Growing up, I was never too fond of orange marmalade. As the cheapest of all the fruit preserves, it was ubiquitously served by all the old aunts and their friends with whom I had the misfortune of having tea at some point or another. I am sure they were great ladies on limited budgets trying to save a few pennies, but as a child I wasn’t that understanding. At home, I insisted on strawberry jam, or if we were lucky and found it available at the store, on rapsberry jam. Even as a kid, I felt sophisticated eating toast with butter and those exotic berries.
I still prefer berry jams, which in the US are as obiquitous as orange marmalade was in Argentina. All jams & jellies here seem to be priced identically, regardless of flavor, so there isn’t an incentive to buy any but the one you like.
I hadn’t given a second thought to orange marmalade for at least twenty years, until I ran into this product at the 99-cents store. I could recognize the brands, they were imported from Argentina. I was intrigued, it had been sooo long since I had tasted it and it could indeed bring memories back of home and childhood. And yet, I hadn’t liked it as a child so why should I like it now? So I didn’t get any.
I kept thinking about it, though, so when we visited the 99-cents store again last weekend I decided to get a jar of orange marmalade along with one of apple jam, also a product of Argentina. Today I tried it and was very pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it. Perhaps its sweet and sour taste is more pleasing to adults, or perhaps it’s just nostalgia speaking, but I thought it was great on a slice of toast, and even better in a peanut butter & jelly sandwich. At 99 cents it cannot be beat.
The apple jam is quite good also, it tastes like a sweeter, denser apple sauce. This is something I might have had once as a kid, so it didn’t any evoque any particular feelings, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
Category: Food Items (Page 19 of 20)
I hadn’t been to the farmer’s market in quite a while. Generally, Mike and Mika go there on Saturday mornings letting me sleep late. But I was awake today so I tagged along. I discovered that there was a new stand I hadn’t seen before, staffed by two African-American older ladies and selling seafood gumbo, cobblers, cheesecake, pecan pie and the like. I wanted to try something, of course, and I settled on the bread pudding. I LOVE bread pudding but as Mike doesn’t, I seldom feel inclined to make it.
Unfortunately, this bread pudding wasn’t very good. It was too dry and while it came with a sauce, there wasn’t enough of it and it hadn’t permeated the pudding enough. As a result, the pudding didn’t have much flavor. It was a large portion and it satisfied my hunger but not my desire for good bread pudding. I guess I’ll have to make my own after all – maybe a savory one. Anyone has a great recipe?
We got these bars (peanut butter chocolate chip) at Trader Joe’s for Mika’s school lunches. Unfortunately they are too tough for her to bite into. I don’t particularly like the flavor either. They taste too much of plain cereal and they are too sweet. I wouldn’t buy them again.
Safeway refrigerated cakes are often very good, the best cakes I can get in my little city (but if you know of a good source for cakes & desserts in San Leandro, please let me know). Unfortunatelly, their non-refrigerated cakes are not as successful.
Yesterday we were going to Charlotte’s for dinner and, as usual, I figured I’d take dessert. The dessert had to stay in the car for several hours so I didn’t want something that would have to be refrigerated, thus I decided to get the non-refrigerated coconut cake. It was OK but not great. The cake itself was a little bit dry and the frosting too-sweet and artificial tasting. I wouldn’t get it again.
I got one of the gold pinapples at Safeway. I don’t know if they had other kinds, I just picked up what I saw. It’s a special variety (genetically modified, no doubt) twice as sweet as regular pineapple. It’s delicious, without a doubt, but perhaps too sweet. Even Mike, who doesn’t always like pineapple because he finds it too sour, thought it wasn’t sour enough. After all, the combination of sweet and sour is what makes pineapple so great.
Still, this was really, really good. We’ll see how it works out on the pizza tonight.
We just made another trip to Trader Joe’s so I figure I’ll write a few words about new products we’d bought. I’ll keep adding more items to this posting as we try them.
