Tri2Cook

There's always a risk. I've landed on both sides of the luck line. The vast majority of the time, I've got away with it. The few times I didn't, I swore I'd never do it again. Maury determined that was a lie. One thing that's never let me down is table pizza. That leftover pizza you see when you come stumbling out of your bedroom on a Sunday morning wishing the sun wasn't so bright that puts a big happy smile on your face. The hangover breakfast of champions. I don't know how many times I did that one when I was younger but it never once resulted in regret. These days, the leftover pizza goes in the fridge too.

Thanks! I know there are plenty of things I could do, I just had a couple things I wanted to do. It's a minor thing, people have much larger things to worry about right now, but it doesn't take a whole lot to kill my home cooking enthusiasm on a work night. I'm sure I'll end up doing something even if it's just a cocktail or two and a plate of nachos.

I already knew a decent Mexican beer and masa harina were not going to happen by May 5th. Now the commercial corn tortillas that were promised to be arriving yesterday at the local store did not arrive and my enthusiasm to do anything for Cinco de Mayo is rapidly declining. Unless I can convince myself to use flour tortillas or soften up a box of Old El Paso crunchy shells so I can roll them (something I actually briefly considered... shame on me), it may not happen. There's still an outside chance of pambazos but like I said, the enthusiasm is waning. May just buy some good ginger beer, break out the tequila and crème de cassis and toss down an El Diablo or two. I can't imagine even a global pandemic causing the local shoppers to hoard corn tortillas so I'm assuming it's a supply problem.

I like the Skull Rock Stout from Sleeping Giant brewery. They're semi-local to me, about 4 hours or so away, but I have no idea what their distribution range is. It's a nice English style oatmeal stout. The Shinny Pants Session Stout from Great Lakes brewery is surprisingly tasty for a stout coming in at just 4.3% abv. Makes it easy to toss down a few, which I can't normally do with stouts, they're usually a one or two and done for me... but that's probably the whole point behind calling it a "session stout." 😁

Me too! 😁

The store has an abundance right now and they're cheap (for here, still pretty expensive for everywhere else apparently). I brought home 8 limes and 4 lemons, I used two of the limes tonight for the Thai food I made for dinner. They were surprisingly juicy. I may go grab some more, the sale price is good until Thursday. They seem to last at least half of forever in the fridge.

With apologies for my apparent lack of reading skill, you'll have to lead me directly to the part where anybody said "my goose is cooked"... I'm still not seeing it.

Where I live, in the store where I shop, they are this... I can't give you any further helpful information, I've never purchased them.

I'm assuming lemons and limes aren't selling well right now locally and they need to get rid of them because both are the cheapest I've ever seen them here. So I grabbed several of each. There doesn't seem to be much of a shortage of anything here anymore but they're still keeping the "limit 1 per customer" signs on the paper products... which I'm not in need of anyway. Actually, there is one surprising shortage. For whatever reason, chow mein noodles are completely non-existent right now. I wasn't looking to buy them anyway, I just noticed it while grabbing some other noodles and thought it a bit odd.

I have to say, after reading through this entire discussion, I am extremely disappointed that not one person came back with a picture of their finished bird and captioned it "my goose is cooked."

Normally, two weeks out would be a little early to start planning for me. But circumstances are different this year and what I make may very well come down to what's available to work with... so I'm getting an early start. My initial thought was carnitas tacos with homemade tortillas. Masa harina isn't gonna happen in time so the homemade tortillas are out which makes me want to say tacos are out. Other ideas right now include pambazos or enchiladas. If the enchiladas win out, I'm going to disappoint the purists because they'll be the enchiladas of my childhood. Seasoned ground beef wrapped in tortillas and baked in a pan covered in (homemade, which is not consistent with the childhood version) enchilada sauce and cheese. Possibly even a scattering of black olives. Maybe the arroz poblano and from-scratch refried pinto beans I have planned as sides will offset some of the audacity of the Americanized enchiladas?

I have no problem with flour tortillas, I just like corn tortillas better. But I'll keep watching the store, I have a couple weeks to figure it out.

