Marga's Food Blog

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A word on Thai chilies at Safeway

July 1, 2026 / / 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.

Amazon Grocery Pie Crusts are surprisingly good.

June 28, 2026 / / 0 Comments

But Amazon has a such a dirty pricing policy

I don’t bake much, and I never make pie crust. I know it’s easy, but I avoid anything that forces me to use a rolling pin (this includes cut cookies). Therefore, in the rare occasions when I make a pie, I buy pre-made pie shells.

Unfortunately, most store bought pie shells aren’t very good. They can be too tough, not flaky enough or have an unpleasant bitter baking soda taste. In addition, they are expensive! Enter Amazon Grocery pie shells.

At about $2 for 2 shells, these shells were surprisingly affordable – though beware that Amazon practices “dynamic” pricing, with products sometimes changing prices multiple times a day and coming in-and-out of inventory. Still, that’s half the price of the supermarket-brand pie shells. They were also surprisingly good. The shells are pretty thin, and while not flaky, their thinness stops them from being hard. They also have a pretty good flavor, slightly salty but that works well with sweet fillings as it provides a balance to them. That said, I used the shells in a sugar cream pie, and I’m not sure how well they will handle a pie with a significantly heavier filling, such as apple pie.

These shells come refrigerated and rolled up, with parchment paper separating them. Some of the dough stack to the paper, though it was easy enough to fix fix them.

I’ll definitely buy them again next time I bake a pie.

Update: Let’s talk about dynamic pricing. Just two days after I wrote this post, Amazon has doubled the price of the shells from $2 to $4!

Rana Pulled Pork Ravioli is … interesting

June 27, 2026 / / 0 Comments

I love ravioli. It’s been my favorite pasta since I was a kid. Indeed, it was the only pasta I liked as a kid. This love comes from the fact that my grandparents used to make homemade ravioli, and they celebrated my first birthday with a raviolada, I love seeing the photos of my with a face full of sauce.

Short of having my grandmother make ravioli, I only had ravioli growing up when my father would buy the fresh pasta at a nearby pasta factory. But it was expensive. My parents were thrifty, so it was a special occurrence.

In the US (and in Argentina nowadays), you could get frozen ravioli for a reasonable price, so they were one of the first dishes I started “making” after I got married. I still always keep a bag of frozen ravioli in the fridge just in case.

With time, supermarkets started selling higher quality refrigerated ravioli, and recently Rana has moved into selling these “gourmet”-style ravioli, with unusual/special fillings. They were on sale this week ($5 for the 8 oz package, down from $8 regular price), so I grabbed a couple of bags.

I hadn’t had the pulled pork ravioli before and I was sort of puzzled by them – I still am. The pulled pork filling is very tasty, it has a strong, but balanced, BBQ pork flavor and stands well to the pasta. The flavor of fillings in ravioli often gets lost, but that is not the case here. Still, it was not clear to me why I was eating pulled pork inside a ravioli. The flavor/texture combination wasn’t really obvious and I’m still not sure that it worked. Again, it was tasty but it was weird.

I usually eat commercial ravioli with store-bought pasta sauce, but I didn’t think the flavor combinations would work here, so I tried these ravioli with butter – that worked well enough. I think brown butter and sage would work as well, though I was too lazy to make it last night. I did try it with some grated pecorino cheese, but the cheese does nothing here but confuse flavors – it’s definitely best left out. You do need butter or sauce as otherwise the ravioli get too sticky/gummy.

The other issue I have with these ravioli is the package size. The 8 oz package is supposed to offer two servings of one cup each. But unless you are serving them as an appetizer or along other dishes, or simply are not very hungry, a cup of ravioli is too little. Two cups, however, is too much unless you are actually very hungry. Now, the package might be perfect if you are making dinner for yourself and a young child, but that’s no longer my case. I wish they would increase the size to 12 oz, or perhaps decrease it to 6 oz. That said, $5 for a gourmet tasting meal is definitely not a bad price.

The ravioli themselves are pretty large – the kind you need to cut in two in order to fit into your mind. Obviously you can do this with a fork, but I personally prefer smaller ravioli.

I might buy these again to feed to my husband, who just loves pulled pork. But really, I wish Rana would just sell their pulled pork to eat in a sandwich, that feels more natural.

Mezetta Three Cheese Sauce Review

April 20, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Sometimes non-natural is tastier

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m currently in a cooking strike. Meanwhile, my youngest daughter has been doing a lot of cooking for herself. This means that commercial pasta sauce has reappeared in our kitchen.

In the last few years, a number of premium pasta sauces have made their appearance at the supermarket, led by Rao’s, named after the famous pasta restaurant in NYC. What characterizes premium sauces are that they are made with actual whole tomatoes and olive oil. Regular pasta sauces, on the other hand, are made with tomato puree and soybean or canola oil (Ragú, Prego) or a combination of tomato puree and diced tomatoes (Barilla, Bertolli and Classico).