–Corinthians Chocolate Cream Wafers. These are very long cylinders filled with dark chocolate cream. They are very brittle and most of them seemed to have broken at least in two even before we open the can. They are good and addictive but not as good as others I’ve had. I probably shouldn’t buy them again.
–Think Thin Sugar Free Sour Citrus Slices. These are little soft candies in sour flavors. Mike bought then and didn’t like them as they weren’t very sweet, though he says they are growing on him.
–Piccolo Limone Italiano. This pre-squeezed lemon juice comes in a little plastic bottle in the shape of a lemon. Unlike other commercial lemon juice, it’s neither lemon juice from concentrate, or pure-lemon juice. Instead it’s a mixture of water, lemon juice, citric acid and lemon oil. It does need to be refrigerated after opening it. It was quite good, it had a distinctive lemon-oil flavor that I actually found quite pleasant on top of last nights milanesas. Of course, fresh lemon is better – but if you don’t have your own lemon tree it can be quite expensive.
–Kettle Corn. Though obviously not as freshly made as the kettle corn from the farmers market, it tasted quite fresh. It was very good, but much sweeter than the farmer’s market stuff. That’s not bad in itself, though a concern if you’re watching your sugar intake.
–Orange Chicken. This is a frozen product that has to be heated by baking or sauteeing (in 1/2 cup vegetable oil!). I was VERY dissapointed. The chicken was pretty tasteless without the sauce, and the sauce was too runny and not very good. It didn’t really taste much like orange and not at all like the sauces you get at Chinese restaurants. Given how much time it takes to make this dish, and how it’s not microwabable, it’s certainly not worth it. It probably wouldn’t be worth it either if it was microwabable.
–Chicken Curry. This is a frozen entree under TJ’s label. It was very disappointing, much worse than the other frozen Indian entrees that TJ sells under a different label. The “basmati rice” was long-grain and may have been basmati, but it was completely tasteless. The curry had very few pieces of chicken and the spicy sauce tasted mostly of cinnamon. It was edible but not enjoyable.
I’m ashamed to say it but I love Stouffers lasagna. The small ones are OK, but they can’t compete with the large party-tray size. For some reason, maybe the long, slow baking, it tastes much better.
I don’t even want to look at the list of ingredients as I’m sure I’d be apalled. But it tastes sooo good, it’s such the perfect comfort food. Plus, if you bake a tray you’ll have dinner/lunch for at least a couple of days.
Michaela and I have fallen in love with Trader Joe’s frozen gnocchi. Both their Gnocchi alla Sorrentina, with a tomato sauce and mozarella cheese and their Gnocchi al Gorgonzola are great. We specially like the gorgonzola one, though it’s terribly caloric. One 1lb. package has almost 1,000 calories and while it’s supposed to be four servings, that would only be if you served them as a side dish. Mika and I had no problem devouring one whole package for dinner last night, and she was even hungry enough to have some more gnocchi from my mom’s plate.
The gnocci alla sorrentina is much healthier, with 510 calories for the 1lb package. Of course it’s not as yummy, but it’s quite good nonetheless.
You can make them with less sauce for less calories and less mess.
They are made in Italy, without any artificial ingredients, though the gorgonzola gnocchi has margarine in addition to butter. You can heat them on the microwave or in a frying pan (7 minutes). In all, it’s a delicious and quick meal.
I just tried the flan from costco. AFAIK it’s a new item and was in the cakes section (next to a fruit cake and a cheesecake). It’s delicious. It tastes just like great flan, but it’s incredibly smooth and creamy. I actually missed the rough texture I get when I make flan, but my mom loved the smoothness. It’s also very, very rich. Yummm.
Of course it has some ingredients I don’t like (like corn syrup), and at $13 for the 3 lbs flan it’s not exactly cheap. Plus it’s very flat so I wouldn’t serve it to guests. But lord, is it good!
They were very good. At 450 calories for the 12 containers in the package, a little bit too caloric for an everyday meal – but very, very tasty. All ingredients look good as well.
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