A photo of snow in Snellville.

It  has just started, and this is what my front porch looks like tonight:

 

 

Engaged: Jimmy of Eat It Atlanta

Since my tweeting this would only be seen by  a few people, grats to Jimmy of Eat It Atlanta on his recent engagement. May this lead to many decades of happiness.

 

 

New Phone, Twitter, Tim the Cheese Man, and More.

My phone was getting old, perhaps 5 years old, so I had it replaced – replaced all the phones in my family. My daughter noted we hadn’t replaced phones in 5 years. We got her one with a touch screen and all. No web, but unlimited text, and my new phone, a Samsung Smiley, is quite a deft messaging phone. It was hard to miss that BuHi has been eating near where I work and tweeting about it. That and Chloe’s use of text was enough to want to move into the texting realm and dare stick my nose on Twitter. So I’m out there, fumbling along, as FoodNSnellville.

My blog volume is very different this December than last. Last year because of all the San Francisco posts, I was picked up by an aggregation site and they drove some daily volumes to record highs. This season it’s rather been mediocre. Maybe its the exceptional cold, the season, families preparing to head home. I can’t blame anyone really.

To note, a new blog on the side bar, Tim the Cheese Man, who hails out of Star Provisions. Terrific read. His tastes are different from mine, but mine surely are more ad hoc than his. In the world of cheese, I’m largely an autodidact.

If I don’t post my thoughts, OU for U is quite good. Excellent breads. Hopefully I will get out a post tomorrow. And maybe one of the blogging folks will be thinking about lunch roughly in the Dunwoodies some Thursday (fingers crossed).

FnS.

 

Christmas is upon us

Christmas is upon us and it isn’t even Halloween yet. Don’t believe me? Walk into any Best Buy and look at how the GPS devices are positioned and priced, how the televisions are  positioned and priced. Not that this is anything new. Back when I was young enough to be a stock boy at a dollar store, we would start preparing for Christmas sales in August.

 

Arabia Mountain Trail, Lithonia GA

My family has been talking about traveling Arabia Mountain Trail for some time, but until the pollen counts grew low enough that my wife could comfortably ride, we’ve been patiently waiting. But this weekend, the weather was cool enough and the poillen mild enough for the whole family to get outside and enjoy the ride. Arabia Mountain Trail has paths that circle the north end of Stonecrest Mall, so it was at Stonecrest that we joined the trail, and traveled about 6-7 miles down it and back.

There is a lot of stopping and starting, waiting at corners of roads in the beginning,  but then it begins to open up and the views can be impressive, especially the bridges.

There are farmhouses and barns along the way as well, and portions of the  trail so quiet and wild I could reach out and almost touch the deer alongside the trail.

Next time we’ll bring food and water with us. The trail has a lot of shallow dips and rises, but after a few miles of this, it’s wearying for people like us, just starting out any kind of organized riding. But the sights, the quiet, the possibility of seeing others enjoying the path is pretty refreshing for a pleasant September day. I suspect we’ll be back, and I’ll be wearing a backpack with supplies next time.

 

Quick Notes on a busy Father’s Day

Relatives are arriving, so though I have material for reviews and some nice new pics of the “Grand Opening” of the Snellville Farmer’s Market, I don’t have time to post them yet. My wife has us all working hard in preparation. Many apologies, and once the relatives are here, the madness may calm enough for me to post a photo or review or two.

I will say this. Relatives arrive around 6pm at Hartsfield. We can get them home and put up things by perhaps 7:30pm. Most places will be packed with Father’s Day eaters. So what’s a good place to eat circa 8pm (or even 9) on a day like this? I’ll be happy to check out any suggestions.

Tomatoes have been producing well (surprising how they can do that potted but not in the soil of my yard), the Japanese eggplant is fruiting, and for the first time, my sole boonie pepper is flowering.

 

Bowie needs a home, and other notes.

The first item of note is that I’m having some serious foot issues, and until they are resolved, new reviews will be coming slower, if at all. The second item of note has been provided by Vicki Sabo, who raises Tibetan Spaniels OTP, and as far as I know, is the only Tibetan Spaniel breeder in the state of Georgia. Our dog is a Tibbie, as they are called, and we’ve come to know Vicki as we bought our animal from her.

She has an animal she’s rescued, and I’m going to report her recent letter about the dog Bowie:

HI friends,

I’ve had a rescued Tibetan Spaniel in my home for the past 7 weeks.  This poor boy (I call him “Bowie”) has a sad story.  I had met his owner at dog shows a few years ago. We became friendly and discussed traveling to shows together the falling spring to save expenses and have companionship.  However, she developed leukemia that winter (a result of chemo as a child) and died that winter.  The husband had not been real involved with the dogs, but now had 16 plus an elderly aunt that lived with them.  He put the 6 male dogs (not neutered, I assume, as this boy wasn’t until recently) in the basement during the day.  A couple of the dogs were large, and Bowie was “picked on” by the other dogs.

