Kent D
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Posts posted by Kent D
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Today's Wichita Eagle says that this concept is working so well, they're going to expand it to two more stores... one of them in MY neighborhood! The latest announcement is for the 31st and Seneca store:It will include many of the same elements featured in Dillons' expanded Marketplace concept, which adds department-store style shopping areas and items.
Featured will be upgraded grocery departments, a specialty kitchen and beauty center, a Starbucks, a sushi bar, gourmet cheese and olive bars, international, organic and specialty foods and an expanded pharmacy.
Well, gee, this should be an interesting change. Only in recent months have canned cannelini beans been available, and when I ask the produce guys why they don't carry shallots, they get defensive and tell me I can use scallions instead. I know I shouldn't be rude to the young'uns; after all, they're not making that decision. But sometimes it's just all too much.
Scallions, my ass.
So now we're going from not even being able to buy shallots, to having imported (expensive) cheeses available, not to mention sushi and 'gourmet' olives... in a blue-collar neighborhood inhabited primarily by aircraft plant workers? (My husband is one of them, so I'm not putting them down.) I'm just saying that this is a little incongruous, and it'll be dammed interesting to see how it goes.
Wonder if they'll carry shallots in the new store?
My wife was wondering why the last time she went into that Dillons to rent a video they were closing the video rental section.
I can't wait -- now when I drive down Seneca to drop off my recyclables and fill the gas tank, I can run in and buy some new and stinky cheeses...and home furnishings. I may have to change grocery stores, as the one at 13th & West will NEVER go to Marketplace.
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Totally Popeyes. I grew up eating KFC, but I don't remember the last time I ate anything from KFC. The chicken pieces are smaller, the chicken never seemed as fresh, and the sides tasted too "commercial".
I actually think that the deli counter fried chicken at our Dillons stores is a much better product than KFC. But we eat Popeyes a couple times a month with a box of their buttery yummy biscuits.
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Wow, these pictures and commentary are so interesting that you actually made haggis and liver look GOOD. I'm still not eating any, but the seed has been planted!
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My very German grandparents bought me "The New German Cookbook" by Jean Anderson (available pretty much anywhere). I need to dig it out and find something interesting for Oktoberfest -- I've grown tired of the same brats & saurkraut meal. Sometimes I'm a disgrace to my good peasant ancestry.
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I WILL confess that when I was a gas-grill owner, I did use that stuff to impart more flavor to the meat, but the day the gas grill gave up the ghost, I bought a charcoal grill/smoker, bought me a couple bags of wood chunks, and never looked back. Now I mostly use the smoke flavoring in cheese balls or barbecue sauce, not on the actual meat, unless I'm recreating my Mom's crock-pot brisket (no, you don't want the recipe - cook the brisket the way nature intended!).
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For me, I always qualify a "Best of" with "that I've had so far", although I'm always looking for something better. Having a difference of opinion doesn't make either person wrong, it's a factor of individual taste. And until you've FOUND the best, you have to go with the evidence you have gathered to that point.
"Best Of" lists and titles are an interesting diversion, but they mostly come down to a popularity contest, nothing more.
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Everything mentioned so far is wonderful for smoking. Just be extra careful and DO NOT use walnut for smoking. It is POISONOUS! Don't believe anyone who says it isn't. It has and still does kill horses when used for bedding, and its extractives are deadly.
Ray
Are you sure? Walnut was the first wood we burned in our fireplace when we moved to California in 1980. Unfortunately walnut orchards are being cleared for development at an alarming rate in the central valley of California, and the trees are piled up and burned. I've used walnut oil in cooking for years and my understanding is that it is one of the healthiest oils available. I would like to know where you got the information relating to walnut toxicity.
I'm positive. Remember that burning wood in a fireplace (or woodstove) does not expose one to the smoke, unless something is wrong. And the oil comes from the nutmeats, not the wood, bark, husks, or leaves. (Tomato plants are quite poisonous, but we can eat the tomatoes!)
To get the info, just Google it; there are quite too many sources to list. But stop by a horse farm, agricultural station or library if you can; the internet is not the repository of all man's knowledge.
Ray
I Googled "Walnut wood smoking" and the first page was nothing but companies selling walnut chips and chunks for barbecue smoking. Hm...
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I found a big pork shoulder at the store today, and I've decided to jerk it for my Dad's 70th birthday bash this weekend. I'm a little apprehensive, as one of my uncles who will be there ran a barbecue catering company for several years. Not that he did jerk, so far as I know, but I always seem to attack something new in front of a large audience. It's more of a challenge not to screw up big-time.
I've made several jerk sauces/pastes/rubs before, but I've never done it the same way twice, and now reading here that soy sauce is an optional ingredient, who knows what I'll come up with. I just know when I get it right by that smell - that mysterious spicy wonderful smell that lingers on my fingertips and in my nose for days afterwards. It may not be "authentic", given that I have no source for pimento wood, but no one else will know the difference.
