Yesterday I picked up a Bourbon chicken frozen entree at Grocery Outlet. I don’t recall the brand now (and I already threw away the box), so I’ll have to edit that detail in after I go to GO again. In any case, it was actually quite good. The chicken was tender and the sauce flavorful. The only minus is that the amount of chicken provided is somewhat skimpy for two people, but you can extend it by serving the chicken over rice (there is enough sauce for that). In all, I liked it and I’ll probably buy it again – my only hesitation is that the $5 price is a bit stiff for the amount of food. Still, it’s cheaper than going out to eat.
Also, right now Grocery Outlet has Ben & Jerry’s NY Super Fudge Chunk ice cream for $1.50.
Category: Food Items (Page 13 of 20)
I need to learn to look carefully at the “cooking” instructions of frozen food items I buy. This is not the first time I buy something only to find out that it can’t be easily microwaved for serving. For me the whole point of buying frozen food is to be able to quickly heat it up – if I have to thaw it first, or oven-bake it or deep fry it, I might as well take the extra step and prepare the food myself.
Fortunately, most of the frozen taquitos out there just require that you microwave them for a minute or two. Unfortunately, El Monterey taquitos (and gorditas), which I got today at Grocery Outlet, demand that they be thawed before cooking. I can see, perhaps, thawing the whole box if you are going to be serving them at a party – but that doesn’t work if all you want is to fix a couple of taquitos as a snack here and there.
The box offers no instruction on how to cook the taquitos/gorditas from its frozen state. I decided to microwave two taquitos and two gorditas on high for 1 1/2 minutes. The result were taquitos that were very cold in places and boiling hot in others. Still, they were quite food for being frozen processed food – nicer than the taquitos I usually get at the supermarket or Costco. Still, the improved flavor does not make up for the inconvenience of having to thaw them first.
What I’d say is buy them if you want to serve them for a party, but skip them otherwise.
I’ve been eying the Buzz Strong’s Real Coffee Cookies at Grocery Outlet for a couple of weeks now, curious about the possibility of ingesting some extra caffeine in the form of a cookie. I finally got a package and the cookies were fine, but they weren’t tasty enough to be worth the calories.
The smallish cookies taste like your standard packaged chocolate chip cookie, with a hint of metallic preservative taste masked by coffee flavor. They go well with coffee and each one has the equivalent caffeine of 1/4 cup of coffee. I was pretty buzzed after eating four cookies and drinking two cups of coffee, so I think they do the job they promise.
In all, I think these cookies are fine for people who like coffee and packaged cookies, but that’s not really me.
I’ve never been a big fan of Scharffen Berger because I’m not a fan of dark chocolate. Give me milk any time. Well, apparently Scharffen Berger has, unbeknown to me, been making milk chocolate for a while. Today I found their 3oz bars at Grocery Outlet here in San Leandro. The bars are $2 – they sell for $5 at Scharffen Berger’s website. Of course, these bars are close to expiration (January 2010), they were made at the Berkeley factory
which closed in January 2009.
Well, my verdict is that Scharffen Berger milk chocolate is (or was) by far the best milk chocolate I’ve ever tasted. The chocolate taste is very intense, it has layers of complexity and it’s just delicious. I imagine that Scharffen Berger will not/has not been able to keep its standards at the new factory – so I’ll probably hurry and buy a bunch of these bars at Grocery Outlet.
I usually shop at Safeway rather than Lucky’s, as Safeway is closer to me. However, I saw that lamb chops were on sale at Lucky’s for $3lb and figured I’d give them a try. Bad idea. They were soooooo bad, so full of fat that there was barely any meat to eat. Even cutting around the fat was a pain in the neck.
So yes, I learned my lesson, there is a reason why Lucky’s is cheaper than Safeway.
Like most non-vegetarians, I buy my ground beef already ground. It’s easier and requires the washing of fewer dishes. It’s not necessarily cheaper, however – apparently you can make good, lean ground beef from London broil, which is often on sale for less than $2lb.
