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.
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.
Safeway had their deli tamales on sale this week for $1.66 (regularly $2.50), so I decided to give them a try. I ordered the shredded pork tamal(e) and I was actually quite happy with it. There are two things I want in a tamal: a good tasting, not too spicy filling, and a good filling to masa ratio. The latter means that there should be more filling than masa, rather than vice versa. This tamal fulfilled both of my requirements. Indeed, the ratio was close to perfect.
I had a similar positive experience with Trader Joe’s frozen tamales last week. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the fresh tamales we occasionally buy at the farmer’s market, which have much more masa than filling.
There we no instructions on how to reheat this (refrigerated) tamal, so I microwaved it for 1 minute in the corn wrapping. That worked well enough.
I feel that even in this economy, paying $3 for a supermarket tamal is ridiculous (though you can buy 4 for $10) – that’s the farmer market’s/homemade price – but I’ll definitely buy them again when on sale.
Last week, Safeway had Signature Select boneless, skinless chicken thighs on sale for $3/lb – down from the $6.50 regular price. Given how expensive groceries are now, I figured I’d give them a try. I was less than happy.
The thighs are HUGE. I’m afraid to imagine how big those chickens have to be to have such big thighs. And they are also extremely fatty. There are now laws in California that force chicken farmers to give chickens a minimum amount of space and access to the outdoors, but I can’t imagine these chickens have ever gotten any exercise. For that reason alone, I’m unlikely to buy Safeway chicken again.
On the plus side, I was able to cut the thighs into nicely sized cubes for Madura-style satay, and the chicken was quite tender.
I don’t bake much, and I never make pie crust. I know it’s easy, but I avoid anything that forces me to use a rolling pin (this includes cut cookies). Therefore, in the rare occasions when I make a pie, I buy pre-made pie shells.
Unfortunately, most store bought pie shells aren’t very good. They can be too tough, not flaky enough or have an unpleasant bitter baking soda taste. In addition, they are expensive! Enter Amazon Grocery pie shells.
At about $2 for 2 shells, these shells were surprisingly affordable – though beware that Amazon practices “dynamic” pricing, with products sometimes changing prices multiple times a day and coming in-and-out of inventory. Still, that’s half the price of the supermarket-brand pie shells. They were also surprisingly good. The shells are pretty thin, and while not flaky, their thinness stops them from being hard. They also have a pretty good flavor, slightly salty but that works well with sweet fillings as it provides a balance to them. That said, I used the shells in a sugar cream pie, and I’m not sure how well they will handle a pie with a significantly heavier filling, such as apple pie.
These shells come refrigerated and rolled up, with parchment paper separating them. Some of the dough stack to the paper, though it was easy enough to fix fix them.
I’ll definitely buy them again next time I bake a pie.
Update: Let’s talk about dynamic pricing. Just two days after I wrote this post, Amazon has doubled the price of the shells from $2 to $4!
I love ravioli. It’s been my favorite pasta since I was a kid. Indeed, it was the only pasta I liked as a kid. This love comes from the fact that my grandparents used to make homemade ravioli, and they celebrated my first birthday with a raviolada, I love seeing the photos of my with a face full of sauce.
Short of having my grandmother make ravioli, I only had ravioli growing up when my father would buy the fresh pasta at a nearby pasta factory. But it was expensive. My parents were thrifty, so it was a special occurrence.
In the US (and in Argentina nowadays), you could get frozen ravioli for a reasonable price, so they were one of the first dishes I started “making” after I got married. I still always keep a bag of frozen ravioli in the fridge just in case.
With time, supermarkets started selling higher quality refrigerated ravioli, and recently Rana has moved into selling these “gourmet”-style ravioli, with unusual/special fillings. They were on sale this week ($5 for the 8 oz package, down from $8 regular price), so I grabbed a couple of bags.
I hadn’t had the pulled pork ravioli before and I was sort of puzzled by them – I still am. The pulled pork filling is very tasty, it has a strong, but balanced, BBQ pork flavor and stands well to the pasta. The flavor of fillings in ravioli often gets lost, but that is not the case here. Still, it was not clear to me why I was eating pulled pork inside a ravioli. The flavor/texture combination wasn’t really obvious and I’m still not sure that it worked. Again, it was tasty but it was weird.
I usually eat commercial ravioli with store-bought pasta sauce, but I didn’t think the flavor combinations would work here, so I tried these ravioli with butter – that worked well enough. I think brown butter and sage would work as well, though I was too lazy to make it last night. I did try it with some grated pecorino cheese, but the cheese does nothing here but confuse flavors – it’s definitely best left out. You do need butter or sauce as otherwise the ravioli get too sticky/gummy.
The other issue I have with these ravioli is the package size. The 8 oz package is supposed to offer two servings of one cup each. But unless you are serving them as an appetizer or along other dishes, or simply are not very hungry, a cup of ravioli is too little. Two cups, however, is too much unless you are actually very hungry. Now, the package might be perfect if you are making dinner for yourself and a young child, but that’s no longer my case. I wish they would increase the size to 12 oz, or perhaps decrease it to 6 oz. That said, $5 for a gourmet tasting meal is definitely not a bad price.
The ravioli themselves are pretty large – the kind you need to cut in two in order to fit into your mind. Obviously you can do this with a fork, but I personally prefer smaller ravioli.
