Good Tuesday morning.
We are deep in the heart of pumpkin everything season – from the sublime (muffins, bread, pie, soup, latte, protein powder, cereal) to the, in my humble opinion, ridiculous (candles, pasta, nasal spray, deodorant, toilet paper, toothpaste, mac-and-cheese, hummus).
As an aside: all these products DO, in fact, exist, according to a brief Google search. I tied in vain to determine the complete universe of pumpkin products and failed utterly. One single search turned up 65 items – all edible. Trader Joe’s alone has 132 pumpkin-related offerings, according to its website.
The very truncated lists that appear above are merely my point of view, which I’m sure many people do not share. Also, when we say “pumpkin” here, we’re really referring to the spice blend that usually appears in pumpkin pie (cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, and cloves).
For the bakers among us, you’ll note that the aforementioned mix is very similar to apple pie spice, though with the addition of ginger and cloves, which gives all things pumpkin that slightly complex and spicy element that so many people enjoy.
Pumpkin on its own – minus the signature spice – is pretty bland, as a rule. (PSA: All pumpkins are a type of squash, but not all squash are pumpkins. If you want to go deep on that, click here, because technically speaking, this post is actually NOT about pumpkins – we’ll get there, I promise).
Pumpkin is not, actually, my preferred fall treat. I am firmly on Team Apple, which includes hot apple cider doughnuts – a delicacy that is pretty much unsurpassable – especially if it’s hot out of the fryer. I also love an apple pie and apple streusel muffins (who am I kidding, streusel on anything elevates it considerably).
That said, there are few traditional pumpkin desserts that I would decline, with the exception of cheesecake, which is hands down one of my least favorite sweet indulgences. I know I’m probably in the minority here, as cheesecake is included on at least one Top 10 most popular desserts in the U.S. list, ranking behind everyone’s favorite sick room sweet, Jell-O, which I find somewhat insane.
Cheesecake’s origin story has roots in Ancient Greece, but the modern-day version – the heavy, rich dessert with a crumbly crust – was created here in the U.S. A New York dairyman named William Lawrence had a hand in that by inventing what we now know as cream cheese. Like so many good things, he happened on this innovation entirely by accident, while trying to recreate the French Neufchâtel.
Lawrence, who lived in Chester, Orange County, mass produced what would one day become a staple of bagel lovers everywhere – Philadelphia Cream Cheese (yes, it originated in the Empire – not the Keystone- State). Cream cheese is the not-so-secret ingredient in New York-style cheesecake, which is denser and richer than its “regular” cousin, thanks to the combination of additional cream cheese, more eggs, and heavy and/or sour cream.
The invention of New York-style cheesecake is attributed to a man named Arnold Ruben, the owner of Reuben’s Restaurant and Delicatessen in New York City. If you want to go very, VERY deep on all things cheesecake, click here.
Interestingly, the concept of pumpkin cheesecake might SEEM modern, but it actually dates back centuries – all the way back to the Renaissance, circa 1570, in fact, when a chef named Bartolomeo Scappi hit on the idea of mixing pumpkin puree with ricotta, Marscapone, cream, melted butter, brown sugar, and spices, and then baking it. The result was crustless and very rich.
Today is National Pumpkin Cheesecake Day, which comes just ahead (five days before) National Pumpkin Day, so this post technically kills two birds with one stone.
After a truly weird day that saw sun, drizzle, hard rain, hard wind, and then drizzle again – all in the span of just a few hours – today is going to be incredibly boring from a weather perspective. Look for mostly sunny skies with temperatures in the mid-60s, but don’t get used to it.
In the headlines…
President Donald Trump can move forward with his plan to deploy National Guard troops to Portland, an appeals court ruled on Monday in a major legal victory for the administration.
A three-member panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals delivered the 2-1 decision, striking down one of two temporary restraining orders issued by lower courts that halted the National Guard deployment to the city.
Deployment can move forward, for now, under the preliminary ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. But legal wrangling will likely continue.
The nomination of Paul Ingrassia, President Trump’s pick to lead the Office of Special Counsel, appeared to be in jeopardy last night after Politico reported that he had sent a series of racist text messages.
At least four Republican senators, including the Senate majority leader, have signaled they will oppose his nomination to the office – traditionally independent corruption-fighting agency that safeguards federal whistle-blowers and enforces some ethics laws.
