that one plate, enjoying every last morsel a bite at a time, with plenty of reading and tea in between bites. Find another delicious dish, and repeat.
The great dim sum parlors were more like neighborhood community centers than restaurants. Grandparents might hold down a table for the morning. Kids and grandkids would come and go. Other people would drop by. Friends and family would kibbitz. And at the end, there would be fisticuffs to pay for the check.
I’d usually bring some work reading, and hide out at the dim sum parlor for a good hour and a half. At least a couple times per week.
What is kind of interesting, is that this approach helps to highlight certain dishes that might otherwise be overlooked.
A Little Drunk in Albany
Do you know how often I go out to drink? Well, before this past Friday, I could safely say “never”. The statute of limitations has to run out the shenanigans of your early 20s at some point, right?
Which isn’t to say that I don’t attend beer pairing events, or enjoy a cocktail before dinner, or go out for a drink with some friends. But usually, I’m a one and done kind of guy. And it’s not because I see anything wrong with drinking. Largely, it’s for practical reasons.
When I lived out west, it was easy to get back home at the end of the night. For starters, there were plenty of watering holes within walking distance. But there was also some pretty solid public transportation infrastructure. Oh, and reliable, honest, taxi service.
Recently, I met a fellow who insisted that the culture of the Capital Region has changed for the worse since there was more public awareness and police enforcement of drunk driving laws. Apparently, at some point in the city’s not-too-distant history, everyone drove out to the bars, got wasted, and then drove home. Those days were apparently full of camaraderie, community, and a cadre of colorful characters.
Maybe I’m more modern and cut from softer stone, but that seems like a bad idea.
Anyhow, last Friday I had two booze-centric events back to back, and I decided to throw restraint out the window. So instead of driving downtown, I took the bus. It’s alway easy to get into the city. Getting out is another story entirely.
Jewish Penicillin
Today we do Jewish. Because yesterday was a continuation of the coordinated bomb threats phoned into Jewish Community Centers around the U.S.
I don’t know what goes on in Polish Community Centers, or Italian Community Centers, or Irish Community Centers. But the Jewish Community Centers aren’t just rec rooms. They aren’t simply halls where people congregate for big events. Often they are daycares and nursery schools. Sometimes they serve as senior centers too.
So when one has to be evacuated, because someone thinks it would be a good idea to call in a false bomb threat, these are the human beings who are directly affected. Our most vulnerable, and their caretakers.
Yesterday, dozens, literally dozens of JCCs got such calls. Those are in addition to the calls several other JCCs received last week. Two coordinated attacks. That forms a trend line. And it’s not pretty.
The aims of such actions are to intimidate. Part of this makes me sad. Part of this makes me angry. But a bigger part of me knows that anger isn’t going to solve the problem. The answer is love. The answer is compassion. Because people are not born to hate. We’re not.
And there’s no better expression of Jewish love, than chicken soup.
There Are No Best Bloggers
If you want to call me a self-serving egotist, that’s okay. Sometimes, I act that way. Other times, I offer to do good things for others. It’s true. I’m actually a pretty nice guy.
What I won’t do is help anyone move.
Once I helped my friend Bill move a sleeper sofa up three flights of stairs. The fact that it was a sleeper sofa was kept from me until I was at the bottom of the stairs, trying to push this giant heavy thing up vertically through the stairwell. And now, after his ex-girlfriend stabbed me with a fondue fork, we no longer talk.
Never again. Screw that. This is why God created movers.
Speaking of the past, does anyone remember the FUSSYlittleBALLOT? It had a few different iterations over the years, but the goal was to try and improve the results of the Times Union’s Best of the Capital Region. As it turns out, the thing that had the most impact was the open letter I wrote to the paper.
The bottom line is that for the last few years, the Times Union’s Best of the Capital Region hasn’t been a complete embarrassment. In fact, I’ve been tickled to have been voted as one of the area’s best bloggers. I cracked the top five for the past two years straight, which is pretty impressive for a guy with a complicated history with the paper.
As with many things, 2017 is bringing some major changes.
FUSSYlittleBLOG 