I am a bad mother. There is no denying it. Today I helped Mika make peanut butter cookies from the Better Homes and Gardens New Junior Cookbook
As for the cookies, they are quite good, a bit dry but tasty. I’d make them again had I not looked at the nutritional info.
Page 85 of 162
Like most non-vegetarians, I buy my ground beef already ground. It’s easier and requires the washing of fewer dishes. It’s not necessarily cheaper, however – apparently you can make good, lean ground beef from London broil, which is often on sale for less than $2lb.
In any case, an article in today’s New York Times has convinced me that I should give up that practice. The article recounts how common is the contamination of ground beef by e-coli and how opposed to any testing of the product are both meat producers and processors (though specially the former). They don’t want liability, so they don’t want to test. Even when they do, it’s very infrequently.
E-coli can be quite dangerous – lead to uremic hemolitic syndrome and to death. My own sister got the syndrome when she was 9-months old and has since then had three kidney transplants and a life that revolved around hospitals. It only takes a few e-coli cells to make you virulently sick, and e-coli multiplies every few minutes. Moreover, it doesn’t go away by being cleaned with simple soap and water – you need to use bleach to disinfect your cutting boards to get rid of it. In other words, it’s very easy to get infected.
It’s not clear to me how dangerous is the handling of non-ground beef (what they call muscle meat), but it’s surely safer than ground beef. So I’m going to try grinding my own in the food processor – specially when London broil is on sale.
I made this epicurious.com recipe for Chicken with Black-Pepper Maple Sauce for dinner tonight. It was awesome. Or rather, the sauce was awesome. The chicken was OK, the skin was great, of course, but not much flavor penetrated into the flesh. But the sauce was incredible, even though I forgot to add the two tablespoons of butter needed to finish the sauce. As Mike put it “I’d eat anything dipped in that sauce”.
I followed the recipe pretty closely but I used a 5.5 lb chicken instead of a 3-3.5 lb one. I’m sorry, but it’s unrealistic to feed a family of 4 (and we were one more tonight) with just 3.5 lbs of meat. The 5.5 pounder fed the five of us well, and we have a couple of leftover pieces. The problem, however, is that it took longer for the chicken to cook (about half an hour longer), and the breasts overcooked a bit. Next time I’d use chicken pieces instead of a whole chicken, and I’d remove each part when it is ready. I increased the sauce ingredients by one-half to accommodate the larger chicken, but if I was going to make it again, I’d at least double the sauce recipe. It’s that good.
I served the chicken with couscous and green beans. The sauce went incredibly well with the couscous and I’d recommend the pairing.
I should note that I only used about 1/2 Tbsp of peppercorns, rather than the required 1 1/2 Tbsp. As it was, the sauce wasn’t in the least spicy, so next time I might increase the amount.
I have just learned that Biggie’s Brazilian BBQ has closed, just a few months after opening. I’m quite sad about it (I hope my review did not have much to do with it), it’s horrible when people put their dreams and sweat on a business, only to see it fail after a short time. Plus, I really liked the food when we visited.
I learned about Biggie’s closing only a couple of days ago when I got an e-mail from restaurant.com – I just called to confirm and their number has been disconnected 🙁
Update: The Mutt Hut closed, which is pretty sad because it was such a San Leandro institution.
I just realized that I have never reviewed the Mutt Hut, a humble restaurant with an exclusive menu of hot dogs, which is just around the corner from my house.
The Mutt Hut is a small place, they have 3 or 4 tables inside and perhaps a couple outside. They have hot dogs, polish sausages, hot links and a couple of other varieties. There are a variety of toppings (cheese, bbq sauce, etc.) but not much more. You can get chips and drinks and that’s about it.
The hot dogs are good, but not extraordinary. This is basically a convenience place, where you can get a quick, cheap lunch. The owners are very friendly, there is always a newspaper around to peruse while you wait/eat, and the place is very clean. We come from time to time.
The Mutt Hut
1904 Washington Ave
San Leandro, CA
(510) 352-7794
M-Sa 11 AM – 5 PM
A small mini-mart opened a little while ago on the corner of Estabrook and Washington, behind Cafe Americano. Today I finally checked it out.
The store is small and carries staples (including some Asian ingredients like coconut milk and canned lichees) and fresh vegetables. Their selection of the latter is quite good. Everything is reasonably priced. While their inventory is not too vast right now, they are planning on increasing it.
As the store is only a block from my house, I expect I will be going there when I’m out of one or two items and don’t want to go to Safeway. While I love Grocery Outlet, you can’t expect to find something specific there. Plus their vegetable selection is not very good and it’s not that cheap. Plus I like supporting the little guy. 🙂
So, if you live in the neighborhood, check it out.
Marina Market
2150 Washington Ave., Unit A
San Leandro, CA
510-351-4000
I’ve been reluctant to try to capitalize this blog in any way, but given the financial situation I thought I’d give google ads a try – at least to help a bit with my bead obsession. So I’m giving it a try and putting a small, discreet, but not-endorsed-by-me (I don’t get to chose the ad, and I can’t even filter ones that I don’t like) ads at the bottom of the left margin. Please click on them 🙂
This is a list of the cookbooks I want. I have them on swaptree, but apparently none of the books I have for trade are good enough to get any of these 🙁
A16: Food + Wine
Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook
Argentina Cooks!: Treasured Recipes from the Nine Regions of Argentina
Bouchon
The Complete Robuchon
Cafe Boulud Cookbook: French-American Recipes for the Home Cook
How to Cook Everything
Mustards Grill Napa Valley Cookbook
Pintxos: Small Plates in the Basque Tradition
The Zuni Cafe Cookbook
I just came back from our semi-annual library sale, and this time I didn’t buy many cookbooks, and I didn’t have any “finds”, but I think I did OK. I got:
–The Frugal Gourmet Cooks Italian: Recipes from the New and Old Worlds, Simplified for the American Kitchen
–The Foods and Wines of Spain
–Ethnic Cuisine: How to Create the Authentic Flavors of Over 30 International Cuisines
–Cocina tradicional mexicana
I also got two children’s cookbooks:
–Better Homes and Gardens New Junior Cookbook
–Kids’ Party Cookbook!
and finally, a food writing book:
–The Soul of a Chef: The Journey Toward Perfection
They are all in pretty good shape, and I’m quite happy.
One of my favorite products at Grocery Outlet is Smithfield cream cheese bars (8 oz for $1.30). Not only are they cheap (which significantly lowers the cost of baking a cheesecake), but the cream cheese has a nice, solid/stringy consistency that is wonderful for New York (and other) cheesecakes, and a vibrant, fresh flavor. I have gotten nothing but compliments for the NY cheesecake that I’ve been making with this cheese.
One thing to keep in mind, some of the cheese packages may be marked with the “Spanish” date notation (day-month-year). The ones currently on sale expire on “02-12-09”, which means on December 2nd, 2009.
And for those of you planning to make cheesecakes today, Grocery Outlet also has honey maid graham crackers ($2), sugar ($2.50, I think) and jumbo eggs ($1.50 a dozen). If you do use my recipe, note that it’s for large eggs, so reduce by one if using the jumbo size.
Recent Comments