Fussy Through the Ages
I did say that there would be listicles. The problem was that I was up too late drinking beers at the farm and didn’t leave enough time for a proper story about food and preparing for New Year’s Eve.
Usually, New Year’s has been a low key affair down on the farm. This year, I think it’s going to be a low key affair back in Albany. The event that The Hill at Muza is hosting sounds wonderfully low key, but I think we’re going to stay off the roads.
Anyhow, yesterday I shared the top stories that were written last year. But one of the interesting things about the FLB is that there are a handful of posts that continue to have a long and fruitful life for years and years thanks to the magic of the interwebs. Some make sense. One was my attempt at writing a clickbait article, which totally worked, but felt dirty. Most of the others are just strongly held opinions that have been connecting with people for years.
The most popular post, though, has been pulling in readers since 2009.
The Best Dozen of 2015
What is December without a year-end listicle or two? Every year there are some posts that inspire people to share them on Facebook or Twitter. Some folks will still email stories. Others will post links to them in blogs of their own. I have no idea why they do it. Maybe I’ve tapped into the zeitgeist. Perhaps they reveal something wonderful that was hidden in plain sight. Or it could be that my argument was so outrageous, it couldn’t be ignored.
Whatever the case, it warms my heart every time a post gets passed along. It truly does. When stories get shared, it helps me know that the blog is doing something right.
The FLB is also a stimulus-response machine. When I see certain types of stories resonate with readers, it’s more likely that another post will appear along those same lines. And conversely, when I hear crickets every time I write about wine, I’ll need to have something awfully important to say if I’m going to post a wine story.
So the following is less of a self-congratulatory lap around the last twelve months, and rather a reflection on what worked. Maybe you’ve read all of these. Maybe their time has passed, and the stories are no longer relevant. Or perhaps you missed one of these the first time around, and might be interested in giving it a read today.
There was one story I wrote in 2015 that totally eclipsed them all.
AskTP – My Last Quarter
Last night, my kids and their cousins got to open a flurry of presents at the farm. My present has been drinking through some of the beer stash I brought with me.
I figure it will be a meaningless list to most of you, but so far we’ve had Nancy by Allagash Brewing Company, Bomb! by Prairie Artisan Ales, Beer Geek Breakfast by Mikkeller, Epitome by Carton Brewing Company, Aún Más A Jesús by Evil Twin Brewing, Hammerstone Pale Ale by Crossroads Brewing Company, Mo’ Shuggie Soulbender IPA by SingleCut Beersmiths, and Equinox by Kent Falls Brewing Co.
If you’re really curious about my top line thoughts on specific beers, I’m putting them up on Untappd. But I can’t imagine that it would be all that interesting.
What I hope is much, much more interesting is my response to reader questions. “What! That still happens?” Well, not so much anymore. But I committed to answering all reader questions at the beginning of this whole FLB project. And even though there are questions dating all the way back to October, that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten.
So, without any further ado, onto the questions.
A Christmas Present for Fussy
This is what Christmas in Miami and California feels like. I should know, I have many more of those under my belt than these crazy cold upstate winters. Yesterday, I went out on my beer run in sandals. The beers I had wanted were actually sold out, so it seems like if I’m going to get serious about this beer thing, it may involve some amount of standing in line.
Soon, I’ll be packing the car with a stupid quantity of beer bottles and driving down to Pennsylvania. I can’t remember if the rest stop McDonalds and Starbucks are open on Christmas Day, so I’ll just have to find out the hard way.
At the very least, perhaps we can find some Chinese food on the way to Bedford.
Now, this is just a guess, but I’m going to go out on a limb and imagine that if you celebrate Christmas you probably have gotten a gift or two this morning. As far as I understand it, that means you’ve been nice. Naughty folks get coal. Clever naughty folks get coal, and turn it into New-Haven-style coal fired pizza.
My Christmas present was finding this list that will make sure you all stay on Santa’s good side.
The Final Countdown: Christmas Edition
Cue the music. It’s almost here. Time to get excited.
Actually, I’m totally ill equipped to help anyone in these final preparations for Christmas day. I was reading Facebook, and hearing about the struggle to secretly wrap presents so that the kids might think Santa brought them into the house. I’ve never done that before. It can’t be easy. I struggle to wrap just one present whenever a kid is invited over to a birthday party.
We don’t bake cookies. It’s been a long time since I’ve decorated a tree, and I’ve never strung lights along a house. But there are still a couple of things I want to share. One is just a little insight into my own madness as we prepare for the annual Christmas trip down to the farm in Pennsylvania. The other is my annual appeal to prevent the senseless destruction of countless holiday hams through a simple, seemingly harmless, step in their journey from store to table.
