The World's Greatest Muffin (Maybe)

This morning I ate the best blueberry muffin I ever had in my entire life. At least I think I did. Let me explain.

Pushing up on 53 years old, I have had a fair amount of blueberry muffins throughout my lifetime. I didn’t have many—if any—in my youth, as the concept of fruit in a dessert-type item nauseated me. (At that time, I was all chocolate all the time.) But sometime in adulthood I accepted, indeed, even embraced the idea of the blueberry muffin.

For three years in my early 20s, I lived and worked in Manhattan. It was about a 20-minute walk from my small studio apartment on the Upper East Side to the MAD Magazine offices on 52^nd Street and Madison Avenue, and I passed countless eateries along the way. Restaurants, bakeries, street vendors—the breakfast options on my daily morning commute were endless. I was living on my own for the first time and with that newfound whiff of freedom, I decided I would be fearless. I would put myself out there and eat non-chocolate pastries that I never dared try before. For the first time I experienced the wonder of a bear claw, the glory of an almond croissant, and yes, the majesty of a blueberry muffin.

I am not going to lie for the sake of this blog post and say that blueberry muffins were my favorite because that’s simply not true. But I did like them very much and made them a regular part of my breakfast rotation. Sometimes I would get them from a bakery, sometimes from a breakfast cart, and sometimes I would even bake them myself. (No, that last part is a lie. I never baked a blueberry muffin in my entire life. But wouldn’t it be cool if I did?) During my years in Manhattan, I must have had something on the order of 200 blueberry muffins. Most of these blueberry muffins were very good. A few were duds.

When I moved out to Arizona in 1995, I continued to eat blueberry muffins, though perhaps not as frequently. Using standard deviations, supply chain economics, and numbers I’m simply pulling out of my ass, I would estimate that since moving to the Grand Canyon state I consume approximately 40 blueberry muffins a year. That makes about 1,080 blueberry muffins I’ve had in Arizona. Adding that to the 200 from New York days, it seems I’ve had an estimated 1,280 blueberry muffins in my lifetime.

So how do I know the one I ate this morning was the best? I don’t. I can’t. But people say that sort of thing all the time. “This is the best pizza I’ve had in my life.” “This is the best lobster I’ve had in my life.” “This is the best frog eye salad I’ve had in my life.” Granted, sometimes this is simply hyperbole, but other times people seem sincerely committed to the notion that whatever it is they just ate is really the best version of that thing they have had. How does one know that?

I am a man who loves keeping track of things with spreadsheets, but it has never occurred to me to keep a spreadsheet of all the items I eat and their relative tastiness. And even if I had such a spreadsheet of every blueberry muffin I’ve ever eaten, how would I know if the amazing one I had on March 23, 1994, was any better or worse than another amazing one I had on October 10, 2008, or any other amazing muffin day?  How accurate can one’s taste memory really be?

And yet the blueberry muffin I had this morning, which I got from the café at my work, was so amazingly delicious that, at this moment, I feel it is the best one I have ever tasted. And who are you to say any different? Do you secretly keep a spreadsheet of all the blueberry muffins I’ve had throughout my life? And if so, how did you get access to such information? And more importantly, please email it to me so I can continue to build on your incredible work.

The last morsel of this morning's muffin.

Flagstaff Food Fest

 

This summer we did not know if we were going to go on a family vacation. I started a new job in late February and had no idea what my workflow would be like, so I was hesitant to plan for any chunk of time away from the office. As the school year wound down, our two teenage boys (especially the younger one) kept on asking if we would be going anywhere this summer and I kept on saying “we’ll play it by ear.” Of course, “we’ll play it by ear,” is one of those parental loophole phrases that really translates into “I severely doubt it, but don’t want to flat out disappoint you, so quit asking me.”

As I progressed in my job, two competing points factoring into the vacation equation became clear: 1) from about mid-May to mid-August, my place of employment switches to a “summer schedule,” which means that we work ten-hour days from Monday through Thursday and have the day off on Fridays (Yay!); and 2) some of my projects are extremely demanding, which means I often have to work a significant amount of time on the weekends (Boo!). Reconciling these two concepts in an effort to plan for a vacation is a tricky proposition, but this past week, as a major project was put to bed, I found that I unexpectedly might be able to take an extra day off and…wait for it…do a quick, sort of spontaneous, family getaway.