I went on a scouting mission today after work to determine the feasibility of my Cinco de Mayo plans. Looks like the only sticking point is going to be tortillas. Masa Harina is rarely available locally at the best of times, it's not available now or expected in any foreseeable future. Amazon Canada is currently sold out and wouldn't get here in time anyway with the current expected delivery dates they're giving on pretty much everything. We're going on 2 weeks with no commercial corn tortillas available in the store. They have much more hope for that to be replenished than any chance of masa harina arriving so, under the circumstances, I'd be willing to go with that. But there's no guarantee they'll arrive. So the decision I'm gonna have to make is, change my plans or go forward with the knowledge that I may have to use flour tortillas instead. I know... if that's my biggest problem right now, I've got it better than many. That's not lost on me.

With fluctuating availability and store attacks from the masses whenever one of the government check release dates arrives, food in the time of a pandemic means I'm going to start preparing for Cinco de Mayo way earlier than I normally would. One door has already been closed due to the current situation. The only Mexican beer available at the LCBO right now, locally or via the online ship-to-store option, is Corona... and they're not expecting that to change anytime soon. I'm not unintelligent enough to be troubled by the coincidental match between the beer name and current virus troubling the world, it's just not good beer. So I'm eyeballing tequila cocktails as my backup plan. Unless something changes between now and then, I'll be working the next morning so there's not going to be large quantities of whatever I go with. Anyway, pork butt in both roast and steak form are on sale this week and I was leaning towards carnitas so I guess I'll see if I can wedge a little more in the freezer.

Walked straight into the local grocery after work today with no wait. One of the few things I still hadn't managed to check off of my just-in-case list was rice. They finally had it restocked today so that's done. They were never actually out of rice, just the rice I wanted in the size I wanted. I have no need for a 10 kg bag of rice, pandemic or not. I was also able to get my hands on pancake syrup (Aunt Jemima) for the kid today, that shelf had been bare for a couple weeks. The real maple syrup that I prefer has been available aplenty. I noticed the number of people swelling while I was in the store and by the time I left, they had someone stationed at the door to monitor the line that was forming so I guess I went at the right time.

Never mind... I thought this was going to be a thread on food things that are impossible. Seriously though, my first thought would be to reduce the fat ratio.

My grandfather on my mom's side went to work for P&G after WW2 when he got out of the army. He worked in the lab so my grandmother was an unofficial product tester as a result. She had her favorites but there was always an interesting array of their products in the house. He always claimed that while the company would never admit it, Mr. Clean was modeled after him. The resemblance is definitely there (he wasn't bald but he maintained a very short military buzz cut until he retired) and a couple of his buddies from the lab always said the same thing but that's not the story according to official information and honestly, probably not the case. Still, as a kid it was fun to think it was true.

I'm just gonna keep hoping the "quaran" part doesn't get here but it's always good to have a plan just in case so I took note of your link, spelling be damned.

I'm leaning more towards Quarantiki .

It occurs to me with additional thought that my previous comment is completely irrelevant because the names of the chocolate producers will be secondary to being able to say "it's a Connoley" when showing off their acquisition... and nobody's gonna say "Who?" to that.

It could be my imagination but I don't think so. I think I'm seeing a direct effect of the massive amount of grocery buying that is happening. The local store went a couple weeks with no brown sugar on the shelves. On my last trip there, they had it back in stock so I grabbed a couple bags of the dark stuff. I opened a bag yesterday for use in the sugar pies I made for today's dessert and I was pleasantly surprised by the heavy molasses aroma coming from the bag. It was super fresh and moist and flavorful. I'm pretty sure it couldn't have been more than a few days off the production line. I've never had complaints about the brown sugar I buy but I have a feeling I now will once things go back to normal.

Which I assume means small batch artisan still has to be big name artisan enough that people who do their research can find good information about them. Nobody wants to show off their expensive acquisition and say "it's a Farbman" and their audience say "Who?"

I woke up my sourdough starter last weekend. Today seemed like a good day to put some of it to work...

I'm in Canada and I don't think I've ever attached any importance to beans on toast... but I do like it. On toast. With butter. My late wife favored creamed peas on toast over beans.

In my neck of the woods, when not on sale, and they're not on sale often, limes and lemons are both usually right at or just over a dollar each... that's per lemon or lime. Last trip to the store, lemons were $1.19 each and limes were $1.39 each.