Last week, I wrote about my discovery of Twinning’s Lapsang Souchong tea and my sorrow at learning that it’s no longer being made. I looked to see if other brands might still carry it, given that some seems to still be produced. I found that Taylor’s also had a lapsang souchong tea available at big retailers in America for about $7-9 for a 50 tea bag box. I had to give it a try.
I’m sad to say that I was quite disappointed. The tea tastes just like another indistinctive black tea. It has a hint of smokiness, but only if you try very hard to taste it. Otherwise, it’s just generic.
This doesn’t mean it’s bad, I’ll happily drink the rest, but it’s just not at all special.
I also doubt that it’s actually lapsang souchong. According to the box the tea comes from “the mountains of China,” but there is no mention of the Wuyi Mountains in particular, where lapsang souchong must be grown to be considered such. “Smoke” is listed as an ingredient, but there is no explanation of where this “smoke” comes from.
I hope to find another lapsang souchong that I can afford at some point, but meanwhile, I have a lot of tea bags to get through.
Safeway had Entenmann’s snack cake boxes on sale for $2.50 last Friday, so I thought I’d give them a try. I got two kinds and I’d probably get them again (when on sale). The cakes are individually packaged and a good snack for when you need a sugar rush.
The Brookies were what they sounded like, half chocolate chip, half brownie. The cakes are a pretty good size, I’d say you could even share one if you just wanted a bite. Neither the cookie nor the brownie were particularly high quality, and “sweet” was their man flavor, but they were tasty enough. They also had a good, chewy mouth feel. I wouldn’t crave them, but I enjoyed them.
The Iced Party Cakes I saw but did not get to taste. They were very popular with the whole family and disappeared, one by one, before I got a chance to beg for a bite. In other words, they were a hit.
Entenmann’s, which has been passing hands from big food conglomerate to big food conglomerate since the 70’s is now owned by Bimbo.
I asked Mike to get me some weird snacks from Grocery Outlet – which sometimes is very good at it – but instead he brought me these sea salt chocolate flavored banana chips from Sun-Maid.
I thought they were just OK. The coating is a sugar and hydrogenated palm oil confectionery flavored with cocoa, and it tastes like bad quality dark chocolate. It’s on the bitter side, and pretty much obliterates the flavor of the banana.
That said, my husband liked them.
Sun-Maid is a brand from a cooperative of farms in California.
I have young nephews, so of course I’d heard of Kpop Demon Hunters, even though I didn’t see the movie. Still, it wasn’t as much the branding that enticed me to buy these Kpop Demon Hunters Golden Waffles when they were on sale at Safeway for $3.50 (from $4.50 regular price), as the fact that I’m a sucker for anything that says “brown sugar”.
These were OK. Serviceable as a quick breakfast snack. They smell amazing while they’re toasting, but the brown sugar cinnamon flavor is not very strong – you wouldn’t necessarily know they weren’t just plain waffles unless you were very familiar with that variety. They are also, weirdly, a tad salty. All in all, I’d say they are interchangeable with plain waffles.
Continuing in my phase of reviewing everything I touch in the kitchen, today is the turn of Kirkland Organic Maple Syrup, a product of Costco. I truly don’t know what to say about it beyond the fact that it’s a good maple syrup, delicious on pancakes, waffles, etc. This is, fortunately, true of most maple syrups I’ve tasted, though. I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a maple syrup connoisseur. The only time maple syrups failed me was when I ordered a set of flavored maple syrups from Tree Juice Maple Syrups – but I learned my lesson about that.
So, in conclusion, it’s great, it’s affordable at about $15 for a little over a quart, and I’ll continue buying it.
I know, I know, there is absolutely no point in reviewing Corona beer. It’s the most popular beer in California, and if you were going to try it, you’d have already. Still, I’m in a product review kick, so here it is.
I love Corona. I’m not a sophisticated beer drinker, so what I went in a beer is something that has a mild, but real flavor and doesn’t taste watery (so Budweiser for me). I like lagers and pilsners (no idea what the difference is), and Mexico really produces very good ones. Among them, Corona has hit the mark for having an easy to drink, not too bitter beer which is also flavorful. It’s the perfect beer for pizza or other salty snacks.
Price wise, it’s in line with other bottled lagers, I paid $19 for the 12-pack.
Corona is made in Mexico by Mexican based Modelo, which produces other Mexican beer and which is now a subsidiary of Belgium-based InBev.
Swedish Meatballs was the second Boston Market frozen entree I bought when these were on sale last week. I remember having them during past cooking strikes years ago, and I remember them being not too bad. Unfortunately this time they’re a definite thumbs down.
The problem was not the meatballs, which were actually pretty tasty on their own. They had a nice texture and the ingredients are not too bad. They’re made with beef and pork, vegetable and soy protein and herbs and spices. If the dish was just the meatballs, I might buy it again.
But it wasn’t, it came with mediocre noodles (I mean, that’s all you can expect) and a completely insipid sauce. It’s really amazing how you can make a sauce and have it have absolutely no flavor. I really don’t understand it. Maybe the dish is directed to people who have COVID and never regained their taste buds, but it’s the definition of insipid. If you’re going to consume 520 calories and 22 grams of fat, you should at least get some flavor out of it.