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I seem to recall eating there with my family when I was in my teens, but I haven't set foot in one since then, only because I really don't like seafood outside of the occasional piece of salmon, a tuna sandwich, maybe some mesquite-grilled shrimp. Things like lobster just creep me out.
Strangely, though, somehow my daughters have developed a fascination with RL, and so whenever my parents ask them where they'd like to be taken for a birthday dinner (...hey, how come MY grandparents never took ME out to dinner?), they always say "RED LOBSTER!". Fortunately, this means it doesn't come out of my pocket. Of course, then I have to take them out for another birthday dinner, but at least that's at some place I can find something I want to eat.
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It's summer, and since my daughter's always do the summer reading program down at the library, I get to check out real books for a few weeks. So I always hit the "new books" shelf, and for some inexplicable reason always end up with food-related books. Right now I'm flipping through:
HOW I LEARNED TO COOK: CULINARY EDUCATIONS FROM THE WORLD'S GREATEST CHEFS by WITHERSPOON, KIMBERLY (A lot of quick-read chapters of almost everyone who's anyone in food.)
The improvisational cook
by Schneider, Sally. (Wouldn't you know -- someone stole the name of MY cookbook before I had a chance to write it. All about taking a simple recipe or concept and making into something else and not being tied to structured recipes. It's really how I live my life in the kitchen, even with shelves full of cookbooks.)
Wrestling with gravy : a life, with food /
by Reynolds, Jonathan. (An autobiography of a NYT food writer. I always like food biographies, just picked this one up for the title and cover.)
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1. Pre-packaged fruit - if it's being sold by the pound, my wife opens the bag, pull out what she needs and approves of, and puts it in another bag. It's hardly fair for the grocery store to list grapes at 99 cents/pound, and the only bagged grapes weigh 4 pounds and you can see the slimy, mashed icky grapes in the middle.
2. Going into the store on a Sunday afternoon, when it's busy, and having only 2 clerk-staffed lines open and a long line in each, but 8 of the self-checkout lanes empty, which I refuse to use, because it just encourages them to NOT staff the checkout lanes.
3. I hesitate to even mention this, for fear of being called an insensitive monster or worse...the well-intentioned but totally useless hiring of "handicapable" persons as sackers who will either put one item per bag or bag up an assortment of canned products and then drop them in the cart on top of a previous bag full of bread or produce or get so flustered that the checker has to stop what they're doing to show them how to sack groceries. And these are "long-term" sackers.
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1. watermelon - sugar baby
2. watermelon - black diamond
3. watermelon - rattlesnake
Other than that, I don't care for melons of any sort. Cantalope made me gag as a child and I've never been able to get past the smell. Honeydew's the only other I've tried, and I didn't like it either. But I can eat watermelon all summer long, if it's fresh and local.
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I've been picking for two weeks now. My wife limited me to only 8 plants this year (I've gone over 20 some years), so I went for a range of colors: Cherokee purple, Black Krim, Belgian yellow giant, German green (which hasn't produced a single tomato yet), Early Girl, Celebrity, Big Beef, and some other beefsteak hybrid. And my daughters have a couple cherry tomatoes to keep them occupied.
I love ALL of them, and after having a disastrous year last year (no rain, high temps, tomato diseases, bugs, etc.) it's been great this year. Plenty of rain, temps in the high 80s and low 90's, a new growing spot this year - I might actually get more than my fill of tomatoes this year.
It's been hard to consistently find heirloom tomatoes in Wichita from year to year, so the last couple years I've ordered them off eBay, which seem to ship fairly safely, so long as the weather's receptive when they arrive. This year, we had snow the day I received my plants in mid-April, so I had to nurse them indoors until the snow melted and the weather cleared a week later. I've found that planting them in mid-April doesn't seem to make a difference over early May, it was still July 10th before I picked my first ripe tomato.
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The only downside I can see to the cobranding is what is going to happen when the big corporations inevitably do the brand selloffs and swaps?
Godfather's pizza is now in many BP service stations, along with a sub shop of some sort.
Well, that would explain some of the drop-off in quality of Godfather's pizza around here. They've become gas-station pizza.
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During the summer, at home, a nice thick medium-cooked patty (no more than 80% lean), grilled over charcoal with some mesquite chunks for flavor, on a grill-toasted bun.
Toppings: mustard, mayo, dill pickle slices, purple onion, a fresh slice of beefsteak tomato, and a slice of whatever cheese I can find in the drawer. Oh, and they have to be served on the metal western platter I inherited from my maternal grandparents.
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My only problem with these co-branded stores, at least the one I stopped at in Estes Park, CO (hey, we'd been eating "camper food" for two days straight!), it was a KFC/Taco Bell (judging from the floor plan, it was a TB with a retro-fit), and it was an abbreviated menu for each. But the option of getting a taco AND a chicken snackwich is good for a family with divergent tastes.
