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United States, North Carolina, Carrboro, English, Paul, Male, 56-60, All Music, All Food.

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Thursday, September 12, 2002

Harris Teeter's variation on the flyer idee fixe Buy One Get One FREE this week is more informative. Not so good for the pork tenderloins ("SAVE BIG with your VIC card"), but all the other featured items use a "SAVE at least $X.XX on two"  format. "X.XX" is 59 cents on Starkist Chunk Light Tuna, for example, and my cats told me that's a pretty good deal. Like me, they won't eat canned tuna if it's packed in oil (unless it's tonno ligure sott'olio, but I don't let 'em see that). With bulk yellow stone-ground grits available locally, the X.XX=1.79 on Quaker Instant Grits ain't worth it. $8.49 for 2.5 pound bag "IOF" boneless chicken breast get's me thinking about chicken breast/morel mushroon sausages (hint of nutmeg too), but that's still pricey. The only real items of interest are blueberries (2 halfpints for $2.99) and large white eggs (2 dozen for $1.19). Ice cream, Velveeta, Doritos, Classico Pasta Sauce who cares? Some of this stuff on the last page looks good. Dragon Plums (no links - rare...what are they?) looked good in the store, but they're $2.79/lb. Valencia oranges are not in season and generally not very good out of season, but I didn't check them out. The best deal was one I can't find online, but was in the local (NC) flyer - $11.99 for "101 ounce Bertolli Extra Virgin Oil". Wish they had put "olive" in there, I have great admiration for virgins and the extra one even fits in with "Buy one, get one free", but they're useless in the kitchen. If this is olive oil, as it's safe to guess, this is roughly equivalent to 3 one-liter (34 ounce) bottles, and that's a "don't miss it" price. Good utility oil from Unilever, the same people who bring you the unique (and sometimes strange) line of Knorr products (their ham boullion is great with green beans). 6:10:45 PM    comment []

This week, Kroger's has grape tomatoes (aka "Santa Fe F1" - which should never be confused with this F1) at the silly "buy one, get one free" price. Does that mean if you accidentally pick up just one, you pay full price? Never, it is always half price - even at the automated checkouts where human judgement is entirely eliminated ("Remove the item from the scanner and place it in the bag"). Normal price is $3.99, here's the ad. T-bones at $4.99 ain't a bad deal either. I'm not sure what "Ready To Eat" cantelopes are, makes me worry that I have been leaving out some essential step in the ones that aren't advertised that way, but at 99 cents per, who's complaining (if they're ripe - I didn't check). This page has a lot of annoying stuff. "Slicing Tomatoes" is descriptive, just don't eat them - not just these, but in general. Use a serrated knife and edible tomatoes can be sliced. The blueberries, grape tomatoes, "moonlight" mushrooms (what, the guy grows 'em after getting home from his regular job?), fresh celery (who wants limp?), and seedless cucumbers are all listed "buy one, get one FREE" (note what gets the attention-grabbing font size), but no prices are given at all. This is useless for making an at-home shopping decision. Fortunately, they tend to keep all these specials, generally legit, in the same area, so when you've already decided to go to the store you can make a mental note to check the prices of all of them without having to make a list. Here at home, the baby backs curing in the fridge look about ready for the next step. There's a salty syrup in the bag from the liquids drawn by the cure. Tomorrow morning, I'll rinse them off and hang them from bacon hooks until Saturday morning when the smoking process begins. The plum juice yield from Tuesday evening's steam extraction was, similar to the apples, a bit over a half gallon from 5 pounds of fruit. The Mehu-Liisa laughs derisively at 5 pounds of fruit, it can easily handle 10. Wonder how it does with tomatoes? - the manual says "1-2 cups per pound of fruit". "Canning tomatoes" can be had for a song these days. In sharp contrast to "slicing tomatoes", they are not pretty but do have flavor. My guess is that the pulp leftover in the steam juicer could be used for tomato sauce, in fact the manual recommends doing just that with pulp. My favorite quote from the manual comes from the very first section: "The best way to discover the right setting is by trial and error". Anyone who has done any cooking at all knows this simple truth, all the thermometers, measuring cups, scales and gauges will get you to the ballpark, but they won't teach you how to pitch. God is in the smidgens. 5:04:40 AM    comment []

This is old news, but still very sad. The ACLU, I'm sure, always hated some of the losers they chose to defend in the name of Constututional free speech and in the same vein (so to speak), it is difficult to defend haggis, but the genuine threat is sheep casings: The Agency is not advising against the consumption of sheepmeat or sheep products. However, consumers have a right to know that, if BSE were present in sheep, their risk could be significantly reduced by avoiding sausages made with natural lamb casings and avoiding mutton. In particular, the Food Standards Agency has recommended to the European Commission, as a proportionate and precautionary measure, that sheep intestine should be banned from food use on a Europe-wide basis.   Sheep casings are indispensible to homemade sausage. BSE is a genuine threat and the FDA here in the US assures us it is not a problem, but a lot of traditional foods, many with origins BCE ("Before Common Era", no relation to BSE) can no longer be sold in the Old World. This is where the richest tradition is still maintained, even though production has migrated with the artisans who brought their skills to the US. Many of them, such as bundnerfleisch, depend on the micro-ecology and weather of their point of origin for their unique flavor. I sure hope this Mad Cow Paranoia runs its course without a whole bunch of dumb laws getting passed that linger on decades past their usefulness. That could really take the snap out of our sausages. 4:10:52 AM    comment []