And this has been my last experiment with Boston Market. If they couldn’t get either dish I tried right, I’m done with them.
In my quest to clean up the freezer, I made these leftover Amazon cheese ravioli yesterday. They were $4.10 for the 24 oz package when we last bought them, but they’re currently unavailable.
The ravioli are filled with a mixture of ricotta, bread crumbs, Romano cheese and water, seasoned with salt, calcium carbonate, corn starch, parsley and black pepper – a pretty standard filling for cheese ravioli. It’s not particularly flavorful, however. The pasta is a little on the thick side.
In all, the ravioli are just OK – but that can be said of most frozen cheese ravioli. They are cheaper than most and they serve as a vehicle for whatever sauce you put on it.
I absolutely love Indian food, it’s my favorite in the world, but it is the most challenging to be able to eat at home. I have always found preparing Indian food difficult – even when recipes succeed, it’s usually a lot of work to get there. Takeout has become expensive, and my last experiences with Shef (which I can no longer afford anyway), were less than brilliant. So we are left with commercial Indian food which, IMHO, sucks.
Take this Sukhi’s Butter Chicken, which my husband insists in buying at Costco when he goes shopping by himself ($16 for 2 pouches, or 4 meals if you add rice). It’s OK, but it tastes nothing like actual butter chicken.
You make it by emptying the included pouch into a bowl and microwaving for 3 minutes. As you take your first bite, the smell/taste of tikka is strong, but it manages to dissipate fairly quickly. You are left with a curry which, as most commercial tikka masala/butter chicken sauces, is way too acidic – probably from the added citric acid. The acid overwhelms any other flavor the sauce might have, hiding most spices. It is slightly spicy, so if all you want is a bit of heat, this might satisfy. For this reason, my husband actually likes it. I will add that it has a hint of sweetness, but I don’t think that improves it.
Sukhi’s is a family owned Bay Area business, so that, at least, is a plus.
with Ball Park Burger Buns & Kraft American Cheese
I’m in the process of cleaning out my fridge & freezer and came about one last frozen ground beef burger patty from Amazon Grocery which my daughter left in the freezer before she went away to college. I figured what the heck, I’ll give it a try.
I ate the burger patties in a bun with a slice of American cheese, mayo, Dijon mustard and ketchup. I had a small taste of the patty itself and I can’t say I liked it, it just tasted weird. As part of the burger, it tasted like your run-of-the-mill normal burger, the type you’ve had a thousand times. Nothing to get excited about, but nothing to complain about either.
The patties can be cooked from frozen and are made of just beef, with 15% fat content. Amazon Grocery also sells 20% fat patties, which might be tastier.
The 2 lb package of 8 burgers which was $9.60 a month ago, is now $11.20 – each 4oz burger patty is thus ~$1.50. At $5.60/lb these patties are about the same price of fresh 20% fat ground beef when it goes on sale at Safeway – but they do offer the convenience of being pre-made and frozen so you can use them whenever you need them. All in all, I don’t think I’d buy them again myself, but then again, I never bought them in the first place.
Amazon is, of course, one of the most evil corporations in the world as well.
I served the burger with a slice of Kraft singlesAmerican cheese. American cheese is a “cheese product” which takes cheddar and processes it into a more meltable substance. It has a pretty distinct flavor, with a metallic/bitter undertone, and it’s not something anyone would munch on. But it works on burgers and even grilled cheese sandwiches. It’s regularly sold in individually wrapped slices as the cheese is pretty sticky and it’s otherwise hard to separate from each other. These are also easy to pack in a lunch box. Kraft singles have long been the most popular brand for single serve slices, probably due to decades of intense advertising.
American cheese is so ubiquitous on burgers at burger joints and restaurants, that it becomes an acquired and familiar taste. It’s not something I particularly like, it has a strange bitter artificial taste, probably from the chemicals in it, so it’s not a cheese I normally use. Still, we have a huge package of it in the fridge as we use it to wrap the dog’s medicine in it, and I figure I’d give a try here as well. It went perfectly fine with the patty, giving it that familiar burger flavor and melting beautifully (I put it on the patty when I flip it). It’s really perfect for a no frills burger like this one. Do note that they are not vegetarian, as they include rennet.
Costco sells a 4lb package of American singles for $13, so each slice is 14 cents. On the other hand, Safeway sells the 24-oz package for $9, or 28 cents a slice.
Finally, I put it in a plain Ball Park burger bun, which I’d gotten at Grocery Outlet ($3.30, the regular price elsewhere). Ball Park is best known for its cheap hotdogs, and their buns are exactly what you’d expect: completely generic. There is nothing remarkable about them, but they were still fresh-ish a few days after I’d bought them and allowed the burger to taste like a burger, adding no off flavors.
In all, if you’re looking for an easy, generic burger, all these items worked well.
Ballpark buns are manufactured by Mexican based multinational Bimbo Bakeries.
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