So it was, that on Monday we decided that we would be heading to Flagstaff, Arizona on Thursday for a quick two-night stay. As someone who likes to plan a vacation months in advance, hitting the road for a trip with no itinerary and only the vaguest of plans concerning what we would do once we got to our destination, was a tad unsettling. We made reservations to stay at a Days Inn in the eastern part of Flagstaff and knew that we wanted to eat at a critically acclaimed Mexican restaurant called Salsa Brava, but other than that the trip plan was somewhere between murky and hazy. No matter—we were all excited to get out of the 100+ degree heat for a couple of days.

As it turns out, our plan to eat at Salsa Brava on the first night of our trip was a perfect launching pad for what our trip ended up becoming—an excuse to eat at unique Flagstaff restaurants for three straight days. Yes, I did take the boys on a hike for a couple of hours on Friday morning, but other than that, the focus was on finding interesting eateries. And in that endeavor, we succeeded in spades.

While Flagstaff, Arizona may not be thought of in the same regard as Paris, Rome, or New York when it comes to high quality cuisine, the truth is that every city has its own share of hidden culinary gems if you put in the effort to find them. And in the case of our family, we are just as happy (in fact, happier) with hole-in-the wall mom and pop establishments, as we are with fancy five-star restaurants. So, join me, won’t you, as I take you on the Schwartzberg culinary tour of Flagstaff.

Day 1

Dinner: Salsa Brava – The featured restaurant on our culinary tour, Salsa Brava, is one that we stumbled across when we were last in Flagstaff in October of 2019. We all loved this place so much the first time, that we knew the next time we went to Flagstaff, we would have to eat there again, which is exactly what we did on Thursday night. Living in the Phoenix-metro area, we eat Mexican food on a frequent basis and have our favorite spots, so we are no stranger to this cuisine. So, trust me when I tell you that as good as the best Mexican place is in our area, Salsa Brava is even better. I’m no food critic, so I’d be hard-pressed to tell you what makes their food so much better than every other Mexican restaurant that I’ve been to, but I can tell you that the whole family finds the cuisine amazing. Perhaps it’s the unique menu selections, or the high altitude (Flagstaff rests at 6,909 feet), or the fact that the place is always so packed you have to wait at least 45 minutes to get seated so you’re starving by the time a fork enters your mouth, but every dish we’ve tried there has been sensational. I inhaled—I mean ate—the Portobello & Spinach Enchiladas. My wife and older son both had the Lobster & Shrimp Enchiladas, and my younger son had the Shrimp Street Tacos. In my younger son’s words: “the food was a 10 out of 10.”

Dessert: The Sweet Shoppe – After dinner we decided to head to downtown Flagstaff to walk around and look in the shops. What we hadn’t considered was that at 8:30 PM on a Thursday night, all of the retail shops were already closed. No matter—some of the food shops were still open, so while we couldn’t buy souvenirs, we could buy dessert. This we did at the Sweet Shoppe, which is another place we first discovered on our 2019 excursion. The Sweet Shoppe has sweets of all kinds—candy, baked goods, and gelato. On this occasion, we opted to go the gelato route. The worker there was very generous in letting us sample the flavors. Indeed, between the four of us, we probably sampled 20 different flavors before making our decisions. The final choices? Me – Stracciatella (Italian for “yummy”), Wife – Limoncello, Son 1 – Dark Chocolate Orange, Son 2 – Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate.

Day 2

Breakfast: Day’s Inn Complimentary Breakfast Buffet – Okay, I’ll admit this meal wasn’t quite on the same level as the rest. What it did have going for it, though, was that it was free, conveniently located, and filling. I had an average blueberry muffin, a decent egg and cheese omelet, and an adequate piece of toast. My wife and younger son took advantage of the nifty automatic pancake maker. There was apple juice and orange juice. My older son dared my younger son to mix the two and drink it, which he did. What do you expect? They’re teenagers, so that’s how they entertain themselves when not gaming.

