All the Best
Many thanks to Mr. Marshall who alerted me to the fact that currently Metroland has opened their polls for a Best of the Capital Region list of their own. You can vote here through February 22.
Kevin has a few picks that he would like you to support. I see no harm in endorsing those except that his choice for Best Local Blog is his own and not your friendly neighborhood FLB.
It’s funny. Because while their list of categories isn’t nearly so constrained as the Times Union questionnaire, they still combine Vietnamese and Thai cuisines . Cheers to them, though, for breaking China out from Japan. But jeers for lumping in Mexican with Southwestern.
I’ve voted. And I thought I would take this opportunity to share with you my ballot. Not so much because I want you to vote the same slate, because I don’t. These are just my casual opinions. I’ll ask for your vote in April when the FUSSYlittleBALLOT 3.0 comes out for the Times Union poll, because those will not be my choices, but a synthesis from multiple sources, including reader input.
Hopefully sharing the below will help to show where those two lists overlap and where they converge. But it’s still early, as we’ve just begun to build the ballot.
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Weird Diets & Crazy Thoughts
Nobody knows anything about food and health. If you don’t believe me, check out the wild swinging pendulum that is the health community’s thoughts on butter. We only got transfats in everything because cholesterol was demonized. Then as it turns out, in the end, the “healthier” cholesterol-free alternative wasn’t.
It’s not that I’m antiscience.
I love my iPhone and I think antibiotics are pretty groovy. I’m also really excited that I don’t have to worry about my kids getting polio or measles. Science is great. But for some reason, science seems to keep failing when it comes to improving food, farming and nutrition. And often in the service of trying to make things better, they get worse.
What I’m about to unleash is a massive amount of speculation. And really, it’s speculation I would not have engaged in had I not been recently asked a rather thought provoking question, that I’m both totally qualified and ill equipped to answer. The question went like this:
What are your thoughts on the gluten and dairy-free diet trend?
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Building the Ballot – The Markets
Welcome to the first working post of the FUSSYlittleBALLOT 3.0. Hopefully you read a couple days ago about the plan to build a better ballot for 2012.
When April rolls around, I’m going to ask for your help. If you and I and everyone we know vote for a common set of exceptional local businesses, we can propel some of the best places in the area onto the Times Union’s Best of the Capital Region list.
But I’ve found in the past, it’s been challenging to get people to vote for a slate of businesses that they themselves have had no input in creating. Well that’s what we are doing today. And really, the comments section of this post will be active until the time I actually cobble together the FLB 3.0 at the end of March.
So….grocery stores and farmers markets. What makes them good? And which ones are just a little bit better, rising to the top and qualifying as one of The Best. I’ll spell out my criteria and give you my top three picks for each category. You can feel free to agree or disagree, and leave as detailed a comment as you like. All I ask is that if you play along at home, you submit not just your top pick, but the three best options (in rank order).
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Ask the Profussor – Keep On Keeping On
One of these days I’ll start keeping up with all the questions to the blog as they come in. But these past few weeks have been especially busy and once again I’ve got a large heaping pile of some great questions that you all have asked over the past few weeks.
Today, I start to tackle the pile again. But there were so many questions, I’ve got to post them in batches. If Mrs. Fussy couldn’t make it through all 3,000 plus words, it’s unlikely you would either.
My commitment to you is that if you ask a question, provided that it ends with a question mark, it will eventually be answered. So keep on asking. I love the push back, the challenges, the chances to offer further clarification, and all the great things that writing on a two-way platform provides.
Now without further ado, on to the questions.
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Building the FUSSYlittleBALLOT 3.0
This is what you want. This is what you get. For the past couple of years, I have been managing a campaign to take back the Times Union’s Best of the Capital Region poll from the mediocrity that has pervaded it for so long.
Here’s the logic.
Last year, based on the paper’s own numbers, there were nearly 15,000 ballots cast in the survey. That may seem like a lot, and frankly it is. However, if we all joined together, and brought our friends, family and coworkers in on the scheme, we could form a powerful voting block that could influence the results.
But—and this is a big but—it only works if we all vote on a common slate of local businesses.
This was why I created the FUSSYlittleBALLOT. The idea isn’t that the businesses on the slate are the best of the best. Rather, that we can all agree that these businesses are among the best, and far better from some of the other schlock that’s been praised by the paper.
