Giving Kids The Good Stuff
I wanted to call this post The Kids Are Alright but apparently, I used that title just about a year ago when writing about a school field trip to the Bronx Zoo. It just so happens that today’s post is also about the same school, but different kids.
Yesterday, I told you my plan about going into the elementary school and talking to fifty first graders about food criticism. A big part of my presentation relied upon bringing in donuts to use as a teaching tool.
Now these weren’t going to be just any donuts. I figured that I would bring the students what I consider to be the single best donut in the Capital Region. Schuyler Bakery’s old fashioned cake donut. A donut I only discovered thanks to writing The Best Dozen feature for All Over Albany where I ended up eating 141 donuts looking for the best twelve in the area. If you want to know how much I love these donuts, you can read my Yelp review to help put all of this in context.
Everything was going fine, except as I was leaving the bakery, I got a stern warning from the owner. He admonished me for not getting the glazed donuts and was absolutely convinced that the first graders were going to hate the old fashioneds.
Donut Sugar
Today I shape the minds of tomorrow’s food enthusiasts. Yes, that’s right. I’ve been invited to give a talk at the local elementary school. Apparently they are doing a unit on criticism, and food criticism is a part of the program.
Will I be able to hold the attention of over fifty first graders for a full thirty minutes? It’s a daunting task, to be sure. So I figured I should talk about something they would hopefully have more interest in than pimento cheese, eating vegan, or the upsides of vegetarian burgers.
Luckily, I’m become an expert at evaluating donuts. Plus, who doesn’t love donuts? And because Schuyler Bakery runs a nut free operation, I can even bring some in for the kids as a bribe. I mean… a teaching aid.
So despite my diet, I have donuts on the mind. And quite by coincidence, yesterday I encountered someone on social media longing for a jelly donut rolled in granulated sugar. Let me see if I can put this gently, because I’ve been so good lately about not getting into food fights.
The FUSSYlittleBALLOT: A Eulogy
This blog taught me something interesting about democracy. If you don’t like the results of an election, the secret to a better outcome may not be campaigning harder for your candidates, but rather changing the rules of the game.
Who here among you remembers the FUSSYlittleBALLOT?
When I first arrived to the Capital Region I was disheartened by the Best of the Capital Region polls. Especially the one from the Albany Times Union, which listed Subway’s sandwiches and Pizza Hut’s pizza among the region’s best things to eat. Disheartened is probably putting it mildly.
So I started an elaborate campaign for a slate of excellent local businesses. And that went okay in the first year. But what really changed the game was my open letter to the Times Union. It made a compelling case that this poll should be about local businesses and not chains. And eventually, the paper came around. First with requiring voters to select a single location, which eliminated the relative advantage held by the chains. And later, the paper would also break up categories so that Chinese restaurants didn’t share the same category as Japanese restaurants.
It’s been about three years since my last coordinated campaign, and last year’s results were the best I’ve ever seen. So the days of the FUSSYlittleBALLOT are officially over. That said, the Times Union has opened up its poll for 2016, and a couple of the questions inspired some unexpectedly strong feelings.
March 2010: Brushes With Fame
Everybody hates this. Nobody likes this. Mrs. Fussy grimaces on Thursday mornings when she comes down to copyedit the TBT posts. So she’s flown the coop this morning. She’s so sick of these posts that she took a plane out of town and won’t be back until Friday.
So here’s my compromise. I’ll do just two more. This one will cover March. The next one will cover April. Then I’ll have done twelve. We can package it all up as The First Year of Fussy, and never speak of it again. I knew it was a bad idea in the first place, but hey, sometimes good things can come out of bad ideas.
The goal here was to see where the blog has been, how it got here, and what we missed. In doing so, I had hoped to reveal what has changed, which ideas are still relevant today, and find a bit of inspiration for posts that still need to be written. I think we’ve done that. We’ve certainly improved the color coded key to help navigate the tangle of post summaries that follow.