The Trump administration says it is cancelling student debt for millions of borrowers — a pivot from its previous moves to block some loan forgiveness plans.
In an agreement with the American Federation of Teachers, the White House will start processing student loan forgiveness for eligible borrowers in two income-driven repayment plans – Income-Contingent Repayment and Pay as You Earn – until they expire.
Outrage spread yesterday over Trump’s effort to mock the huge No Kings protests over the weekend by posting an AI video of himself dumping waste on demonstrators.
Supporters of the rallies slammed Trump for posting the 18-second clip depicting him wearing a crown and piloting a KING TRUMP warplane over some of the sprawling crowds that gathered on Saturday to protest his hard-line second term in power.
Demolition began yesterday on the East Wing of the White House to make way for Trump’s massive new $250 million ballroom.
An outage involving Amazon Web Services, the cloud service provider that supports much of the internet, took many websites and apps offline for over two hours yesterday, in the latest disruption that showed the fragility of global technology infrastructure.
The outage, which affected websites and apps for some major banks, gaming sites and entertainment services, started shortly after 3 a.m. Amazon said in an update at 5:27 a.m. that most websites and apps relying on its services were working normally again.
A number of online services including Venmo, Snapchat, Fortnite, Facebook, Prime Video and Amazon’s cloud computing unit Amazon Web Services, were hit by the outages.
New Amtrak rail options are coming to the Albany-Rensselaer Train Station, which serves the Capital Region. Beginning next spring, the Metro-North Hudson Line will go beyond Poughkeepsie and extend to the Capital Region.
The expansion is intended to fill a gap in NYC-Albany service left by the cancellation or consolidation of three weekday Amtrak trips last May to accommodate long-delayed work on the East River Tunnels to repair damage done by Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office said the fares for the new Metro-North service will be fixed at about $40, unlike Amtrak’s trains, which have variable prices that can exceed $100 on some trips.
“New Yorkers deserve more and they certainly demand more,” Hochul said. “That’s why I pushed Amtrak and the M.T.A. to join forces together and see if we couldn’t find some creative solutions and tackle this issue head-on.”
Hochul has pursued some transparency initiatives, — but still hasn’t come through on her 2021 promise to expedite New York’s notoriously slow foil system.
Although Hochul is expanding Metro-North’s service area, she is not expanding the Metropolitan Transportation Authority commuter zone area that is impacted by the payroll mobility tax. But that doesn’t mean that she can’t (or won’t) in the future.
New York regulators moved yesterday to shut down a cannabis company on Long Island after it allowed some of the industry’s biggest brands to make products at its facilities without the required licenses.
State legislation has made its way into law aimed at giving courts leeway in removing firearms from individuals when evidence of animal cruelty has been discovered, according to Sen. Michelle Hinchey.
The rabbi of a prominent Manhattan synagogue slammed Zohran Mamdani as a “danger to the security of the New York Jewish community” — as he urged congregants to back Andrew Cuomo for mayor instead.
Mamdani’s time at the Bronx High School of Science expanded and helped shape his views of New York, from the cricket pitch to politics.
A group of wealthy New York businessmen has in the past few days pumped more than $3 million into newly formed super PACs that aim to stop Mamdani as the prospect of the democratic socialist running City Hall looks increasingly likely, new filings reveal.
Mamdani’s ideas aren’t as outlandish as they may sound in the power halls of New York or Washington; they’ve been tried elsewhere around the world, by politicians on the left and right, and in many cases, proved both popular and politically effective.
John Catsimatidis called on Curtis Sliwa to quit the mayor’s race, joining a last-minute effort by Cuomo and his supporters to clear the field for the former governor. The call touched off a disagreement between Sliwa and Catsimatidis over the Sliwa’s job status.
Catsimatidis and Sid Rosenberg, two of New York’s most influential conservative voices, urged the Republican mayoral nominee to drop out of the race, reasoning it’s necessary for him to do so to help defeat progressive front-runner Mamdani.
With two weeks left in the scramble for City Hall, Sliwa, 71, has finally and improbably emerged as a full-fledged protagonist on the city’s biggest stage — and he is ready to fight anyone trying to push him off before Nov. 4.
Former independent mayoral candidate Jim Walden, who dropped his own long-shot campaign and backed Cuomo’s bid, rehashed a slew of scandals, allegations and sagas from Sliwa’s decades in Big Apple politics.