Mezetta is the premium bland that most often goes on sale at Safeway, so I’ve now tried several of its flavors. I reviewed the roasted garlic one before. The ingredients for the basic sauce include “Italian Plum Tomatoes from Italy’s San Marzano Region, California Plum Tomatoes, Imported Olive Oil, Fresh Onions, Sea Salt, Fresh Garlic, Fresh Basil, Black Pepper, Spices,” plus whatever flavoring the particular sauce has. This one had cheese. It tasted exactly like would expect: tomato sauce with cheese. It’s actually pretty good as a dipping sauce. it has a very fresh, bright flavor and the cheese adds even more umami. I like it less on top of pasta. Served on ravioli, it was too acidic to compliment rather than overwhelm the filling. Even on just plain spaghetti, the acidity of the flavor is a bit too much. It needs something more substantial and absorbent, such as bread, to truly shine.

This, btw, has been my general complaint with the premium sauces – they are just not as good on pasta as the more cooked down, old-style and cheaper red sauces. Premium pastas tend to win taste tests when they are tasted on their own – and I can totally understand that – but it’s different to eat a whole bowl of pasta than taste a spoonful of pasta sauce.

Celentano frozen ravioli review

April 19, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Pretty tasty

Frozen ravioli have long been a savior for busy moms – and just regular people. They are easy (though a bit bulky) to keep in the freezer, quick enough to make, and, combined with store-bought sauce, a super easy weeknight meal. I’m going through yet another cooking strike, so frozen ravioli have reappeared in our lives.

I’ve been buying Celentano frozen ravioli quite a bit lately because they are often on sale at Safeway ($4-5 for 20-24 oz, from a $8 purported regular price), and at that price they are cheaper than Safeway’s own brand. Safeway only carries the cheese, spinach & cheese and beef ravioli, so they are they only ones we tried.

They are pretty good, not dramatically different in taste than other brands. My daughters don’t like the spinach & cheese flavor, but they are happy enough with the cheese ones. These come in both regular and “mini” version, the latter are easier to eat. The regular sized ravioli are too large to eat with one bite, so you need to cut them in two, though you can accomplish this with a fork if you cook them past al dente (which I do). Like other raviolis, if you do this they tend to open in the boiling water and the filling comes out.

The beef ravioli have a subtle flavor, as is often the case in ravioli, but not really different than Safeway’s own brand. There is enough flavor to eat them with butter and cheese instead of sauce.

In all, if you are watching your pennies, there is no particular reason to not buy this brand versus other regular frozen ravioli brands – obviously they are not as good at Genova ravioli, my favorite brand, but they are about 1/3 the price.

Empalagar

April 10, 2026 / / 0 Comments

We need a term for this in English!

Empalagar is a Spanish verb that describes the sensation of feeling sick or queezy from something being too sweet. It’s how you feel after eating something unbearably sweet, or eating too many sweets, or thinking about such things. For example, this morning I put too much sweetened creamer on my coffee and now I feel empalagada (the participle of the verb) and can’t bear the idea of eating anything else sweet. I feel this sensation in the back of my throat.

Empalagar is a reflexive verb, it describes how something sweet makes you feel, either in general or at a particular time: “Dulce de leche me empalaga,” or “I put too much syrup on my pancakes y me empalagué“.

Empalagar can sometimes be translated as cloying in English: something which is cloyingly sweet me empalagaría (would make me feel sick), but while as the verb to cloy is not reflexive it (you wouldn’t say “the cake cloyed me”) it doesn’t work it most instances. I don’t think I’ve even heard anyone say “I feel cloyed.”

“Sicken” is too general and often has a different and sometimes more severe meaning. Indeed, the more that I write about this, the closer that I am to being sick rather than just empalagada.

I wish there was a verb that perfectly described this sensation in English, but as there isn’t, I’ve decided that going forward I’ll just use the Spanish word, and refer to this post when I do.

Swiss Miss Dark Chocolate: Finally!

April 10, 2026 / / 0 Comments

I first came across Swiss Miss instant cocoa back when I was a kid. We used to drink chocolate milk every afternoon, after coming home from school, made from Nesquik or Toddy powders and hot or cold milk, depending on the season. My dad would prepare it for us and I can still see us, waiting at the kitchen table, while dad mixed it. I can’t recall exactly when or how, the little packages of Swiss Miss came into our lives, but I know they had mini-marshmallows – something I’d never even heard of before. Perhaps my aunt Grace brought them from America when she came to visit my grandmother before she died. Or perhaps my father bought them in Buenos Aires, circa 1979, when Argentina’s currency was artificially strong (just like right now) and the country opened up to imports. In any case, we liked it – but as we were used to mixing the chocolate mix with milk, rather than water, that’s how we prepared it then and how I’ve prepared Swiss Miss mixtures all my life.

