Marga's Food Blog

A Gorgeous Bread Bowl

October 11, 2026 / marga / 0 Comments

A great addition to my table from Forest Decor

As you probably noticed, I do not run a commercial food blog. I don’t run ads, I don’t accept money for back links – or anything else -, and I use this blog mostly as a memory aid for myself and, perhaps one day, my children. I am, of course, very happy when people find some of its content useful, but my goals is far more self-involved.

Once in a while, however, someone asks me to review an item they are selling and they offer to ship me that item for free – if it’s something I’m likely to use in the near future, I might accept – particularly if it’s something that intrigues me. This was the case with the products sold by Forest Decor. This is company sells made to order and personalized wood products created in their workshop in Utah. They looked beautiful on their website, and thus I was happy to review them.

The company sent me two items, their Olive Wood Bread Bowl ($55) and their maple cutting board. I will review the latter after I use it a few times, but the bread bowl, which comes pre-oiled, is mostly a decorative and not particularly fragile item, so I figure I can review it as is.

Looks-wise the bread bowl is gorgeous. I’m keeping it in my dining room even when I’m not using it, because it’s decorative in itself. I love its lines, which makes me think of a canoe and the natural decoration of the wood. It’s carved into a single piece of wood and it I imagine it can be used for multiple purposes, including as a catch-all and candy bowl.

The bowl is 11.5″ x 3.5″, so too small for a regular size baguette, but perfect to accommodate demi-baguettes, which are about half the regular size. I like keeping demi-baguettes in the freezer to bake for breakfast or for when I have a sudden hankering for fresh bread and don’t want to go shopping.

It is a little too small for dinner rolls, though it still works

But it’s pretty functional to serve small pastries.

Still, I anticipate using it mostly for demi baguettes. Last year I bought a beautiful salami board from Argentina, that I am now hanging on my wall for most of the year, and I’m looking forward to using both this bread bowl and the salami board to serve a simple picada for Christmas. Depending on how well the cutting board fares, I might use it to serve some cheeses as well.

In all, I’m in love with this bowl. It feels so rustic yet elegant and also quite unique. It’s the sort of thing that I can see passing on to my kids.

Artisan Bake at Home French Style Demi Baguette

October 11, 2026 / marga / 0 Comments

Great to keep in your freezer

I love French bread, baguettes included, but they are only good when they are fresh. After a day, they get hard and you have to toast them to enjoy them. This means they are not particularly suitable for breakfast, unless you want to go shopping before you have your morning coffee.

Now, back when I was a kid and there was a bakery every couple of blocks that made sense. Here in America, however, that’s more of a pain and this is where frozen bread comes in. You take it out of the freezer, bake it for 15 minutes, and you’re enjoying warm, tasty bread with your coffee.

I started buying La Brea Take-and-Bake demi baguettes last Christmas, when I bought myself the Bonne Maman advent calendar and I needed a medium for jam every morning. I loved it, but it’s a bit expensive. Come Amazon to compete with them. Amazon demi baguette are comparable in quality, but cheaper ($3 for 2 6-oz demi baguettes).

My favorite creamers

October 11, 2026 / marga / 0 Comments

Coffee at your laziest

I’m lazy. Anyone who knows me can attest to that. It’s not something I’m proud of, but there is no point about lying about it. I’m as lazy a person as it comes. This means, that I do look for shortcuts whenever possible, and that’s always been my approach to coffee.

Like many Latin Americans, I grew up drinking instant coffee, and I did not change that habit until my mother gifted me a Keurig machine, some time over a decade ago. Brewing coffee was just too much trouble. I had added milk and sugar to my coffee until I discovered creamers – probably not too long after they started to fill supermarket refrigerators. Creamers – or so I thought – combine milk/cream and sugar, plus often another flavoring, cutting one step in my morning coffee making. Plus, to be honest, they taste better than just milk.

Alas, until I started reviewing different creamers for this blog post, I hadn’t actually looked at the ingredients on creamers. I had assumed – silly me! – tha they were made from milk or cream, given that most brands distinguished between their regular and non-dairy varieties. Imagine my surprise when I realized than the cheaper brands don’t have milk or cream at all. They are not technically diary-free only because they include milk-derived proteins such as sodium caseinate and micellar casein, but otherwise they are a mixture of sugar, oil and water. Yuck. One brand, Coffee Mate, even includes cellulose!

Truth be told, until reading the ingredients, I usually bought from whatever brand was on sale at Safeway that week – usually for $3 or $4. I’ve tried the natural ingredients brands, but I hadn’t enjoyed the flavors as much. I might be revisiting them, however.

The purpose of this blog post is as a memory aid of the creamers I try and my impression of them, to see whether I’ll buy them again. I do like variety above almost everything.

Bad ingredient creamers:

Coffee Mate Pumpkin Spice (on sale for $3 from $6 regular price)

I got this seasonal flavor for my daughter, but I tried it after I run out of my regular creamer. It’s not for me – I’m not a big fan of pumpkin spice anything, much less in coffee. My daughter liked it, however.