Lunch: Restaurant (aka The Crown Railroad Cafe) – About two blocks from our motel was a large restaurant that we all thought was simply called “Restaurant,” because that is what the very prominent signage said. Every time we drove past it, we joked about the generically named establishment, never thinking we would end up eating there, because it seemed like more of a punchline than an eatery. So, when we got hungry for lunch on Day 2 of our trip, we never really considered “Restaurant” an option. I searched online for a suitable place for lunch and came across an interesting establishment called “The Crown Railroad Cafe.” As I read about the décor (the restaurant is railroad themed and features an elaborate miniature train set with a track that runs throughout the entire place) and the extensive menu (vast selection of diner-type food, featuring 66 different omelets, since they are located on Route 66) I decided this is the place we had to go, especially since it seemed to be located right near our motel. Then I clicked on the images of the place and, to my astonishment, found that “The Crown Railroad Café” and “Restaurant” were one in the same! Why they decided to display the word “Restaurant” in enormous 15-foot-high neon letters on top of the building and “The Crown Railroad Cafe” in illegible small print on the awning below, I did not know, but I promptly turned to my family and said, “Put on your shoes, we’re going to Restaurant!” About three minutes after we all put on our shoes, we arrived at Restaurant and were greeted by very friendly waitstaff. As we did the touristy thing of taking photos of each other sitting in the booth, the waitress came over and offered to take a picture of the four of us. The photo, which accompanies this blog post, is great for several reasons. First off, it’s the only photo of all four of us from this trip; second, in the upper lefthand corner, you can see signage that says “Flagstaff,” so years from now, we will all remember where the picture was taken; and finally, third, outside the window you can see both Route 66 and the railroad tracks that the restaurant was named for. The french-fries were crispy and not greasy, the coleslaw was freshly made and delicious, and the bread on everyone’s sandwiches was toasted to perfection. The generic “Restaurant” turned out to be way better than any of us would have imagined when we first drove past it the day before.

Mid-day Snack: The Sweet Shoppe – After lunch we decided to head back to downtown Flagstaff, because the souvenir shops were bound to be open at 3 PM on a Friday, and gosh darn it, we wanted souvenirs. Indeed, the downtown area was now bustling compared to the previous evening, and we joined in on the bustlement, checking out as many shops as we could in the eight-block radius that comprises the Flagstaff tourist hub. Of course, all this walking made us burn off our lunch and build up quite an appetite. Soon, we found ourselves in front of the Sweet Shoppe once again. And the truth is, you can’t be in front of the Sweet Shoppe without entering the Sweet Shoppe. While my wife and older son went right back to the gelato, I and my younger son, opted for the candy section instead. I left with a raspberry truffle (deliciously decadent) and my son left with some sort of chocolate stick with a gummy worm connected to it (tasty and weird.) The sugar rush managed to give us the energy we needed for the rest of our souvenir shopping, then it was back to the motel to nap until we were ready for dinner.

Dinner: Golden Dragon – After sleeping off our food comas it was time to decide where to have dinner. The family seemed to have a hankering for Asian cuisine, so it was off to Google to figure out what Flagstaff had to offer in that genre. Of the dozen or so restaurants that came up from my Google search we went with the one that a) had a very extensive menu, and b) was really easy to get to from our motel. Golden Dragon was an extremely large traditional-looking Chinese restaurant that was almost completely empty when we arrived a little after 8 PM. Indeed, when we walked in only one of the 50 or so tables in the place was occupied. As you can imagine, there was no wait to be seated. Now when I enter a restaurant of this size on a Friday night and find almost nobody there, I think one of two things must be going on: 1) the food is really bad, so they have no repeat customers, or 2) it’s actually a front for an illegal gambling den housed in the basement. Well, after eating the food at Golden Dragon (me: Family Style Tofu, Wife: Lemon Chicken, Son 1: Orange Chicken, Son 2: Shrimp Lo Mein) I can safely tell you that the answer is not #1, as the food (including our appetizers of spring rolls and crab puffs) was all very good to great. So, the next time I find myself if Flagstaff, I’m going to go to Golden Dragon and slip the hostess a twenty to see if she’ll show me to the hidden craps table.

