Text 310, 56 rader
Skriven 2006-04-14 00:20:58 av DAVE SACERDOTE (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av MICHAEL LOO
Ärende: Eats
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It seemed like the grocery store was purging the shelves of beef 
today, on the eve of Good Friday (a holiday taken very seriously
in this predominately RC town.)  The markdowns at Shaw's today were
numerous and steep - thinly sliced block chuck for sandwiches marked
down to less than $2/pound, beef liver marked down to .89/pound,
black angus chuck for stew, $1.10/pound... Most of it shows Saturday
as the last date of "safe" sale, ha ha, so I loaded the shopping cart.

Lynn had a bunch of kids over this evening; thanks to the markdowns
I had a huge load of lovely thin veal cutlets on hand, so I made
veal parmesan.  (Spur of the moment, though, so I used sauce out of a
jar, heaven forbid!)  Some observations:

 - Rienza Angel Hair Pasta (#2) - A good pasta overall, but suffers 
   from the same irrationality in cooking instructions that we've
   observed from other brands.  Prominently displayed on the front of
   the package: COOK 2 MINUTES.  2 minutes and the stuff was still
   brittle.  At a little under 5, though, it was just right.  Nice
   hard wheat, too, no gluey texture or floury taste.

 - Ragu 5-Herb Tomato sauce.  I checked the labels on every brand of
   sauce in the aisle.  All of them were sweetened (no surprise there,
   just about every Eye-Tie I know puts some sugar in their sauce) but
   Ragu was the only one with sugar rather than corn syrup, and had
   the least amount of it as well.  There were big chunks of tomatoes
   and identifyable bits of onion, garlic, etc.  The 5 herbs seemed to
   be basil, oregano, salt, pepper, and basil, but once it had been
   doctored with a little table cheese and had some of the extra
   moisture simmered out of it, it was decent sauce for "outta da jar."

= = 

Strange Brew Department:  Kool-Aid Soft Drink Mix, remaindered at
Ocean State Job Lot, in shrinkwrapped bundles of 10 unsweetened
envelopes.  They're mystery packs; you don't get to see what flavors
lurk below the mild-mannered surfaces.  But they're just a buck for
the pack, so what the hell.

My pack contained a couple blue varieties (yay!); a few "color
changing" mixes, one "Jamaican" flavor (floral and fruit-punchy
with an emphasis on floral); and a couple "Tamarindo Agua Fresco"
with the labels all in Spanish.

The tamarind packets are not all that bad, really.  Kool-Aid sure
has got the color down, that's for sure - you'd lose sight of a 
real tamarind pod the second it went under the surface.  That
doesn't do anything for the visual appeal, however (Lynn refers
to it as "baby-shit brown." [g])  Flavor is a little on the sweet
side (I make the stuff with less sweetener than the label calls 
for but even corrected for that it's sweet) but recognizeable as
tamarind, in a candy-and-Kool-Aid way.

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Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, 
minutus carborata descendum pantorum
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