Safeway is a super market chain operating in Northern California under that name and in Southern California under the name Vons. From time to time it buys other chains or is itself acquired by others. It’s hard to keep up. It’s the closest full size supermarket to my house, and the only one that does pick-up/delivery without a third party, so it’s where I do most of my shopping.
I was surprised at how tasty this pizza was. I don’t usually like thin crust pizza, but it is a great way to save carbs. And this one is really ultra thin. The cheese and the alfredo sauce combined so that it looks like there is a lot of cheese. It was flavorful and loved the little bits of oregano. The caramelized onions provided the occasional burst of sweetness. The chicken didn’t contribute much more than protein. In all, I’d get it again.
Regular price is $7, but I got it on sale for $4.50
The Father’s Table is a company based in Florida which makes commercial cheesecakes and roll cakes for sale at Safeway and other supermarkets. Their 6″, 1lb cheesecake sampler goes on Friday sale at Safeway every few weeks for $5 (from an $11 regular price), along with their Signature Select cheesecake sampler, and I often get it then. Safeway makes many of their products at home, but given the similar packaging, pricing and taste of this cheesecake with the Safeway Brand, I’m betting Safeway’s cheesecake sampler is manufactured by The Father’s Table as well.
This is an OK, but not great, cheesecake. First, the cake is too thick and too dry. This particularly variety has a chocolate flavored cake, which is somewhat better than the graham one, but still not a winner.
The cheesecake itself is competent but not wonderful. It’s a little on the firm side, and with so many additional flavors, its not always easy to detect that of the cheesecake itself. Still, as an occasional treat it’s not bad. Particularly for $5.
I wasn’t a huge hummus fan back when I first tried it, during my year abroad in Egypt. I much preferred tahini by itself. Over the years, however, hummus has grown on me, and I often have it as a snack. I’ve tried a lot of different brands, and I can’t say that any of them stand out. Then again, why would they? Hummus is just a mixture of chickpeas, tahini (sesame paste) and oil, with some salt, lemon juice and garlic for flavor. There are, of course, a wide array of flavored hummuses – but I prefer the traditional.
Organics is one of the home brands for Safeway/Vons supermarkets (currently owned by Albertsons, slated to be sold to Kroeger’s). This O Organics traditional hummus was pretty good, though not special. It’s smoother and has a less chalky consistency than other commercial hummus, and a it features a brighter lemon juice flavor – even though lemon was listed as the next to last ingredient. It also does contain citric acid. The flavor was smooth, and it seemed to have a good ratio of chickpeas to tahini. It uses canola oil, which is not the best, however.
At $6 for the 10-oz tub it’s on par with other supermarket hummuses (which have become quite expensive lately), but I bought it on sale for $4. I’ll get it again when it’s on sale, but I wouldn’t pay full price for it (or for hummus in general – there is usually a brand on sale, or I can just get it at cheaper stores).
I’m not a fan of thin crust pizza, but obviously carbs are bad for me so I could enjoy pizza more often if I could convince myself to go for the thin crust. California Pizza Kitchen might just convince me to do that.
I’d always liked California Pizza Kitchen, though I can’t remember going to an actual restaurant since my 22-yo was a baby. It’s not surprising, the only one in the East Bay is in Dublin, and if I’m going to go that way, I’m going to go to Zachary’s instead (and not for the thin pizza). Their frozen pizzas, however, are manufactured by Nestlé (a very problematic company). I didn’t realize that when I ordered this one, or that they also make DiGiorno and Tombstone pizzas). Hopefully I’ll remember and avoid them in the future.
These pizzas were on sale at Safeway last week for $6 (regular price is $10) and as we didn’t have particularly high temperatures forecast for this week, and I didn’t realize they were made by Nestlé, I decided to give them a try.
The BBQ chicken pizza tasted just like I remembered from long ao. I enjoyed the flavor combination of sweet (but not too sweet) BBQ sauce, chicken, red onions and cheese. The dough wasn’t too crispy, and it served the toppings well. Being so thin, it only required about 12 minutes in a pre-heated oven.
A pizza is large enough to serve 2 if you add a salad. At under 15-oz, it’s not a super great value, but probably better than filling yourself up with carbs. I’d get it again if it wasn’t made by Nestlé.
I get Signature Select salads when they’re on sale at Safeway. My daughter likes the Caesar Salad, and I always go for the Cranberry Walnut one. The mixed greens come in a plastic bowl with a mini plastic fork an they are covered with a plastic insert with divisions for dried cranberries, chopped candied walnuts, feta cheese cubes and a raspberry vinaigrette. It’s easy to mix it all together in the bowl and not too messy. The proportion of greens to dressing and other ingredients is quite good and it makes for a tasty, if very light lunch as the whole bowl is just 4.5 oz (though the version sold at Vons is 4.75 oz for some reason).
Regular price right now is $4.50, which seems insane to me (as all grocery prices do), but they’re often on sale for $3 if you buy 3. If you order online, make sure to indicate a substitute as they will charge you the full price if you order 3, but they don’t have your choices. You can order more than 3 at the discounted price, however.
I’m not the biggest fan of mochi, a Japanese pastry made from glutinous rice, so I surprised myself when I added these Bubbies mochi ice cream treats to my cart after I came across them while online shopping at Safeway. I was also surprised at how much I ended up liking them.
The treats consist of flavored ice cream wrapped in a thin layer of mochi. The mochi is chewy and gelatinous, but thin enough that it actually complements the ice cream.
Ube, a purple yam from the Philippines, has a difficult to describe flavor, which to me is utterly forgettable – probably for this very reason. It’s sweet and somewhat fruity, pretty subtle and filled with umami.