Day 3

Breakfast: Miz Zip’s – On our last day in Flagstaff, we decided to skip the complimentary Days Inn breakfast buffet and try out another interesting looking eatery that we drove past a dozen times in the previous two days. Another mom-and-pop type restaurant prominently situated on Route 66, Miz Zips has a quaint smalltown diner feel. When we arrived at the relatively small café on Saturday morning around 10:30 AM the place was packed, but we were able to get a booth near the kitchen. The interior was chockful of Flagstaff and Route 66 historical memorabilia. On the wall next to me, for example, was a general store grocery receipt from 1909. On the radio was a blend of 50s and 60s rock-and-roll hits. All of this conspired to create a playful, nostalgic atmosphere. Then there was the food, which was delicious and plentiful. I wanted pancakes and noticed that on the menu the options were simply one pancake or two pancakes. I thought, “One pancake? Who eats just one pancake?” So I ordered two pancakes with blueberries. When my meal arrived, I realized why someone might eat just one pancake. Turns out, their pancakes are the size of freakin’ hubcaps! They were delicious, but I will admit I did not finish both pancakes—I got through about 1.75 pancakes before I was defeated. As for the rest of the food, everyone seemed more than satisfied with their various style of eggs and hashbrowns. (I snagged me some hashbrowns off one of my son’s plates and they were quite good.) Miz Zips was a perfect last meal on our culinary tour.

After our late breakfast, we gassed up and headed back down to Chandler, Arizona. The entire family agreed that our quick Flagstaff getaway was a rousing success, even if all we really did while we were there was eat. Oh yes, the boys and I did go on that hike for a couple of hours on Friday morning and the name of the trail could not have been more appropriate for this particular trip—Fatman’s Loop.

Cinematic Resolution Resolved

As we welcome 2022 and say “goodbye and good riddance” to 2021 (which was even more of a suck-fest in many ways than 2020) I can at least say that for the first time ever, I actually made good on a New Year’s resolution. Well, technically I did achieve my resolution in 2009 when my resolution was to not make any resolutions, but I think that’s a bit of a cheat.

Two years ago, in January 2020, I had made what I thought was a great resolution—have lunch with an old friend once every month. I followed through with this in January and February of that year, but then in March the pandemic hit and you can figure out the rest. So in 2021 I decided to make a more home-bound resolution. I resolved to watch 100 movies that I had never seen before. That may seem like a pretty easy achievement to some, but with work and family commitments, not to mention a variety of episodic TV shows that my wife and I watch, finding time to slide in 100 new movies over the year ain’t as easy as making popcorn.

Another layer of complexity in achieving this particular resolution was factoring in our Friday Family Movie Nights. Every Friday a different family member picks a movie we all watch and more often than not, it’s a family favorite that we’ve seen before. I usually use my turn to expose the boys to older movies that they haven’t seen, with mixed results. (They loved Young Frankenstein, but hated The Out of Towners.) So watching movies I’ve never seen before on Friday nights is pretty rare. Indeed, this past year only 8 of the 52 movies (15%) we watched on movie night were ones I hadn’t seen before.

That’s right, I kept statistics, so get ready to be bored to death by data.

I started out 2021 at a torrid pace, watching 14 movies I hadn’t previously seen in the month of January. I did some math, though, and figured out that at that rate I’d reach the 100 movie mark by July, so I decided to slow myself down. (A more ambitious person probably would have just adjusted their goal to match that pace, but I thought seeing 168 movies I hadn’t seen before was setting myself up for failure.) Still, even with the adjusted pace, I found myself ahead of the curve and by the mid-year point I had seen 61 flicks.

Round about October I decided to make a sub-resolution of my main resolution and strived to watch a horror movie every day throughout Halloween month. The caveat here was that they didn’t need to be movies I hadn’t seen before, as long as they were horror movies. If you missed the blog about this startling turn of events, you can read all about it here. 

