Toaster waffles are a quick and convenient breakfast food for those on the go – or too lazy to actually make breakfast. They are not particularly tasty, but they’re easy.
During a recent trip I stayed at a couple of hotels offering “made your own waffle” and was surprised at how much better those waffles are, despite being served with cheap toppings. Part of the reason is that those waffles are much thicker than the frozen waffles I’d been buying. The thickness allows for a crispy crust and a soft, chewy interior. Come Eggo Thick & Fluffy waffles.
These waffles are, of course, much smaller and not as thick as those you can make at hotel buffets – but they are significantly thicker than the regular ones. I’d say they’re just thick enough to give you a good waffle experience. Pour real maple syrup and whipped cream on top, and they’re just delicious. Adding sliced fruit makes them even better. If what you’re looking for is to make breakfast-dessert on a plate without actually cooking anything, these are probably the best base for it.
They are, of course, more expensive than regular waffles. A package of 12 was $5 on sale at Safeway ($8 regular)
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).
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.
Pringles has come up with several new flavors of potato chips. I decided to try and review this one because I couldn’t imagine what it actually would taste like. Everyone in the family went “yuck” just by looking at the can, but I thought they were worth a try. I was wrong.
Needless to say, these chips do not taste at all like meatballs – if the taste of beef was easy to duplicate, I think many more cows would be saved. Instead, these tasted like corn pottage Japanese puffs mixed with a heavy hand of Italian seasoning. They were just weird, and actually quite bitter (which I attributed to the faux oregano).
Because it’s pringles, and they also include some crack cocaine-like addictive substance, I did finish the can – but they were pretty nasty. I would not recommend.
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.
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 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.
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.
As you probably noticed, I do not run a commercial food blog. I don’t run ads, I don’t accept money for back links – or anything else -, and I use this blog mostly as a memory aid for myself and, perhaps one day, my children. I am, of course, very happy when people find some of its content useful, but my goals is far more self-involved.
Once in a while, however, someone asks me to review an item they are selling and they offer to ship me that item for free – if it’s something I’m likely to use in the near future, I might accept – particularly if it’s something that intrigues me. This was the case with the products sold by Forest Decor. This is company sells made to order and personalized wood products created in their workshop in Utah. They looked beautiful on their website, and thus I was happy to review them.
The company sent me two items, their Olive Wood Bread Bowl($55) and their maple cutting board. I will review the latter after I use it a few times, but the bread bowl, which comes pre-oiled, is mostly a decorative and not particularly fragile item, so I figure I can review it as is.
Looks-wise the bread bowl is gorgeous. I’m keeping it in my dining room even when I’m not using it, because it’s decorative in itself. I love its lines, which makes me think of a canoe and the natural decoration of the wood. It’s carved into a single piece of wood and it I imagine it can be used for multiple purposes, including as a catch-all and candy bowl.
The bowl is 11.5″ x 3.5″, so too small for a regular size baguette, but perfect to accommodate demi-baguettes, which are about half the regular size. I like keeping demi-baguettes in the freezer to bake for breakfast or for when I have a sudden hankering for fresh bread and don’t want to go shopping.
It is a little too small for dinner rolls, though it still works
But it’s pretty functional to serve small pastries.
Still, I anticipate using it mostly for demi baguettes. Last year I bought a beautiful salami board from Argentina, that I am now hanging on my wall for most of the year, and I’m looking forward to using both this bread bowl and the salami board to serve a simple picada for Christmas. Depending on how well the cutting board fares, I might use it to serve some cheeses as well.
In all, I’m in love with this bowl. It feels so rustic yet elegant and also quite unique. It’s the sort of thing that I can see passing on to my kids.
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. Amazondemi baguette are comparable in quality, but cheaper ($3 for 2 6-oz demi baguettes).
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.
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