While the slate was never just one person’s opinion, people had a problem voting for a scheme in which they had no direct input. So this year, that part is going to change. It’s time to explain how it’s going to work.
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Hot Wings
Today has to be the Black Friday of pizza and wing deliveries. In years past I went through the ritual of actually reserving a delivery slot well in advance of Super Bowl Sunday so that I could be sure to have the staples required for a proper observance of this national holiday.
Pizza is great. Back out west Steve K. would traditionally bring a large sausage stuffed Chicago style pizza from the only place in town that made it worth a damn.
But for me, wings are a critical part of the Super Bowl. The only problem is that getting wings delivered is destined to fail. Fried foods are awful for you. Positively awful. But they are worth every last bit of heart disease and cancer when you get them right from the fryer, crisp and sizzling and juicy.
Last night, I was reminded of just how bad wings can be.
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Super Bowl Sausage Fest
I’ve been losing things all week. I lost days (I thought Wednesday was Tuesday), lost my keys (well, locked myself out of the house), lost my Xbox Live profile (some hacker stole it from me), and thought I lost my wedding ring (it was in my pocket).
Maybe I’m just preoccupied as I face my impending cholesterol test. I’m going to try and get it done this morning. Besides the Tour de Egg Sandwich this past Saturday, I’ve been pretty darn good this week. Plus, if I get my blood work done now, I don’t have to think about it during the Super Bowl.
As it turns out, the Super Bowl will fall in the sweet spot between my blood work and my appointment to discuss it with my doctor. It’s like a hall pass for the week.
What does this mean for the big game?
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Red Beans and Dice
Sometimes cooking is a gamble. Sometimes you have to be confident with what you know, and kind of fake the rest.
Many years ago, I was visiting my friend S in Los Angeles, and she thought it would be a good idea to make some gumbo. She wanted me to do it, even though I had never made gumbo before. So I went through her cookbooks, got a broad sense about the dish, and then put a gumbo together that used what I thought were the best parts of each recipe. In the end, it turned into something delicious.
Sometimes I follow recipes fastidiously. Other times I cook fast and loose. Well, maybe not so fast. One of these days I’ll get my speed up. The critical piece of that is improving my knife skills.
Red beans and rice is the classic New Orleans dish that I never make exactly the same way twice. It was a staple of our diet last winter, and having not written down the process, I was afraid I had forgotten how to make it. Yesterday, I figured it out again and it came out well. So today I’m transcribing the process, as much for me as for you.
Like most of my hearty winter bean dishes, it starts with two pounds of dried beans.
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Cracking the Egg and Cheese Sandwich
Sleeping in on Saturday mornings is one of the great pleasures of my life. After several years of children requiring early morning attention seven days a week, Young Master Fussy is finally at an age where we can train him to take care of his little sister for an hour or two. Sure, television and sugary treats are involved. But did I mention the sleep?
Still, it was my decision to assemble a group of intrepid eaters at 7:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning in order to eat an unholy number of egg and cheese sandwiches.
Had it not been for the untenable hour, I suspect more people would have shown up for the Tour de Egg Sandwich. But as it was, we had twenty people on the tour, of which eighteen submitted completed score sheets. Some were first timers, and it was great to meet all of you, but most had some previous experience traipsing around the region with me sampling one of the area’s culinary delights.
By the end of the morning, we had been to four fine establishments, plus one Stewart’s, and ate an egg and cheese sandwich on a hard roll at each. Here is what we learned.
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The Box of Chocolates
Is the suspense killing you? I’m sorry. The Tour de Egg Sandwich was over three days ago now, there’s been no word on a winner, and today I’m writing about chocolate. That seems needlessly cruel.
I’m sorry. You’re right. It’s bad form.
But won’t it be exciting later today when the victor of the Tour de Egg Sandwich is announced on All Over Albany? The Eat This! feature generally is posted sometime between noon and 2 p.m. Just so you know, the results were incredibly close. It was almost a three-way tie for first place.
In the meantime, hopefully I can distract you with tales of my favorite chocolate maker. After all, tomorrow is the first day of February and that means two things.
1) The day to download the membership forms for the Roxbury Farm CSA is less than 24 hours away.
2) Valentines Day is two weeks away.
So apropos of the default VD present, here is the big question. Where can you get an amazing box of chocolates?
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