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Category: Food Items (Page 4 of 32)

De Cecco Potato Gnocchi & Rana Alfredo Sauce Review

October 28, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Both are good, but not together

I love gnocchi, but only when they are light and fluffy, with the right proportion of potato to flour. Because it is hard to get it right, I never make gnocchi – so it’s usually something I eat at restaurants. You can, however, buy pre-made, ready-to-boil gnocchi and once in a while I get them. They are OK, but not great.

De Cecco potato gnocchi ($2.50 on sale from $4) are among the best of the bunch. They are pretty light, though still heavier than I would like. Flavor wise, they are a little too bitter and in need of another pinch of nutmeg, but they are not bad. They do cook very fast (mine are overcooked in the photo).

Ingredients are dried potato flakes, potato starch, flour, rice flour, spices, salt, lactid acid.

I served the gnocchi with Rana Alfredo Sauce ($3 on sale from $6), sold refrigerated. I have liked this sauce before, but it didn’t really vibe well with the gnocchi, the combination had an unpleasantish bitter flavor. The sauce is pretty good as a dipping sauce, and I would buy it again, but not serve it with gnocchi.

It’s made with cream, parmigiano reggiano, onions, pecorino romano, food starch, natural flavors, salt, autolyzed yeast extract, garlic and spice.

See other reviews of pasta & pasta sauces

Trader Joe’s Garlic Gondolas Review

October 27, 2026 / / 0 Comments

What you see is what you get

I picked these Garlic Gondolas last time I visited Trader Joe’s, as they somewhat reminded me of khachapuri, a tasty cheese bread from the Caucuses. These, however, eat more like cheese sticks from a pizzeria, though the bread is somewhat harder (though still doughy). They were, indeed, very garlicky, maybe not cheesy enough, but otherwise pretty generic.

The size is a little problematic. They are really too big for just one person, but it’s a bit awkward to share them. I think it’d be better if they had 4 mini-gondolas. Then again, I don’t eat much bread nowadays and these might be perfectly adequate in size for those who do.

In all, I wouldn’t buy them again but I was glad I tried them.

Signature Select Traditional Whole Rotisserie Chicken is Mid

October 26, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Soft skin, fatty and very brined

When the kids were young, and omnivores, I used to make rotisserie chicken often. My mother in law gifted us a rotisserie many years ago, and it produced a very good and tasty chicken. Over the years, we’ve also bought our share of Costco rotisserie chickens and probably some Safeway ones as well – but as the kids became vegetarian, we sort of gave up on them. It’s thus been a long time since I even thought about buying one of this, much less at Safeway.

Still, they were on sale last Friday for $5 (from $10 regular price), in a variety of flavors, and I thought I’d give one a try. All but the “Traditional Whole Rotisserie Chicken” are actually roasted rather than rotisseried, and I’d ordered the “sweet smoky BBQ” flavor, but it wasn’t available so they substituted with the traditional rotisseried instead.

At 30 oz, the chicken is tiny – it doesn’t quite reach 2 lbs. You can’t buy such small chickens raw. But it’s definitely enough for a 3-4 people, mostly because you don’t really want to eat that much of it. The chicken was heavily brined and tasted very much of it. It had a weird, gummy texture, no doubt created by spending too much time in the brining liquid. It was fatty and not that enticing. The skin was a little overseasoned, but the flavor was fine. The problem is that it wasn’t very crispy – thus defeating the whole purpose of it being rotisseried.

I wouldn’t buy it again, even at $5, unless I was planning to use it for chicken salad or the like.

Reser’s Spaghetti with Meat Sauce review

October 25, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Exactly what you’d expect

Reser’s Fine Foods is best known for its buckets of potato and pasta salads – which Safeway has on sale for $5 every couple of Friday’s. They now seem to have introduce a new line of refrigerated, microwavable pasta meals. In addition to spaghetti with meat sauce, they have penne alla vodka, mac & cheese and cavatappi alfredo chicken. Regular price at Safeway is $8 for the 22oz tub (pictured next to a soda can for size), I got it on sale for $6. Price wise it’s competitive with equivalent frozen products.