Eventually neighbors called animal control on this man, as there is a limit of 3 dogs in his county.  The animal control supervisor lives one block away and has kept pressure on him reducing down to 3 dogs.  Only two of the dogs were tibbies, and he kept the female one.  He contacted me (I had offered to help him) and brought Bowie over.  Bowie had a severe flea reaction and had lost most the hair on his back end (although bathed the night before, he was still covered in fleas).  He was also rather skinny.  But the main help this dog needed was LOVE…he was terrified and very skiddish.  In fact, the dog was in my backyard (half-acre) when the man left, and I could not get him to come in, he just kept running from me.  I had to have the man come back!  I kept the dog on collar and leash for the next several days until I was sure he would come to me.

Fortunately, it only took a couple days for this dog to bond to me, he was so appreciative of attention and affection.  He really enjoys the company of my dogs except for my boys who were aggressive to him once they discovered he was intact.  He is now a happy, healthy, very handsome dog.  He was well-bred and could have finished his championship.  However, he had a severe marking habit that few people could tolerate, so he was neutered.  Just one week after neutering, his marking behavior has curtailed greatly, and I will continue to work with him with hopes of eliminating that entirely.

Other than initial shyness and marking, he is the perfect pet.  He loves to take walks, will ride in the car quietly, does not object to crating at night in my room, and plays all day with other dogs here.  He likes toys and has some cute quirks.  He is very gentle and sweet and is in excellent health.  I am asking for reimbursement of expenses only-neutering, shot, etc.

Let me know if you can’t open the photos,  It gave me a funny error message that I ignored and was able to see them when I checked.

Oh,BTW, he is just turning 4 years old and is about 15 lbs.

Your friend in dogs,

Vicki Sabo

PS The ideal home would be able to keep him inside in a gated area with no carpet until he loses the desire to mark.  He will potty on papers if needed.  He uses the dog door here to go outside.  You would need to devote the first couple days to making him comfortable.  Your house and yard MUST be escape-proof as Bowie may be very skiddish again in a new situation and would be impossible to catch.  He must be pottied on a leash the first days to prevent having to catch him.  Trust me, this dog is worth this early inconvenience.

If this dog interests you, and you need Vicki’s contact information,it can be found in the breeder’s list of the Tibetan Spaniel Club of America.

 

What should be done about Access Atlanta?

If there is one thing to be said about the AJC food staff, love or hate them, it is that they are professionally trained, know how to write and can write. Sometimes they write beautifully, the kind of prose you want to read over and over. It sure would be nice if there were a search tool that allowed access to, oh, all articles by Meredith Ford from 2005 inclusive. You know, a nice text field were you could say something like “author=Meredith Ford, year= 2005, subject=food” and go for it. Instead we’re faced with the interface of Access Atlanta.

Access Atlanta is more a dream for advertisers than readers. The interface is cramped, the interface is slow. The whole site acts as if was never seriously tested with the target audience that would try to use it most. More so, Access Atlanta doesn’t seem to be able to keep food articles that were once there. The hundreds of broken Access Atlanta links around the internet are proof of that. The number of lost articles that can’t be recovered, even by searching on the site, is proof of that.

Access Atlanta is the La Brea tar pit of food articles; articles check in, and soon are lost forever. Contrast that state of affairs with the New York Times, where it’s not all that hard to use a web search and find an article dating to the 19th century. It’s a waste of the AJC’s greatest culinary resource, its long history of excellent food writing over the years. It’s a crime to the authors of the work, it’s a crime perpetrated on readers like me.

 

01/2010 and Food near Snellville is the third largest independent food review site in Atlanta

I’m not much for self promotion, but I suspect it’s time to do so. According to Urbanspoon (about the only metric that I know of) I have more Atlanta reviews than all but two independent blogging sites, and those reviews have been accumulated in a little less than 11 months. In late February this site will be one year old.

This metric, of course, does not count newspapers, who more and more no longer have feature writers and instead have bloggers. And it includes Blissful Glutton, who makes her living by reviewing restaurants. It doesn’t include sites that aren’t “into” using Urbanspoon as an iPhone link, though that seems a little silly to me.

What’s more I am more often these days in Urbanspoons top 25 bloggers worldwide. Now that I believe is a bit of faint praise, but it’s real. I think it speaks more for the penetration of iPhones and blogging in general into the Atlanta market than it does how fantastic the site is, but once again, it gives people a sense of where this blog has been, and how much work has been done here to provide content to readers.

Some of this output has been by design. There is no way I can compete with a professional food writer, any professional, with long extended reviews, given my typical 50 hour week and long commute. The only way to distinguish myself in this crowded medium is to publish short and fast. Sometimes, the reviews will be awkward, because of the time scale on which I have to publish. Other times, I’ll be the only one publishing a review of a restaurant. I really like forgotten restaurants, those that the popular crowd has passed by. But in all I try for a mix, and in particular seeking out good, inexpensive, independent restaurants. Those are the most fun to find. Some of those, to note, will be extremely popular.

For those who have wondered about site readership, I’ll note that daily reading metrics have gotten quite volatile, and unpredictable. Often my best days are the day after I publish an article. But in general, on a monthly scale, this site has seen nothing but steady growth. And hopefully, that growth will continue into the near future.

 

On Vacation

I’m out of town this week, so if the nature and number of posts are smaller than ordinary, that would be why. I’m going to try and eat at a couple local restaurants – I’ll be in Louisiana and Texas – and so we should have some interesting new content in the days to follow.

That said, I still haven’t published all my content from San Francisco either. I have articles on two Japanese restaurants to complete.

FnS.