In any case, an article in today’s New York Times has convinced me that I should give up that practice. The article recounts how common is the contamination of ground beef by e-coli and how opposed to any testing of the product are both meat producers and processors (though specially the former). They don’t want liability, so they don’t want to test. Even when they do, it’s very infrequently.
E-coli can be quite dangerous – lead to uremic hemolitic syndrome and to death. My own sister got the syndrome when she was 9-months old and has since then had three kidney transplants and a life that revolved around hospitals. It only takes a few e-coli cells to make you virulently sick, and e-coli multiplies every few minutes. Moreover, it doesn’t go away by being cleaned with simple soap and water – you need to use bleach to disinfect your cutting boards to get rid of it. In other words, it’s very easy to get infected.
It’s not clear to me how dangerous is the handling of non-ground beef (what they call muscle meat), but it’s surely safer than ground beef. So I’m going to try grinding my own in the food processor – specially when London broil is on sale.
One of my favorite products at Grocery Outlet is Smithfield cream cheese bars (8 oz for $1.30). Not only are they cheap (which significantly lowers the cost of baking a cheesecake), but the cream cheese has a nice, solid/stringy consistency that is wonderful for New York (and other) cheesecakes, and a vibrant, fresh flavor. I have gotten nothing but compliments for the NY cheesecake that I’ve been making with this cheese.
One thing to keep in mind, some of the cheese packages may be marked with the “Spanish” date notation (day-month-year). The ones currently on sale expire on “02-12-09”, which means on December 2nd, 2009.
And for those of you planning to make cheesecakes today, Grocery Outlet also has honey maid graham crackers ($2), sugar ($2.50, I think) and jumbo eggs ($1.50 a dozen). If you do use my recipe, note that it’s for large eggs, so reduce by one if using the jumbo size.
This week we discovered Crunchies at Grocery Outlet. Crunchies are basically dehydrated fruit, but very airy and light. They are made by removing the water from the fruit in a refrigerated vacuum (at least, according to the box). The results are very flavorful, extremely light, crunchy foams of fruit. They supposedly keep their nutrients, but you can eat a full fruit in 2 bites.
Each box of Crunchies comes with 9 packages, 3 of each kind. One contains strawberries, another a mixture of mangoes, strawberries, apples, raspberries, blueberries and peaches, and the final one mangoes, bananas, strawberries, pineapple and oranges. Each package of dried fruit is equivalent to one serving of fruit (which, btw, is either 1 piece of fruit or 1/2 cup of fruit, depending on the fruit in question). Of course, one package of crunchies is unlikely to make even a small dent in your hunger, but it’s a very easy, very healthy snack. And quite perfect for when you are craving something sweet.
I’ll check later how much the Crunchies were at Grocery Outlet (I can’t find the receipt), they have a msp of $9!!!
I love Grocery Outlet, you never know what you’ll find there. Today I found, of all things, Tortuga Caribbean Rum Cakes. I had never heard of it until a few weeks ago when I started researching my upcoming Cayman menu. Apparently, these cakes are a very famous Cayman product, known throughout the Caribbean. I was planning on making a rum cake myself (from this recipe), but I’m thrilled at finding the real thing. And at Grocery Outlet, no less!
Of course, the price is also unbeatable – $1.50 for the 4oz cake. Not cheap in the abstract, but Amazon sells the 16-Ounce cake
I usually get my olive oil at Trader Joe’s (though I wonder if it’s real olive oil), but I was out of it a couple of weeks ago and I was at Costco and decided to get their house brand: Cost Kirkland Filippo Berio Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Bad call. The olive oil has a very nice olive oil scent, fresh and vibrant. But it has a bitter edge to it, it probably doesn’t matter for cooking, but it’s not too pleasant to eat with bread. I won’t buy it again.
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