The problem is that Swiss Miss powders already have dry milk inside them, so when you mix them with actual milk, the result is a sweet liquid that has very little chocolate taste. Upping the amount of mix simply makes it too sweet to handle.

Come Swiss Miss Dark Chocolate. It ups the amount of chocolate (or chocolate flavor), and while it’s still too sweet, at least hot chocolate made with it tastes like chocolate. The sweetness makes it a very special occasion treat – just thinking about it most of the time makes my stomach churn -, but perfect for when I actually want a lazy hot chocolate.

Costco Valentine Madelines Review

April 8, 2026 / / 0 Comments

They looked good…

My husband got me a box of these heart-shaped stuffed madelines ($10) for Valentine’s Day and it was such a lovely gesture. The box came with six red, raspberry jam filled madelines and three nutella-filled ones. I love madelines and was very intrigued. Alas, the idea was better than the reality.

What makes madelines wonderful is their subtle flavor, the slight caramelization of its surface, and their spongy texture. Here, the flavors of the fillings were so strong that you couldn’t taste the madelines themselves. The filling made them very thick, and perhaps for that reason, very dry. It robbed the madelines of their “madelineness” and just made them into a generic jam or nutella filled thick and dry pastry. I just wasn’t a fan.

A-Sha Meteor Noodles with Danzai Sauce Review

April 8, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Unusual and tasty ramen-style noodles

I’ve been eating ramen since college – and I still do from time to time – but I pretty much missed the ramen revolution of the last decade or so. I’ve seen the new ramen styles at the grocery store and read vague reference to them, but I never paid much attention. Filled with carbs and fats, ramen is not particularly healthy, and when I crave it, I want the old, familiar blocks of Top Ramen or Maruchan, with a lot of cheese added for an Argentinian touch.

Still, I saw a box of A-Sha Meteor Noodles with Danzai Sauce on sale in the Grocery Outlet flyer, and I figured I could dip my toes into the ramen craze by trying these. While the ramen was good, I don’t think I’ll hurry to put my whole foot inside it.

These noodles are air dried, rather than fried, so they don’t have much flavor on their own. They have to be boiled in water for 5 minutes, but rather than add a powder to the boiling water to create a broth, you drain them and mix them with the sauce that comes in the pouch. All the flavor comes the sauce. And I just can’t really describe the flavor. It’s savory, maybe somewhat meaty in the way that mushrooms are, but not really tasting of mushrooms, and fully of MSG-produced umami. It’s tasty enough, but not memorable and I can’t imagine myself craving it. If anything, it made me miss regular ramen.

My husband liked it more and had it a couple of times. I don’t think we’d buy it again after we finish this box.

I think we paid $6 for the box of 12 at Grocery Outlet, but its official retail value is $20.

Chain Restaurant Reviews: Domino’s Pizza

April 8, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Better than expected and a great (now expired) deal

It’s been a couple of decades since I last ordered pizza from Domino’s, despite having an outlet not very far from my home. Domino’s is definitely not what I think of when I imagine quality pizza, and I had the vague memory I was boycotting it for some reason (apparently, its anti-abortion founder has long divested from the company, though there might be a grassroots boycott due to the behavior of Domino franchises in Israel). Still, I couldn’t remember why and when I saw an ad for large pizzas with up to 7-toppings for $10 ($11 here in the Bay Area), I was tempted. We have pretty much stopped getting take out due to the exorbitant prices, and I been on a cooking strike as of late.

We ended up getting Domino’s a couple of times while the promotion lasted. I was surprised to find that Domino’s pizza is pretty good. The pizzas are nothing to write home about, but they are pretty solid in comparison to other chains and mom & pop pizzeria pizzas – and at $11 while the promotion lasted, they were far, far cheaper. My only real complaint is that the pizzas could have stronger flavors, maybe some oregano would help.

We tried both the handtossed and pan pizzas – the handtossed are on the thin side, and pan are what used to be a normal thickness a few decades ago. The handtossed only comes in medium, which I imagine is a 12″ – the others come in 14″ / large size.

I wouldn’t order Domino’s at the regular price, but I just got a promo for a 2-topping large carryout pizza for $7, and given that I mostly buy pizza for my children and they prefer just cheese pizza, I’ll probably get these at some point. Hey, at that price they are competitive both with 7-11 and supermarket pizza.

I like that Domino’s lets you pay online when you order, or use cash and pay at the store and, of course, that it’s close enough that we can save all fees by walking to get them. Note that this is not a restaurant, there is nowhere to seat, just a kitchen with a counter to pick up pizza. 

Domino's
1768 E 14th St
San Leandro, CA 
(510) 351-3301
M-Su 10:30 AM - 12 AM
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