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Now see, they can sell their tacos for only $0.69 because they don't have to spend all that money on ambience.
While on vacation in Colorado Springs a month ago, their local paper's restaurant reviewer visited a "mobile unit/lonchera" that parks in a parking lot and caters primarily to "guest workers" in the area.
Now, admittedly, the going rate for a carnitas taco from this truck is $1.25, but who knows what the standard of living is like in Colorado Springs. If I knew the area better while I was out there, I might have sought the place out...nah, knowing me, I'd have ended up at Taco Bell or worse.
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I could have listed ANY of the above, as I've had nearly all of them happen to me at one time.
I took the family out a couple Saturdays ago for a late lunch at a local family diner/steakhouse, and was told by the waitress as she brought our meals, "My shift is over, but that gray-haired lady over there will be taking over for my tables." Okay...fine. But the gray-haired lady never bothered to check on us, leaving me to drink from everyone else's tea glasses after my iced tea ran out just a few bites into my meal. After we were totally done, and had sat staring at our empty glasses, she brought the check and THEN asked if we needed anything. Not now, granny.
No tip was left, since waitress #1 left us in the care of Forgetful Flo, and no service was provided by waitress #2. I can forgive many of the transgressions listed above (even if my wife can't), and I'm generally an adequate tipper, but leaving me dry is a guaranteed empty tip tray.
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I wouldn't be messing around with frying that egg in butter, not with bacon drippings left in the pan. And I doubt that "butter lettuce" is ever going to make an appearance in my crisper drawer. But I guess Mr. Keller can make his sandwiches the way HE wants to eat them, and I'll make mine my way. And he can sell about a million cookbooks and make a gazillion dollars, and I will continue to fritter away my culinary talent working in a dead-end clerical job.
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Um...I like it, but I suspect from the tone of your question, I am in the wrong for liking it. So, I will quietly continue to enjoy it, and hope that no one else takes offense at my continued enjoyment.
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We keep the bottom bin of the freezer packed with them during the summertime. It's a cheap refreshment for when the neighborhood kids storm the house after playing in the backyard, and I always get one or two after mowing or working the garden.
I don't really have a tremendous preference of one color over another, although if you held me down and forced me to choose, I'd probably go with green flavor.
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Perhaps it is because there are so many different Mexican restaurants and chains that have the faux-Mexican-village decor, "plastic" Mexican food, etc., that it could be claimed the Casa Bonita/Taco Bueno wasn't original itself therefore no harm in copying it. I mean, what you described is what EVERY Mexican restaurant here has, with the exception of the flags to get the waitress.
Boy that didn't come out well but I hope you understand what I'm saying.
Then surely as a culinary culture we have fallen farther than I thought...
I guess, for me, if I walk into a restaurant and say "hey, this looks like Joes Diner down the street", and the menu has the same entrees, and they let you throw your peanut shells on the floor the same way as Joe's, I'm still going to judge both of them on service and quality and perhaps even price, NOT on decor and theme, the same way I'd judge two dissimilar restaurants. MOST customer's aren't going to be that confused over similar concepts.
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Well, I hate to even bring this example up, in a forum dedicated to fine cuisine, but the gentleman who brought this country both Casa Bonita as well as the Taco Bueno fast-food chain sold his interest in both years ago, and has now opened in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the location of a closed Casa Bonita, a restaurant called Casa Viva that not only uses then same style of extravagant faux-Mexican-village decor, but features the same "all-you-can-eat" plastic Mexican food dinner, the same "raise the flag to get the waitress" flags, and sopapillas. Maybe it's just not worth the effort to sue him, or perhaps he has permission to rip off his own original concept, but I would think that the citizens of Tulsa who ate at Casa Bonita for 35 years would be familiar and comfortable with the Casa Viva replacement restaurant.
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Wow, looking at that menupix map, apparently there is no "is" between the two coasts. No wonder I'm so hungry.
I just google for the restaurant, see if they have a web page, and look for "menu" on the page. Or I look in the phone book to see if they have one there. Or I just go to my drawerful of restaurant menus, and hope it's up to date.
First Cooking Attempts
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted
Somewhere to the short side of 7 years old, I was reading a "easy cooking for kids" cookbook (even at that age, I read cookbooks for enjoyment), and decided to try to make pancakes, from scratch. I pulled a chair into the kitchen to reach the high shelves, I measured as carefully as I had observed my Mom do, and made pancakes.
My sister, 4 years older, was my guinea pig. The pancakes WERE brown on the outside, but somehow were gray and gummy and unpleasant on the inside, despite being smothered in butter and syrup. Best that we can determine, it was baking soda instead of baking powder, and probably a tablespoon instead of a teaspoon. I'd like to think that she spared my feelings, but I can't say for certain she did.
But within a year, with minimal supervision from my Mom, I cooked a Saturday evening supper with Minute Steak, green beans, some sort of salad and rolls, and by 10 I was in a regular rotation for fixing family dinners.