I’m a moderate tea drinker and mostly a fan of Twinings English Breakfast Tea
I usually like plain black tea mixes – like English breakfast, though I’ll have the occasional cup of Earl Grey. I drink my tea with milk and sugar.
Only “Pure Ceylon Black Tea” is listed as an ingredient on the Barrigton English Breakfast tea box, but I could swear the tea has some sort of flavoring in it. I can taste hints of mint and something else which makes the tea taste particularly sweet. It’s not as robust as the Twinings, but it stands well to milk and sugar, a bag is strong enough for two mugs and it doesn’t seem to over-brew very fast (I don’t usually remove the tea bag while I’m drinking the tea). In all, I’m quite happy with this tea and I’ll probably go and, given the price, I’ll probably go and pick up a few more boxes of it to keep in case Grocery Outlet stops carrying it. The tea expiration date is 11/12, so it should be good for quite a while.
A final thing that I like about this tea is that the bags come in plain paper covers. Twinings’ come in sealed waxed/metallic paper bags, which I don’t think I can recycle/compost.
Finally, I haven’t found much about the Barrington Tea company online – which makes me assume it’s quite new. According to its website, their corporate offices are in Palo Alto. The tea comes from Sri Lanka.
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Update
I just got a box of their Ceylon tea and I’ve enjoyed it very much as well. It’s a robust black tea, with some hint of flavoring but not as strongly as in the English Breakfast. It’s very nice with milk & sugar. I’d buy it again, though now I’m curious about trying the Trader Joe’s tea, which is even cheaper.
I’ve also tried the Earl Gray tea and this one has disappointed me. It’s very weak and it doesn’t really have a different spicing than the other teas – it’s just weaker. I won’t be buying it again.
Category: Food Items (Page 19 of 27)
I don’t usually make burgers so before a few days ago I hadn’t perfected a “recipe” – but a few days ago I actually made some and then repeated them yesterday, and I have to admit they were very good. Here is what I did:
– I chopped London broil (the first time) and chuck (the second time, eliminating the external fat) in the food processor. The results weren’t as soft as a regular burger but fine anyway. I liked the texture of the London broil better, but the flavor of the chuck was nicer.
– I mixed the chopped meat with some salt, ground cumin, garlic powder and Worcestershire sauce. I eyed the quantities – my eye seems to be pretty good as both times they were well seasoned. I think the Worcestershire sauce is key.
– I cooked them in the pre-heated Foreman grill until medium-rare. I put a slice of cheese on them and then closed the grill for a minute or so.
And that was it.
I got a bottle of Villa MIlena Extra Virgin Olive Oil (I don’t remember how much I pay, I’d guess about $7-8 for a 1 lt bottle) at Grocery Outlet a couple of weeks ago because I had ran out of it and I didn’t have time to go to Trader Joe’s, where I usually buy my EVOO (I get the Greek Kalamata one in the large bottle, it’s quite good and cheap). I wasn’t expecting much, but I still managed to be disappointed. The oil is a green-yellow color and has a fruity beginning, no middle whatsoever and a *very* bitter finish. Indeed, it leaves a bitter taste in your mouth when you are done.
I’ve used it for sauteing/pan frying and it’s fine for that, but definitely not for salads or with bread.
Today I saw Vienetta Triple Chocolate dessert at the San Leandro Grocery Outlet for $1.50 or $2. I didn’t taste it, so I don’t know how good it is, but I know that Vienetta has a lot of fans and it’s hard to find, so I figured I’d post about it here.
I got a package of Hibachi House Sesame Chicken at Grocery Outlet as a quick lunch. It wasn’t cheap, $4 or $5 if I well recall – and while the box says it has 4.5 portions, nobody but a supermodel would be satisfied with one cup of rice and chicken for lunch. And it’s mostly rice, I was surprised at how little chicken it came with. I felt ripped off. On the plus side, the sauce was quite good both with the chicken and the rice.
All that said, I wouldn’t buy it again.
Got the Organic Classics Macaroni & Meat Sauce at Grocery Outlet a couple of days ago. I think it was a dollar or two for 10 oz – definitely cheap. Alas, it was quite unsatisfying. The meat sauce didn’t seem to have much in the way of meat, and it just wasn’t very tasty. The macaroni were just macaroni. It would have been better if I had some Parmesan cheese, but in any case I wouldn’t buy it again.
Yesterday I picked up a Bourbon chicken frozen entree at Grocery Outlet. I don’t recall the brand now (and I already threw away the box), so I’ll have to edit that detail in after I go to GO again. In any case, it was actually quite good. The chicken was tender and the sauce flavorful. The only minus is that the amount of chicken provided is somewhat skimpy for two people, but you can extend it by serving the chicken over rice (there is enough sauce for that). In all, I liked it and I’ll probably buy it again – my only hesitation is that the $5 price is a bit stiff for the amount of food. Still, it’s cheaper than going out to eat.
Also, right now Grocery Outlet has Ben & Jerry’s NY Super Fudge Chunk ice cream for $1.50.
I need to learn to look carefully at the “cooking” instructions of frozen food items I buy. This is not the first time I buy something only to find out that it can’t be easily microwaved for serving. For me the whole point of buying frozen food is to be able to quickly heat it up – if I have to thaw it first, or oven-bake it or deep fry it, I might as well take the extra step and prepare the food myself.
Fortunately, most of the frozen taquitos out there just require that you microwave them for a minute or two. Unfortunately, El Monterey taquitos (and gorditas), which I got today at Grocery Outlet, demand that they be thawed before cooking. I can see, perhaps, thawing the whole box if you are going to be serving them at a party – but that doesn’t work if all you want is to fix a couple of taquitos as a snack here and there.
The box offers no instruction on how to cook the taquitos/gorditas from its frozen state. I decided to microwave two taquitos and two gorditas on high for 1 1/2 minutes. The result were taquitos that were very cold in places and boiling hot in others. Still, they were quite food for being frozen processed food – nicer than the taquitos I usually get at the supermarket or Costco. Still, the improved flavor does not make up for the inconvenience of having to thaw them first.
What I’d say is buy them if you want to serve them for a party, but skip them otherwise.
I’ve been eying the Buzz Strong’s Real Coffee Cookies at Grocery Outlet for a couple of weeks now, curious about the possibility of ingesting some extra caffeine in the form of a cookie. I finally got a package and the cookies were fine, but they weren’t tasty enough to be worth the calories.
The smallish cookies taste like your standard packaged chocolate chip cookie, with a hint of metallic preservative taste masked by coffee flavor. They go well with coffee and each one has the equivalent caffeine of 1/4 cup of coffee. I was pretty buzzed after eating four cookies and drinking two cups of coffee, so I think they do the job they promise.
In all, I think these cookies are fine for people who like coffee and packaged cookies, but that’s not really me.
I’ve never been a big fan of Scharffen Berger because I’m not a fan of dark chocolate. Give me milk any time. Well, apparently Scharffen Berger has, unbeknown to me, been making milk chocolate for a while. Today I found their 3oz bars at Grocery Outlet here in San Leandro. The bars are $2 – they sell for $5 at Scharffen Berger’s website. Of course, these bars are close to expiration (January 2010), they were made at the Berkeley factory
which closed in January 2009.
Well, my verdict is that Scharffen Berger milk chocolate is (or was) by far the best milk chocolate I’ve ever tasted. The chocolate taste is very intense, it has layers of complexity and it’s just delicious. I imagine that Scharffen Berger will not/has not been able to keep its standards at the new factory – so I’ll probably hurry and buy a bunch of these bars at Grocery Outlet.
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