In March, the blog had a few brushes with fame. Of course, my idea of fame probably looks different than yours. But I got the attention of local businessman Matt Baumgartner, and we had a public dialogue about burritos. I also reached out to Jim Leff the founder of Chowhound and he sent me a present by mail. And one of my stories was covered in The Consumerist. That was super exciting. However, I’m also struck by just how much back and forth conversation there was between the blog and its readers towards the end of this first year.
So how did it break down day by day? I’m glad you asked.
Burger Diet
No joke. The diet is going well. Sadly, this isn’t the diet that’s going to make me my fortune. I wish it were something catchy like, “The Burger Diet” or “Metabolism Metamorphosis”. But once again, it’s simply the “Don’t Eat Like An Assh*le Diet.”
It’s hard to package that to publishers.
When I started this program the only ray of sunshine was that my starting place was so abysmal that improving my diet was almost a sure thing. So I put a sign on the refrigerator that read “Don’t eat if not hungry.” I stopped eating ice cream and fried foods whenever I pleased. I started measuring out cooking oil. I watched portion sizes, and didn’t make trips back into the kitchen for second helpings. I stopped eating all the chicken skin, and started choosing leaner cuts of meat. And when I had a choice, I chose healthful vegetarian or vegan options.
Sometimes the choices aren’t so clear cut. Like for example when my kids want to go to Chipotle. The burritos are a big calorie load thanks to the tortilla. But a vegetarian bowl without cheese or sour cream would just feel too austere. I’m not perfect. I have cheat days, like the Tour de Wings and the NYS Craft Brewers Festival. But even after all of those, I’m still down eight pounds.
So what do I do when it’s time to go out for a burger?
The Last Beer
Last night I happened to stumble onto a draft line of Hill Farmstead’s Susan at the Madison Pour House. That was a happy discovery.
When it comes to beers with cult-like followings, Hill Farmstead is right up there. So I feel extraordinarily lucky that we have access to their tasty beverages at a variety of watering holes across the Capital Region. Many of these cult beers you can only find if you’re willing to drive hours to the brewery and wait on an ungodly line.
Certainly, I don’t begrudge those who take pleasure in visiting the source of their favorite beverages. And lines for good things are so much more pleasant now that almost everyone has a supercomputer in their pocket with blazing fast wireless internet.
I’m embarrassed to admit how long I’ve waited for a cortado at Blue Bottle in San Francisco.
But back to beer. Because of the availability of great beer in the region, I’ve been picking up multi-packs of things that look good. You can’t say six-pack anymore, because fancy beers now often come in four packs. And that’s fine by me.
Because the problem I have would exist regardless of how many beers come in a pack.
February 2010: Good Things
Today is Thursday. That means we’re doing Throwback Thursday, FLB-style. In January I hatched this questionable idea that each week in 2016, I’d look back to a month of posts from the past. The goal is to see where the blog has been, how it got here, and what we missed. In doing so, I’m hoping to reveal what has changed, which. ideas are still relevant today, and find a bit of inspiration for posts that still need to be written.
There’s even a color coded key to help make sense of it all.
You know who else is celebrating Throwback Thursday? Slidin’ Dirty. They’re bringing back the first four Nine Pin 26er Ciders today. So if you are playing the crazy 26er game, and you thought you had already screwed it up, consider this your hail mary. If you aren’t playing along at home, now’s your chance to get in on it. The only reason I mention this is because I’m going for my 26er badge. Why? I’m not quite sure. But it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Looking back to the past, in February of 2010 I seemed to focus a lot on the good things. Why I was feeling so sunny in a cold and dreary February remains a mystery. Maybe I was still all aglow from participating in the Times Union’s wing tasting. But I covered my favorite all-American activity, Albany’s marvelous taverns, the best Valentine’s Day plan, an amazing French butter, great wings, mind changing chardonnay, legit Cuban sandwiches, and my deep respect for pizza parlors.
So how did it break down day by day? I’m glad you asked.
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