By the end of October I had gotten to 98 movies, so I pumped the brakes hard in November and only watched two new movies. I had hit my goal of 100 and initially decided to stop watching movies I hadn’t seen for the rest of the year. For some OCD reason, I decided I would spoil my resolution if I watched more movies than I said I would. For a couple of weeks I stuck with this mindset and watched nothing new. Eventually, I realized I was being a putz, and if I surpassed my goal of watching 100 movies that I never saw before, I would not be tracked down and handcuffed by the resolution police. Besides, I like watching new movies, so I started back up again and by the end of this yearlong project I had seen 111 movies that I hadn’t previously seen.

Now if I was a complete loon, I would give a write up on every movie I saw in 2021, but luckily for you I’m only a partial loon, so I’m just going to make some interesting observations (interesting to me) before wrapping it up.

I focused a lot of my new movie viewing on horror movies and Best Picture Oscar nominees. Those two categories accounted for 74 of the films I saw, or 67%.  In all, I watched 43 horror flicks and 31 Best Pic nominees (with 9 of those being Best Pic winners.)

The oldest movie I watched was Wings from 1927, which was the first ever Best Picture winner, and was a very enjoyable film. The special effects for a movie that is almost a century old were pretty amazing.

I saw ten movies that came out in 2021, five of them in an actual movie theater! That’s right, after 16 months of not going to a movie theater, I finally went back in July, while we were on a family vacation in Texas. I went with my brother-in-law and two sons to see Black Widow, and I don’t know if it was the thrill of finally going back to a movie theater after the longest hiatus in my life, or the fact that I have a schoolboy crush on Scarlett Johansson, but I had an incredible time watching that movie.

I’m sure the question that is on everyone’s mind at this point (or at least the three people who made it this far) is what movie did I like the most of the 111? That’s not an easy question to answer, because I watched a lot of really good flicks over the past year. But if you forced me to pick one (which would be weird, by the way, because why would anyone force me to do such a thing) I’d probably go with La La Land, which was one of the most charming movies that I’ve ever seen.

The movie I liked the least of the 111 was Space Jam: A New Legacy, which we also saw in Texas, although not in a movie theater. Listen, the original Space Jam, with Michael Jordan was only okay, but compared to the new version with LeBron James, it was like Casablanca.

I saw five British horror movies from the early 1970s and all five of them clearly used the exact same country road whenever there was a scene of someone riding on horseback. The movies weren’t  all made by the same director or even the same production company, but it was obvious that it was the same road every time. The most common denominator amongst these films was that Peter Cushing was in four of them, so at first I thought maybe he had some sort of odd clause in his contract that required a scene on that particular road, but then what of the fifth film? Coincidence perhaps? Or maybe there is only one country road in all of England. What do I know?

I suppose I can keep going on making various observations about the films I watched last year, but I fear at this point I’m on the cusp of putting even the most diehard of my blog readers to sleep. So I will leave you with this final thought before sharing the full list of movies I saw last year: If you are ever given the choice of watching The Deer Hunter or Humanoids from the Deep, go with The Deer Hunter.