Ingredient wise, Coffee Mate is pretty terrible. This has water, sugar, soybean oil, dipotassium phosphate, micellar casein, diglycerides, cellulose gel, natural and artificial flavor, cellulose gum, carrageenan, acesulfame potassium and sucralose. It has 35 calories per Tbsp.

Delight Apple Butter Coffee Cake.

I totally hesitated before getting this flavor because “apple” and “coffee” don’t go together, even when followed by cake. Still, I was already planning to write this blog entry and I was curious, plus the reviews were pretty good.

Alas, I have a cold – so my ability to taste is compromised. I’ll write back my impressions of the creamer again in a few days.

Right now, most of what I can taste in my coffee is the apple butter. It’s not too sweet, so I don’t think I’ve added too much creamer, but the flavor of the artificial apple butter is so strong that it completely hides that of my medium-roast coffee. I may try it on dark-roasted coffee and see whether it stands up better against it. The results are not unpleasant, but also, not coffee. As it’s now, I’ll finish the bottle but I wouldn’t buy it again.

Delight is also one of those bad-ingredient creamers. It has water, sugar, palm oil, sodium caseinate, dipotassium phosphate, carrageenan, mono and diglycerides, flavoring, sodium stearoyl lactylate and salt.

Lucerne Belgian Chocolate Toffee (on sale for $3 from $4 regular price).

This has been my go-to creamer. I like the chocolate flavor and the “toffee” seems to round it up. The ingredients, however, are just awful, and I should probably just buy chocolate milk instead. They are: water, sugar, vegetable oil, cocoa, sodium caseinate, dipotassium phosphate, DATEM, artificial flavor, cellulose gum, polysorbate 60, salt, carrageenan. Despite this, it’s not vegan because the sodium caseinate comes from milk products.

Actually milk/cream based creamers:

Starbucks Caramel Macchiato (on sale for $4 from $8 regular price).

I enjoyed this creamer quite a bit. It gave my coffee a creamy mouthfeel and it had a nice, sweet caramel flavor which wasn’t too overwhelming. I’d buy it again.

Ingredients are: nonfat milk, sugar, heavy cream, buttermilk, vegetable oil, “natural” flavor and gellam gum.

Safeway Tri Tip Steak is not what’s depicted

October 9, 2026 / marga / 0 Comments

Tri-tip, that so-very California cut, was on sale at Safeway last week. It was $7/lb for the untrimmed roast and $10/lb for the steaks (down from $19/lb regular price). Last time I got the roast, it has almost as much fat as meat, so I decided to give the steaks a try this time. In the photo on their website, the steaks looked trimmed. I had bought this cut before in the past, and had worked quite well.

Alas, instead of getting three trimmed tri-tip steaks, I got a bunch of untrimmed smaller steaks. Here is the picture of just one:

I did trim them before grilling them, but the flavor was also sort of off – not as having gone bad, but just not having the great flavor that tri-tip usually has. I’m not an expert on beef, but I wonder if Safeway is getting worse quality meat to be able to put it on sale. The problem is that not knowing whether this is the case, makes me feel reluctant to buy it at regular price as well.

Now, don’t get me wrong, in these times when beef is so astronomically expensive, I very much appreciate Safeway’s sale prices, which I suspect may be loss leaders – but I also want to get what I think I’m ordering.

Signature Select French Onion Soup is a No for me

October 9, 2026 / marga / 0 Comments

Lacks onions

I’m not a huge soup lover, but Safeway deli soups can be a quick and fairly tasty meal, particularly in winter. These soups were on sale a couple of weeks ago ($5, from $9 regular price), so I tried the French Onion soup, which I hadn’t tried before. I was disappointed.

The soup, which doesn’t come with cheese or croutons (understandably), has too high a ratio of broth to onions. The onion slices are cut into short pieces, which I didn’t realize would so interfere with the texture of the sauce. The flavor was just OK, it was a bit too bitter, and it didn’t feel like the onions had been caramelized at all. In all, though I love French Onion soup, I wouldn’t buy this one again.

Safeway’s “Farmstyle” Bread is Moldy

October 8, 2026 / marga / 0 Comments

Orowheat Buttermilk Bread is Good

I was looking for the sliced bread with the thinnest slices to make alitos when I came across this Bakery Famous Bake Farmstyle Bread at Safeway. It is unsliced, which meant I had, at least, the possibility of slicing it thinner than regular sandwich bread. I also liked the idea of actually getting fresh sandwich bread. When I was a kid, my aunt Gladys would buy a loaf of fresh sandwich bread, along with one of rye bread for my granny, and this brought me back to those days.

I did read the reviews and several mentioned this item came hard or expired, but I figured I’d take my chances. I shouldn’t have. I order my groceries online and the loaf of bread they selected expired the same day I placed my order. Within a couple of days it was moldy all over.

I should have listened to the reviews

Still needing bread for the sandwiches, I sent my husband to Grocery Outlet (the closest store to my house, and usually less busy than Safeway) and he brought me some Oroweat Buttermilk bread. While it wasn’t the ideal bread for these sandwiches, the bread itself was tasty enough and, most importantly, it was free of mold.