Rep. Elise Stefanik blasted Hochul’s “desperate” endorsement of Mamdani after the Democratic socialist mayoral candidate’s association with an alleged terror-tied imam sparked backlash.
A new poll from AARP and Gotham Polling finds Mamdani is holding his lead at 43.2%. Cuomo is in second place at 28.9%, and Sliwa is in third place at 19.4%.
The same poll finds Cuomo and Mamdani would be in a neck-and-neck race if Sliwa drops out – with Cuomo just four points behind Mamdani, which is within the poll’s margin of error. In that scenario, Mamdani is ahead 44.6% to Cuomo’s 40.7%.
Mamdani unveiled a sweeping plan to reduce the number of sidewalk sheds, pledging to remove all city-owned scaffolding that has been up for more than three years and to overhaul the city’s approach to building maintenance and facade inspections.
Former four-term state Democratic Attorney General Robert Abrams ripped Mamdani as a “disaster for New York” while endorsing Cuomo for mayor despite “all of his flaws.”
Alex Bores, a Democratic state lawmaker in Manhattan, said yesterday that he would join the open primary race to replace Representative Jerrold Nadler, who is retiring from Congress after three decades.
A new analysis of nearly 40,000 government-funded apartments in New York City finds costs are soaring not only for tenants, but for landlords as well driven by a steep increase in insurance premiums.
Authors of the study say the solution, at least for this subset of low-income housing, isn’t raising rent on tenants, but more rental assistance, new city and state funding for repairs and strategies to limit escalating insurance hikes.
Close to 150,000 New York City students could lose school bus service next month if operators follow through on a threat to yank drivers off the job over a bitter contract impasse, according to a formal warning filed yesterday.
The animal rights group NYCLASS has spent millions of dollars over the past decade as part of its campaign to ban horse carriages in New York City, according to records reviewed.
One person was critically hurt and nine others were also injured yesterday when a box truck hit a van parked near Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan and pushed it onto the sidewalk, the police said.
A newborn girl was found abandoned at the bottom of a staircase in a busy subway station in Midtown yesterday morning, according to the police and an internal police document.
A record 154,000 public school students in New York City were homeless during the last school year, according to data released yesterday, grim evidence that the city’s worsening housing crisis is wreaking havoc on its youngest and most vulnerable residents.
The country’s first hoops-themed school, The Earl Monroe New Renaissance Basketball Charter School — named after NBA Hall of Famer and Knicks champion Earl “The Pearl” Monroe, saw all 89 students in its first graduating class in June enrolled in college.
An audit by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli found that weak state oversight of New York City’s Adult Protective Services failed to address chronic problems that left vulnerable adults without critical support.
Dozens of the city’s new space-age garbage containers crash-landed in Brooklyn over the last week, marking the latest move by the sanitation department to eradicate mountains of trash bags from sidewalks.
Ariel Emanuel, the superagent turned entertainment industry mogul, has added the theater ticketing company TodayTix to his growing portfolio.
Jurors in Oneida County returned mixed verdicts in the death of Robert Brooks yesterday morning, finding two former Marcy prison guards not guilty of all charges, while convicting one of murder and manslaughter.
The jury found David Kingsley, seen on body-cam footage holding Brooks by the neck while he was on a gurney, guilty of second-degree murder and first-degree manslaughter charges. Matthew Galliher and Nicholas Kieffer were acquitted on all charges.
“I’m disappointed by the acquittals in the case,” Hochul said. “I respect the jury’s decision— there was one correction officer found guilty.”
Brooks’ son, Robert Brooks Jr., was not in Oneida County Court, where the trial took place. However, he is expected to call on the governor to sign the Omnibus Prison Refom Bill into law in Albany today.
Mark O’Connell said his more than three decades of experience as a priest in Boston helped develop the tools he’ll need to guide the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany as its 11th bishop.
A former information technology worker for the Troy Housing Authority has been charged with public corruption and official misconduct after state authorities said he illegally managed his own IT business while working for the city.
A sheriff’s deputy visited an outspoken critic of Rensselaer County Executive Steve McLaughlin on Saturday for a check-in after the Republican politician claimed she threatened him in a Facebook comment.
The state University at Albany will pay $40,000 to Dr. Kamiar Alaei, a former lecturer and professor, to settle a federal lawsuit.
It’s only been since March that Republicans have held sway over the Saratoga Springs City Council. But the governing body’s partisan dominance might shift once again — back to Democrats — with the outcome of three competitive commissioner races.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