Date	Movie	Year	My Rating
1-Jan	Dark Skies	2013	8
2-Jan	The Lighthouse	2019	7
3-Jan	The Impssible	2012	8
9-Jan	Peter Rabbit	2018	6
9-Jan	The Invisible Man	2019	9
10-Jan	Maniac	1980	6
16-Jan	The Insider	1999	9
17-Jan	Bohemian Rhapsody	2018	7
18-Jan	The Town That Dreaded Sundown	1976	4
23-Jan	The Hateful Eight	2015	7
24-Jan	Ju On: The Grudge	2002	6
26-Jan	Blood Bath	1966	5
30-Jan	Manchester by the Sea	2016	7
31-Jan	The House That Dripped Blood	1971	7
2-Feb	The Little Girl Who Liveds Down the Lane	1976	6
4-Feb	Frailty	2001	8
6-Feb	28 Weeks Later	2007	6
8-Feb	Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World	2003	8
14-Feb	The Ballad of Buster Scruggs	2018	8
15-Feb	My Bloody Valentine	1981	5
21-Feb	Paths of Glory	1957	8
27-Feb	The Defiant Ones	1958	9
28-Feb	Crazy Rich Asians	2018	6
28-Feb	And Now the Screaming Starts	1973	6
6-Mar	Horns	2013	8
7-Mar	Sound of Metal	2019	7
8-Mar	The Vast of Night	2019	8
9-Mar	Aquaman	2018	5
11-Mar	Twins of Evil	1971	7
13-Mar	The Prestige	2006	8
14-Mar	Countess Dracula	1971	6
16-Mar	Dead of Night	1977	5
20-Mar	The Frighteners	1996	7
21-Mar	A Place in the Sun	1951	8
27-Mar	A Lego Brickumentary	2014	8
27-Mar	I Bury the Living	1958	4
27-Mar	Lifeforce	1985	6
3-Apr	Mank	2020	8
10-Apr	Frequency	2000	8
11-Apr	Julie & Julia	2009	8
17-Apr	Nosferatu the Vampyre	1979	4
18-Apr	The Man Who Skied Down Everest	1975	7
24-Apr	A Simple Plan	1998	9
25-Apr	Phenomena	1985	4
1-May	The Gift	2000	8
2-May	Witness for the Prosecution	1957	9
8-May	Humanoids from the Deep	1980	5
8-May	I Saw the Devil	2010	7
15-May	Shadow of a Doubt	1943	8
16-May	Milk	2008	8
23-May	The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo	2011	8
23-May	Bound	1996	6
30-May	Shane	1953	6
30-May	Nomadland	2020	7
31-May	How Green Was My Valley	1941	8
5-Jun	Wings	1927	9
6-Jun	Hollow Man	2000	6
12-Jun	Upside-Down Magic	2020	3
12-Jun	Minari	2020	7
13-Jun	Vice	2018	8
19-Jun	Philomena	2013	9
20-Jun	The Uninvited	2009	5
26-Jun	The Killing of a Sacred Deer	2017	6
2-Jul	Places in the Heart	1984	9
3-Jul	Downfall	2004	8
10-Jul	In Old Arizona	1928	6
19-Jul	Space Jam: A New Legacy	2021	3
20-Jul	Black Widow	2021	8
24-Jul	Secrets & Lies	1996	7
25-Jul	Splinter	2008	7
1-Aug	Mutiny on the Bounty	1935	6
7-Aug	My Spy	2020	6
12-Aug	Only Lovers Left Alive	2013	8
14-Aug	The Killing	1956	8
19-Aug	The Deer Hunter	1978	9
21-Aug	Yes Day	2021	5
22-Aug	The Queen	2006	8
28-Aug	Letters From Iwo Jima	2006	9
29-Aug	Pumpkinhead	1988	6
4-Sep	Wind River	2017	8
6-Sep	He Walked By Night	1948	5
12-Sep	Secret Window	2004	7
16-Sep	The Last Emperor	1987	6
18-Sep	La La Land	2018	9
23-Sep	Ghost World	2001	6
25-Sep	Summer School	1987	5
26-Sep	Tom Jones	1963	7
2-Oct	Halloween	2018	8
3-Oct	Wishmaster	1997	6
7-Oct	Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings	2021	7
9-Oct	Suspiria	2018	5
10-Oct	The Creeping Flesh	1973	5
16-Oct	Venom	2018	7
19-Oct	Sinister	2012	7
23-Oct	I Was A Teenage Zombie	1987	2
25-Oct	Dead of Winter	1987	6
30-Oct	Halloween Kills	2021	5
30-Oct	Hush	2016	7
6-Nov	Hacksaw Ridge	2016	9
27-Nov	Free Guy	2021	6
1-Dec	Battle Creek Brawl	1980	5
11-Dec	The Life of Emile Zola	1937	7
12-Dec	The Power of the Dog	2021	7
21-Dec	Let Me In	2010	8
21-Dec	Ghostbusters: Afterlife	2021	6
23-Dec	The Best Years of Our Lives	1946	8
25-Dec	Darkest Hour	2017	9
26-Dec	I Wake Up Screaming	1941	6
29-Dec	Don't Bother to Knock	1952	8
30-Dec	Nightmare Alley	2021	8
30-Dec	Red Notice	2021	7

 Note: The ones highlighted in yellow are the ones I saw in the theater.