Safeway Tamales are All Right

September 22, 2026 / marga / 0 Comments

Good Meat to Masa Ratio

Safeway had their deli tamales on sale this week for $1.66 (regularly $2.50), so I decided to give them a try. I ordered the shredded pork tamal(e) and I was actually quite happy with it. There are two things I want in a tamal: a good tasting, not too spicy filling, and a good filling to masa ratio. The latter means that there should be more filling than masa, rather than vice versa. This tamal fulfilled both of my requirements. Indeed, the ratio was close to perfect.

I had a similar positive experience with Trader Joe’s frozen tamales last week. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the fresh tamales we occasionally buy at the farmer’s market, which have much more masa than filling.

There we no instructions on how to reheat this (refrigerated) tamal, so I microwaved it for 1 minute in the corn wrapping. That worked well enough.

I feel that even in this economy, paying $3 for a supermarket tamal is ridiculous (though you can buy 4 for $10) – that’s the farmer market’s/homemade price – but I’ll definitely buy them again when on sale.

Safeway Boneless Chicken Thighs disappoint

September 19, 2026 / marga / 0 Comments

Last week, Safeway had Signature Select boneless, skinless chicken thighs on sale for $3/lb – down from the $6.50 regular price. Given how expensive groceries are now, I figured I’d give them a try. I was less than happy.

The thighs are HUGE. I’m afraid to imagine how big those chickens have to be to have such big thighs. And they are also extremely fatty. There are now laws in California that force chicken farmers to give chickens a minimum amount of space and access to the outdoors, but I can’t imagine these chickens have ever gotten any exercise. For that reason alone, I’m unlikely to buy Safeway chicken again.

On the plus side, I was able to cut the thighs into nicely sized cubes for Madura-style satay, and the chicken was quite tender.

Safeway’s Top Sirloin Roast is really Sirloin Cap (Picanha)

August 5, 2026 / marga / 2 Comments

Great and cheap cut made famous by Brazilians

Top Sirloin roast was on sale this week at Safeway this week, for just $7/lb, and I ordered one with a couple of dishes in mind (Beef Stroganoff and Cambodian beef sticks). What I got was sirloin cap. This is, indeed, part of the top sirloin, a triangular cut with a thick layer of fat on top – which Safeway nicely trimmed (though I had to trim it away for my uses).

This cut is prized in Brazil as picanha and has become popular in the US in recent years, as other once cheap cuts that could be used for steaks have become too expensive for regular use. I have no doubt that the same will happen to sirloin cap.

I will try making an actual roast next time it goes on sale, but for the time being I can say that the cut worked well for grilling as thin strips – it was tender but with a nice grain/pull -, but it failed as cubes for the stroganoff. I’m not surprised as sirloin in general tends to acquire a dusty texture when cooked wet. It might work if I’d cut it into thin slices here as well.

A word on Thai chilies at Safeway

July 1, 2026 / marga / 0 Comments

One name, two types

Chile peppers originated in South America, but they spread throughout the world pretty much as soon as the Europeans and Portuguese got a hold of them. There are 22 species of wild peppers and 5 domesticated ones, but within those five there are thousands of varieties, with differing amounts of of sweetness, fruitiness and spiciness. Most of us, however, have access to only a handful of fresh peppers – those of the varieties most commonly grown where we live – and only a handful more of dry peppers. This means, that when we cook dishes from other countries and regions that call for peppers, figuring out what local pepper to substitute is a challenge.

One common pepper that shows up in Luso cuisines, those from countries once colonized by Portugal, are peri peri peppers. Also known as piri piri or African Bird’s Eye, these are cultivars of Capsicum frutescens. They are young, small and very hot but still red peppers, that will apparently develop into Malagueta peppers as they grow. They particularly prized in Africa and used in many dishes directly or as peri peri sauce. While you can get the sauce in many places in America, including Trader Joe’s, which imports it from South Africa, getting the pepper itself is much harder.

One suggested alternative for recipes that call for peri peri peppers are Bird’s eye chiles, aka Prik Kee Noo, an Asian chili which is also small and very hot. It’s used prominently in South East Asian cuisine. Indeed, peri peri peppers are supposed to be a subcategory of bird’s eye chiles. In America, bird’s eye peppers are often called Thai peppers. And, indeed, if you order green Thai peppers at Safeway (or at least my Safeway), that is what you usually get. Now, red Thai peppers are simply the ripe stage of Thai peppers, so they are usually larger and less spicy than the green kind. But at Safeway, the red Thai peppers they sell are actually Thai spur chilies. Now bird’s eye chiles and Thai spur chilies are both species of Capsicum annuum – as are bell peppers -, but the latter is much larger and less spicy than the former, which makes it not really a suitable alternative for peri peri peppers. It looks easy enough to get dried red bird’s eye peppers, and it might be possible to get fresh ones from Facebook Marketplace or Asian supermarkets. Or, I guess, to just use green ones.

Marga's Food Blog

A Gorgeous Bread Bowl

A great addition to my table from Forest Decor