I might buy these again to feed to my husband, who just loves pulled pork. But really, I wish Rana would just sell their pulled pork to eat in a sandwich, that feels more natural.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m currently in a cooking strike. Meanwhile, my youngest daughter has been doing a lot of cooking for herself. This means that commercial pasta sauce has reappeared in our kitchen.
In the last few years, a number of premium pasta sauces have made their appearance at the supermarket, led by Rao’s, named after the famous pasta restaurant in NYC. What characterizes premium sauces are that they are made with actual whole tomatoes and olive oil. Regular pasta sauces, on the other hand, are made with tomato puree and soybean or canola oil (Ragú, Prego) or a combination of tomato puree and diced tomatoes (Barilla, Bertolli and Classico).
Mezetta is the premium bland that most often goes on sale at Safeway, so I’ve now tried several of its flavors. I reviewed the roasted garlic one before. The ingredients for the basic sauce include “Italian Plum Tomatoes from Italy’s San Marzano Region, California Plum Tomatoes, Imported Olive Oil, Fresh Onions, Sea Salt, Fresh Garlic, Fresh Basil, Black Pepper, Spices,” plus whatever flavoring the particular sauce has. This one had cheese. It tasted exactly like would expect: tomato sauce with cheese. It’s actually pretty good as a dipping sauce. it has a very fresh, bright flavor and the cheese adds even more umami. I like it less on top of pasta. Served on ravioli, it was too acidic to compliment rather than overwhelm the filling. Even on just plain spaghetti, the acidity of the flavor is a bit too much. It needs something more substantial and absorbent, such as bread, to truly shine.
This, btw, has been my general complaint with the premium sauces – they are just not as good on pasta as the more cooked down, old-style and cheaper red sauces. Premium pastas tend to win taste tests when they are tasted on their own – and I can totally understand that – but it’s different to eat a whole bowl of pasta than taste a spoonful of pasta sauce.
Frozen ravioli have long been a savior for busy moms – and just regular people. They are easy (though a bit bulky) to keep in the freezer, quick enough to make, and, combined with store-bought sauce, a super easy weeknight meal. I’m going through yet another cooking strike, so frozen ravioli have reappeared in our lives.
I’ve been buying Celentano frozen ravioli quite a bit lately because they are often on sale at Safeway ($4-5 for 20-24 oz, from a $8 purported regular price), and at that price they are cheaper than Safeway’s own brand. Safeway only carries the cheese, spinach & cheese and beef ravioli, so they are they only ones we tried.
They are pretty good, not dramatically different in taste than other brands. My daughters don’t like the spinach & cheese flavor, but they are happy enough with the cheese ones. These come in both regular and “mini” version, the latter are easier to eat. The regular sized ravioli are too large to eat with one bite, so you need to cut them in two, though you can accomplish this with a fork if you cook them past al dente (which I do). Like other raviolis, if you do this they tend to open in the boiling water and the filling comes out.
The beef ravioli have a subtle flavor, as is often the case in ravioli, but not really different than Safeway’s own brand. There is enough flavor to eat them with butter and cheese instead of sauce.
In all, if you are watching your pennies, there is no particular reason to not buy this brand versus other regular frozen ravioli brands – obviously they are not as good at Genova ravioli, my favorite brand, but they are about 1/3 the price.
I first came across Swiss Miss instant cocoa back when I was a kid. We used to drink chocolate milk every afternoon, after coming home from school, made from Nesquik or Toddy powders and hot or cold milk, depending on the season. My dad would prepare it for us and I can still see us, waiting at the kitchen table, while dad mixed it. I can’t recall exactly when or how, the little packages of Swiss Miss came into our lives, but I know they had mini-marshmallows – something I’d never even heard of before. Perhaps my aunt Grace brought them from America when she came to visit my grandmother before she died. Or perhaps my father bought them in Buenos Aires, circa 1979, when Argentina’s currency was artificially strong (just like right now) and the country opened up to imports. In any case, we liked it – but as we were used to mixing the chocolate mix with milk, rather than water, that’s how we prepared it then and how I’ve prepared Swiss Miss mixtures all my life.
The problem is that Swiss Miss powders already have dry milk inside them, so when you mix them with actual milk, the result is a sweet liquid that has very little chocolate taste. Upping the amount of mix simply makes it too sweet to handle.
Come Swiss Miss Dark Chocolate. It ups the amount of chocolate (or chocolate flavor), and while it’s still too sweet, at least hot chocolate made with it tastes like chocolate. The sweetness makes it a very special occasion treat – just thinking about it most of the time makes my stomach churn -, but perfect for when I actually want a lazy hot chocolate.
My husband got me a box of these heart-shaped stuffed madelines ($10) for Valentine’s Day and it was such a lovely gesture. The box came with six red, raspberry jam filled madelines and three nutella-filled ones. I love madelines and was very intrigued. Alas, the idea was better than the reality.
What makes madelines wonderful is their subtle flavor, the slight caramelization of its surface, and their spongy texture. Here, the flavors of the fillings were so strong that you couldn’t taste the madelines themselves. The filling made them very thick, and perhaps for that reason, very dry. It robbed the madelines of their “madelineness” and just made them into a generic jam or nutella filled thick and dry pastry. I just wasn’t a fan.
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