Truth be told, this spaghetti with meat sauce tasted very much like the Stouffer’s frozen one. I actually expected it to taste better, given that it wasn’t frozen. Ingredient-wise, they both have a lot of artificial ingredients, so I don’t think ether is better than the other.

It doesn’t take much to boil spaghetti and mix it with store bought tomato sauce, so I wouldn’t buy this again, but as this heats in its own boil in the microwave, it doe save you some time and dishes to wash.

Reser’s Fine Foods is privately owned

More pasta reviews.

Best Cuts for Beef Milanesas

October 21, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Like every Argentinian, I love milanesas. They are delicious, easy to make and relatively cheap. You can eat them both hot and cold, by themselves or in a sandwich, by themselves or with toppings. And you can make them with a variety of beef cuts, as long as they are cut thin.

The vest and most typical milanesas are milanesas de ternera, or veal milanesas. Alas, I don’t eat veal in America. I do understand that all meat eating is cruel, but I find the treatment of calves to be particularly heartbreaking. I just can’t eat it.

My actual meat choice for milanesa is top round (cut very thin). It has good flavor, a nice bite (but you do have to cut it thin) and not much marbling (milanesas don’t need it). There is one major fat streak dividing the steaks, and sometimes I simply cut if off, dividing them into two small steaks, which I can then pile in a sandwich. However, thin-cut top round steks are now $16/lb, so I only buy it when it’s on sale – which is not too frequently.

Thin-cut top sirloin is also a good choice for milanesas. The additional marbling makes it very tender, but it’s hard to trim the big pieces of fat without destroying the shape of the steak. It’s also not as flavorful as top-round (don’t ask me why, I’ve no idea). It sells for $18 at my Safeway, but I lost bought it on sale for $10/lb.

Thin-cut Tri-Tip is not available at my local Safeway but I got it once at another supermarket and it worked quite well. It’s been too long so I don’t remember where I rated it vis a vis the other cuts, but I do remember I thought it worked.

One cut that doesn’t work is bottom round. At Safeway, it’s cut thicker than I like. It’s also tough (though OK with tenderizing), filled with grizzle and not as tasty. At $13/lb regular price, it’s cheaper than the other choices.

One thing to keep in mind: you can prepare the milanesas and freeze them uncooked. You can fry them without defrosting them without losing too much quality.

Artisan Bake at Home French Style Demi Baguette

October 11, 2026 / / 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).

Coffee Creamer Reviews

October 11, 2026 / / 0 Comments

The good, the tasty, and the scary

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. For me, brewing coffee in a regular coffeemaker was 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 them. I had assumed – silly me! – that 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

These include Coffee Mate, Delight and some Lucerne creamers. These creamers are mostly made from water, sugar and oil, plus flavorings and a whole bunch of chemical-sounding ingredients. Coffee Mate is owned by Nestlé, one of the most evil companies in the world, Delight is owned by a French company accused of greenwashing and Lucerne is a private brand from Albertsons which currently owns Safeway.

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, and preferred it to the Chobani flavor-wise.

Ingredients: water, sugar, soybean oil, dipotassium phosphate, micellar casein, diglycerides, cellulose gel, natural and artificial flavor, cellulose gum, carrageenan, acesulfame potassium and sucralose.

Coffee Mate Harry Potter Butterbeer ($2.50)

I got this creamer at Grocery Outlet, our discount supermarket, when we ran out of creamer. I simply had to get it for my Harry Potter loving daughter. She felt the butterbeer (butterscotch) flavor wasn’t strong enough. Personally, I feel the very artificial flavor pushing in and it’s not unpleasant. It actually somewhat reminded me of the apple butter coffee cake flavor below. Maybe it’s the “butter”. I wouldn’t buy it again, but it’s definitely drinkable.

Ingredients: water, sugar, soybean oil, dipotassium phosphate,mono and diglycerides, cellulose gel, natural and artificial flavor, cellulose gum, carrageenan, acesulfame potassium and sucralose.

