View From Judges Table: Harvest
Ever wonder what it’s like to judge a food competition? I think the 2009 All Over Albany Tournament of Pizza was the first time I officially became a food judge. But since then I’ve been lucky to serve as a judge at a number of food festivals and charitable events. And it’s always a lot of fun.
But it’s also a lot harder than it looks. Not only because you are asked to sometimes eat a large quantity of not-that-great food. Judging culinary contests is tricky because it can be hard to weigh the tradeoffs of nonparallel strengths and weaknesses.
For example, if one pizza has great crust, weak toppings, and a solid sauce, and the other has great sauce, a weak crust and solid toppings, which is the better of the two?*
Apparently, I’m running a bit of a backlog, and this week is extra busy thanks to Yom Kippur on Wednesday. So today I’m going to play catch up by bringing you the tales of last week’s Harvest Evening Celebration at Revolution Hall in Troy.
7th Annual Tour de Donut: Nominations
October 15. Mark your calendar. Save the date. It’s the Saturday after tomorrow. And that’s when I’ll be leading another group of brave eaters out into the wilderness to try five different apple cider donuts.
I can’t even believe that after all these years there are still more cider donuts in the Capital Region that we haven’t evaluated.
But before we engage in this annual fall rite, it’s customary to call for nominations of where we should go. As usual, I have some thoughts on the matter. And I’ll caution, once again, this isn’t a democracy. So there’s no point in rallying people to endorse any particular comment. I’ll take them all under consideration.
However, on this tour we’ll only be going to places where we haven’t been before. So first, let’s brush up quickly on where the Tour de Donut has taken us in the past.
Say Uncle
Let’s see if this works. Maybe if I create a mantra at the beginning of this post, I’ll successfully achieve a modest goal. Okay. Here it goes.
I’m going to keep this short.
I’m going to keep this short.
I’m going to keep this short.
Last night I organized an Official Yelp Event at Uncle Sam’s Chocolates in Latham. It’s a Schenectady institution, famous for butter crunch, that has opened an Albany County outpost. We had Albany Distilling Company there, Barkeater Coffee Roasters, and Hudson-Chatham Winery too.
For two hours, anyone who had a Yelp profile (complete with profile picture) and who submitted an RSVP request for the event, had free rein over all of the delicacies on display in Uncle Sam’s cases.
There’s only one thing that could go wrong.
Twenty Two Wings
Politicians lie. They distort. They finesse the truth. That’s the job. They do bad things, so we don’t have to. Hopefully they do it for the public good. You’re an adult. Somewhere in your heart of hearts you know that, right? You might not want it to be true. You might prefer to hold on to some kind of myth or legend instead.
George Washington and the cherry tree? Never happened. What did happen was a surprise attack on Christmas morning. And yes, we may all be better off as a result of it. But maybe we can drop a bit of the pretense that our national heroes are saints.
Man, this food blog got really dark all of a sudden.
This past Saturday, I took place in a marathon of sorts. No, it wasn’t a running marathon. It was an eating one. I had agreed to be a judge for the Schenectady Wing Walk. Perhaps if I had a fitbit, I would know how many steps I walked, but I was pretty much walking for four hours, going from restaurant to restaurant, sampling chicken wings.
There were a few other judges, but I went around with comedian Chris Lamberth. He was a drumette guy. Over the course of the day, I may have changed his mind. If not, at least I exposed him to the deliciousness of the flat. Albany Jane was a good sport and accompanied us for most of the day, until she just couldn’t take it anymore.
Twenty-two wings is a lot of wings. And it’s a brutal contest, perhaps for obvious reasons, but there were some highlights.
Living With What I Do
Living in New York we forget a few simple mathematical realities. Only about two percent of people in the country celebrated the new year yesterday. And globally, that number is less than a fraction of a percent. If you were rounding, it would round down to zero.
But happy new year, anyway.
Never turn down an opportunity for celebration. Life is hard. Still, every so often we are presented with joyful moments. Grab them. Embrace them. And drink them to the lees. Of course, the Jewish New Year isn’t quite as festive as the secular New Year. There’s no Champagne or feasts of lobster bisque and standing rib roast. If you are very lucky, there is brisket. We had roast chicken and apples with honey. To really cut loose we got challah with raisins in it. Woo hoo.