The results were for a very enjoyable, not very sweet, treat. It actually made me think it’s something my grandmother would have enjoyed – which only confirms the fact that I’ve gotten old.
The treats come in a wide variety of flavors, though only a couple where available at my local Safeway. I’m totally intrigued about some of the others – blood orange, milk tea and passion fruit sound particularly interested – but I’ll have to wait to find them elsewhere. The package of 6 was $4 on sale at Safeway, but they usually sell for $7.50
Update
I also tried the matcha green tea mochi and I was surprised at how much I liked them. I’m not a huge fan of matcha, though the flavor has been slowly growing on me in the last few years. Here, I actually appreciated it. Once again I liked the consistency of the thin mochi and the light ice cream, but also appreciated how lightly flavored and sweetened the ice cream was. It was quite refreshing in a summer day. I won’t rush to order it again, I’m still not a matcha devotee, but I’ll finish the box.
I finally tried this Shark Tank product and it’s good.
Shark Tank, a show where budding entrepreneurs pitch investment opportunities in their companies to five billionaires, has been on national TV for fifteen years – but as I never watch TV per se, I didn’t really become aware of it until a few weeks ago, when YouTube started pushing episodes of it on me. After trying one, I got hooked on it – not so much for the pitches, but because it introduced me to some cool products, some wacky ones and some that everyone could see were destined to be failures. Several of the products pitched to the sharks have actually become popular since their appearance on the show, though so far, there is only one I’d actually bought myself prior to becoming acquainted by the show. I have been intrigued by some of the products featured, however, and when I saw that the Pizza Cupcake was available at my local Safeway, I thought I’d give them a try.
The pizza cupcakes are not cupcakes per se, but they consist of a pastry dough baked in a smaller-than-usual muffin tin, hollow in the center and filled with pizza sauce and cheese. They come frozen and you bake them in the oven. The secret of the cupcakes is the dough, it’s described as a mixture of brioche and sourdough and it’s light, airy and yet still chewy. It’s quite tasty and I loved he consistency. The pizza sauce was on the sweet side, it bordered on being too sweet an acidic – but as there isn’t much of it, it wasn’t a big deal. The cheese is just cheese, it could have used some Parmesan for a shaper flavor. The problem is that there isn’t enough sauce/cheese for the whole cupcake – only the shallow center has it. Fortunately, the bready borders are good dipped on ranch sauce, but you have to have some around to enjoy them that way.
I cooked my cupcakes in the air fryer, using the directions in the Pizza Cupcake website: preheat the air fryer to 350°, and then cook for 5-7 minutes (I did 6). That left me with some burnt spots on the top and cheese that was bordering on cold. Next time, I’ll try not preheating and doing 8 minutes, or maybe cooking it for 10 minutes at 300° – but I imagine all air fryers are different.
The package of 6 pizza cupcakes was $10 on sale at Safeway ($13 regular price), which seems way too expensive – though I find pretty much all food at Safeway too expensive nowadays.
The final frozen pizza on sale at Safeway last week was Chicago’s Home Run Inn pizza. I got both a cheese and a pepperoni one and my daughter made the cheese. We both loved it. It’s hard to describe a pizza, but this one reminded me of the pizza served at La Vals in Berkeley when I want to college. It’s quite a bit thinner, but flavor wise it’s very close to what I can remember. It is probably my favorite frozen pizza ever.
Safeway had a bunch of frozen pizzas on sale this week, so it seemed like a good opportunity of giving them a try. I’m not generally fond of thin crusted pizza (which is what I gather Safeway means by “Neapolitan style”), but it’s overall healthier.
This flavor particularly intrigued me, as pear and gorgonzola pair beautifully and bacon could only make it better. This time, I was right. The flavors actually all worked very well and the pizza was very good. I’d have it again (despite its crispy, thin crust).
Gorgonzola by itself would be overwhelming, so the pizza also has mascarpone and Mozarella cheeses – but I had to read it in the box, as it’s not apparent. The predominant flavor is gorgonzola, but in a reasonable amount. I did like both the bacon and the arugula, but felt it could have used more of both. The pear came in the way of a very sweet chutney. Of course, fresh pears would be better – or even a less sweet chutney, but it did provide a nice note to the pizza.
It’s made me want to try the other pizzas from this series – though only as long as they’re on sale for $6.
I absolutely love Chicago style deep dish pizza, so when I saw that Gino’s East of Chicago Deep Dish Pizzas were on sale at Safeway for $6, I had to give it a try. The reviews were so good that I got both a Mozzarella cheese one and a Supreme. Boy, was I disappointed!
The pizza tastes of one thing and one thing only: pasta sauce. And while it’s not a bad pasta sauce, it’s not a great one either. On top of some spaghetti, with some Parmesan cheese on top, I might even enjoy it. But it just does not belong on pizza. I am aware that the sauce for Chicago style pizza, unlike that for other pizzas, is cooked – so it lacks the fresh, fragrant flavor of raw sauce. But they still tend to taste different than pasta sauce. Zacchary’s, my favorite Chicago-style stuffed pizza chain in the Bay Area, uses a sauce very similar to just stewed tomatoes, which retains much of the freshness of the raw fruit. Gino’s sauce while still chunky, is really a melded sauce. It’s hard to describe other than it really makes you think of spaghetti sauce.
And while the sauce is on top, as is the custom for Chicago-style pizza, I couldn’t remove enough of it to be able to taste the other ingredients. It was just a mess. No one else in the family liked it either. I hate to waste food, but I ended up giving it to the dog.
It takes 45 minutes on a pre-heated oven to heat up this pizza. I was pre-warned by reading reviews, but you should be aware. At $6 for a 2 Lb pizza, it’s not a bad value while on sale. It should feed two people (or more if you are eating a salad or something else).
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