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.

It was OK – drinkable, but after a week I switched to a different creamer and discarded the half-bottle that was left. The artificial apple flavor was quite distinguishable and, as I suspected, didn’t really mesh with the coffee. Indeed, the flavor was so strong that it completely hid that of the medium-roast coffee. It might be able to stand up to dark-roasted coffee, but I didn’t try it. I wouldn’t buy it again.

Ingredients: 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 for several years. 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.

Lucerne Pumpkin Pecan creamer (on sale for $3 from $4 regular price)

This is the third – and probably the last, given that we’re heading towards December, and Christmas creamer time – of the pumpkin spice creamers I get for my daughter. She liked it more than the Chobani and about the same as the Coffee Mate kind. She finds that the pumpkin spice flavors breaks through, and while the pecan flavor is absent, that’s not an issue for her. Despite the lack of cream in this creamer, she’d have it again.

Ingredients: water, sugar, vegetable oil, cocoa, sodium caseinate, artificial flavor, dipotassium phosphate, DATEM, polysorbate 60, salt, carrageenan.

Actually milk/cream based creamers:

natural bliss is owned by evil Nestlé, Chobani is privately owned, Lucerne is a private brand from Albertsons which currently owns Safeway and Starbucks creamer is also manufactured by Nestlé.

natural bliss Chocolate Caramel Truffle ($3)

This creamer accomplishes its basic job of lightening and sweetening my coffee, but it doesn’t really add much in the way of chocolate or toffee flavor beyond some notes of bitterness which might just be the coffee pushing through. Still, it does cover up the coffee flavor somewhat, so if you’re going this way, you might be better off with just a simple unflavored creamer. I got this at Grocery Outlet when I ran out of creamer but I wouldn’t choose it again.

The ingredients are good, though: skim milk, cream, sugar and natural flavor.

Chobani Cookies & Cream (limited edition, on sale for $4 from $7 regular price)

Chobani offers the most flavors as far as milk-based creamers go. They come in smaller bottles, which makes it a worse value fluid oz per fluid oz, though they are at least not owned by an evil corporation. My real problem with these creamers, like with other milk-based creamers, however, is the taste. It’s pretty mild, and this one tastes just like a weak chocolate milk. This means needing to add more – and at that point I think I may just buy chocolate milk and leave it at that.

Ingredients are: milk, cream, cane sugar, “natural” flavors, cocoa and sea salt.

Chobani Confetti Birthday Cake (on sale for $4 from $7 regular price)

On coffee, this creamer was so subtle, providing little more flavor than milk would, that I actually tasted it on its own – probably the first time I do that to a creamer. And yes, if you taste it, it’s incredibly sweet and it tastes very much like birthday cake (sans sprinkles). Maybe the flavor would transfer if you are drinking light roast – but it just doesn’t work with medium roast.

Ingredients are: milk, cream, cane sugar, “natural” flavors

Chobani Pumpkin Spice (limited edition, on sale for $4 from $7 regular price)

I got this for my daughter and she felt she needed to put far more of it than of the Coffee Mate kind. She would have it again, but prefers Coffee Mate taste-wise.

Ingredients are: milk, cream, cane sugar, “natural” flavors

Lucerne Real Milk & Cream Caramel Macchiato (on sale for $4 from $5 regular price).

Lucerne has both fake and real creamers, the latter costing about $1 more than the former. The difference in ingredients is night and day.

I really wish I liked these natural creamers more than the oil-and-water ones. But I don’t. The creamer enhances, rather than tames, the bitter flavor of the coffee and the caramel flavor doesn’t quite mesh with the coffee. Maybe it lacks sweetness, but it forces me to add more than I would otherwise. I much prefer the Starbucks of the same flavor, but that one is manufactured by Nestlé. I do like there is nothing unnatural (save for the flavors) to this creamer.

Ingredients: milk, cream, sugar, and natural flavors.

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. Alas, it has some added oil and gellam gum and it’s manufactured by Nestlé.

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 / / 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 / / 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 / / 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.

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