The point of the Jewish New Year isn’t to party. It’s a wake up call about the passage of time. The holiday is a reminder to correct the wrongs of the past year. And to try and do better in the year moving forward.
Hopefully, regularity readers know that writing a daily food blog is a struggle, but maybe not perhaps for the reasons one might think.
My Happy Places
Grotesque. The news of the world is just grotesque.
Sunday night is erev Rosh Hashanah. It’s the start of the Jewish New Year. Monday, I’ll be in the synagogue. I’ll be praying for peace. And we need it. There is so much violence. So much killing. Far too much hatred and anger. Way too much fear. Way too little compassion. Almost no understanding. There’s an absence of dialog. A vacuum of compromise.
And it seems like we’ve gotten used to it. Elementary school shootings fail to shock us. We’re far too accustomed to unarmed civilians being shot by police. The media is more concerned about a candidate not knowing what to do about Aleppo, than with what’s going on inside the besieged city. The Dakota Pipeline construction desecrates sacred native lands without creating an outrage. The presidential candidate who wants to initiate a national stop and frisk program and build a great wall between the US and Mexico is in a virtual dead heat with a centrist Democrat with a lifetime of public service who has won the endorsement of conservative newspapers, some of which have never endorsed a Democratic party candidate in their existence.
It’s sad. And it’s exhausting. But this isn’t how I want to end my year. So instead, I’m going to retreat to my happy place. Or maybe that should be happy places.
The Golden Chains
Chain restaurants aren’t all bad. And even the bad ones sometimes scratch a particular itch or fill a specific need. You won’t find me bashing chains just for sport. Some are better than others. Plus, since these businesses tend to feed the mass market, positive changes made within those operations can have significant effects on how consumers think about and relate to food.
We have some good chains here in the Capital Region. Whole Foods is great. Never did I expect to see them come to our humble DMA, but I’m glad that they did and seem to have found an audience. Just last night I went to Blaze, which might not make great pizza, but they produce a quick, convenient, and tasty way of eating lots of vegetables. It’s been years since I’ve stepped foot into a Hooters, but those breaded and sauced wings are still a guilty pleasure of mine, and you can’t find them anywhere else.
Of course, there are those chains without any redeemable value whatsoever. Like that pink and orange monstrosity that is ruining donuts. Or that sandwich maker from Connecticut that trucks in pre-sliced meat in from hundreds of miles away and celebrates its freshness. Blech.
Just recently, Consumer Reports published its list of the best chain restaurants in America. When I looked at the top places in each of the categories, one thing became immediately clear.
Diet Without Excercise
Woo hoo! Yesterday was crappy. Today is still crappy, but I’ve got great news. I’m cured.
Well, maybe not cured. But after today, I don’t think you’ll be having to hear much about my diet anymore. For those who may just be tuning in, let’s turn back the clock for a moment.
At the end of February, I got a bad report from my doctor. My cholesterol was elevated. But instead of going on a lifetime of medicine, I wanted to see if I could improve my cardiovascular health by making some shifts in my lifestyle. The good news was that given my eating habits at the time, the only way to go was up.
The big question was, would it work? The exercise component of the plan never actually materialized. And as we got closer to the final blood test, I also found myself sabotaging all my earlier efforts.
I guess I gave away the answer at the top of the post, but just wait until you see the numbers.
Start With Breakfast
The thing is, I’m unsure about where to even start this week. Later today, I’ve got the dreaded doctor’s appointment. But tonight I’m going to spend some time with a bunch of Yelp friends to eat a lot of dumplings. My sincere hope is that I’ll miss tonight’s debate that starts at 9pm EST.
I don’t know if I can take it.
Just yesterday I spent the day at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan, which presents a living history of the Holocaust. To say it was upsetting would be putting it mildly. One remarkable reminder from the museum was how innocently it all started, with anti-Jewish flyers and political propaganda.
The museum didn’t draw the connection to modern times, but the parallels with our modern political climate and the venomous attitude toward the Muslim community are eerily similar.
To make my mood even more somber, I happened to walk past the 9-11 memorial. I hadn’t been there since before the towers fell. And there’s something about the fountain that is especially heart wrenching. To me it felt like a bottomless pit of despair, that created a vacuum of sadness and loss.
Yes, I might try to eat myself out of this. However, depending on how my visit goes with the doctor, I might not be in much of an eating mood either. So, how do I even begin to turn this around? Let’s start with breakfast.
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