The Beer Bottle Punt
This is not a post about the design of beer bottles, although I could see how you might come to that conclusion. The punt, after all, is the indentation at the bottom of a bottle. These are a fixture of champagne bottles, but they do raise their head elsewhere.
Personally, I think it’s pretty badass to get your thumb up in that punt, and pour the bottle of wine while holding it from below. That’s not a move for beginners. It takes some practice to do it with confidence.
Nope. This is a post with a sports metaphor. Because last night I went on a little bit of a beer shopping spree in preparation for my annual December trip to the farm in Pennsylvania. Here’s how it went down.
Meat & Potatoes
Historically, standards for Capital Region eateries may not have been the highest. I heard a memorable refrain by some old timers inside an old-timey tavern, recalling with nostalgia the passable food at a long gone haunt.
“Well, the meat wasn’t green, and the vegetables weren’t brown.”
That just about sums it up. Part of me has a desire to further speculate on the reasons for this state of affairs, but it’s fair to say that the influences of the past still play out today. At its core, even though we eat green vegetables, this is a meat and potatoes town,
Now there are some who may dismiss meat and potatoes as a basic or pedestrian combination. Others may suggest it’s played out and boring. But you’ll hear none of that coming from me. Meat and potatoes is such a classic because it is so goddamn delicious. All the same, it’s something that we rarely eat for dinner at the Fussy household. And up until last week, it wasn’t even something I’d even consider for a weeknight meal.
Last night that all changed.
Half Mast
Fifty bucks. That’s about where I tap out on buying a bottle of wine at the store. I almost never spend close to that amount of money on a bottle of wine, but that’s my upper limit. Maybe, maybe that can go up to $100 for something like a grower-produced Champagne if the occasion was right. I’ll go up to $100 on a bottle of booze, although if I ever came across another bottle of that 1983 Domaine Boingneres Folle Blanche Armagnac, I’d easily go up to $200 for the privilege of getting to experience it again.
But eight bucks a pound for dried beans? It’s not going to happen. Even though my final dish of Cuban black beans and rice would only cost about a couple bucks per serving, it’s still too staggering of a premium for me to accept.
We all have these price caps in our head. There are some things one person can justify that are entirely beyond the pale for someone else. And it’s not necessarily a question of income, but more a question of values.
This is where marketing plays a very critical role. But marketing relies a lot on trust. If you’ve been paying close attention to the food world over the past couple of days, you may have noticed the ugliness that comes out when that trust starts breaking down.
The Last Weekend Before Christmas
It’s panic time in America. At least right now we’re panicking over something important like shopping. For the next 72 hours we get to put behind those petty concerns like the changing climate, the militarization of our police force, and our collective desire to trade liberty for security. Those things can wait. Christmas, on the other hand, is going to be here next week.
This is one of those moments that I’m happy my winter solstice holiday is already over. This weekend, I can relax and head over to the Guilderland Public Library on Saturday at 2pm, where Amy Halloran will be slinging her famous pancakes. She’ll be doing this as part of a promotion for her book The New Bread Basket: How the New Crop of Grain Growers, Plant Breeders, Millers, Maltsters, Bakers, Brewers, and Local Food Activists Are Redefining Our Daily Loaf.
I’ve never had her pancakes, but I’ve heard great things.
But having recently gone through a little bit of the present crunch, I’m sympathetic to the plight of the shopper. Amazingly, the FUSSYlittleSTORE is still up and active. I don’t profit from it in any way. It’s really there just as a service to readers.
Speaking of service, there’s something else I’m willing to do for those looking at gifts for the food lover in their lives. It may sound a little obnoxious, but I hope it will prove to be helpful. Let’s call it, “For the Love of God, Put That Back on the Shelf”
Confessions: Vanity Over Gluttony
It feels like a while since I last confessed. Sure, confession isn’t a part of my religious heritage. But I’ve long held that Jews are culturally very similar to Catholics. We’ve got strong family ties, a deep love of food, and a penetrating sense of guilt.
There’s some old story about growing up in Brooklyn on the border of Italian and Jewish immigrant neighborhoods, and some young Jewish boy thinking the Italians were just the Jews with better food.
Anyway, my tradition here on the blog is to publicly confess something when I’ve done something worth feeling guilty about. Actually, I’m not quite sure that what follows exactly fits into that framework. Mostly because I’m not entirely convinced that all of the seven deadly sins are entirely evil.
Lately, I’ve been feeling like a bit of a glutton. But here’s what a lot of people may not realize. I’ll never fully succumb to Gluttony, largely because the sin of Vanity will hold me back.
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