Author Archives: didjaeat
Pretzel M&M’s
I like candy, but I rarely eat it. I think it is because my dad was such a cheapass when I was growing up and would never give me money for candy and slurpees at the 7-11 around the corner, that I never really developed a lust for candy. Don’t get me wrong, I can put away some candy if I’m drinking, or if it’s just laying around, but I am not one of those people who has a container of candy stashed away for private face stuffing.
I do have a weakness for M&M’s. If they are around, I will pick at them nonstop. And recently, like with Hershey Kisses, they have been introducing new flavors (ie: Peanut Butter and Coconut, which is odd but really good, especially right out of the fridge). So after seeing the ads for the Pretzel M&M’s, I picked up a bag at my local Wawa.
Pretzel M&M Bag
The M&M’s themselves are a little bit bigger then Peanut M&M’s.
Pretzel M&M
The inside has a pretzel ball surrounded by chocolate and then the candy shell. Nothing really very exciting.
Pretzel M&M Inside
Honestly, I didn’t particularly care for the pretzel, which seemed kind of tasteless and sort of stale-like, but I realized what the problem really was: if you have ever eaten a chocolate covered pretzel, the mix of the salt from the pretzel an the chocolate makes a mind melting mix in your mouth, making you immediately stab anyone who comes close to your precious bag of chocolate covered pretzels…wait, is that just me? Ok, well, the sweet and salty on your tongue is awesome.
And that, my friends, is what is missing in this: not enough, if any, salt. I even dissected one of them and could barely detect any salt on the pretzel. On the bag they even say “crunchy. salty. sweet.”.
I have a little nitpick too: “150 calories and 30% less fat then other chocolate candy”. Guess what? Calories and Fat aren’t the problem with candy, it’s sugar! Talk about some bait and switch.
So, do I like these pretzel M&M’s? Sadly, not really. Between the kinda weird and stale pretzel and the utter lacking in salt, I think these M&M’s are kind of a miss. Maybe they should take a page from Breyers and team up with a pretzel company like Hanover or something and leave the pretzel making to the professionals. I am hoping maybe they adjust thier recipe or maybe I got a bum bag (but I doubt it, Mars is big on quality control). I might try them at some other time but as for now, I’m gonna take a pass. And maybe do some situps!
Breyers Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream
On my way home from the Phillies game, my car somehow guided me to Wawa and whispered that I should buy some ice cream. I found the Wawa and, after literally 15 minutes of intense deliberation, I decided on Breyers Peanut Butter Cup ice cream.
Breyers Peanut butter Cup Ice Cream
I am not a ice cream freak, nor am I crazy about peanut butter. I mean, I like it, but I won’t sell my mother for it (I am sure she would appreciate that). The problem with peanut butter flavored things is that they often taste grainy or so artificial that it immediately turns me off.
However, I am a big fan of Breyers Ice Cream. I haven’t had it for awhile, but at my cousin Michele’s house a few weeks ago I had some mint chocolate chip and forgot how good it really is. The smooth texture is a not silky smooth but it’s as close as you can get in a store bought ice cream. That goes far for me. I enjoy a Ben and Jerry’s pint once in awhile, but it annoys me to have to jam my spoon on there to get a spoonful out.
This Peanut Butter Ice Cream is paired with the Reese’s name, as you can see in the above picture. It has light peanut butter ice cream with Reese’s peanut butter cups and a fudge swirl. The fudge swirl was ok but I was super impressed with the big pieces of peanut butter cups in this pint.
Peanut Butter Cup Piece
I’d say they were about the size of a half of a halloween little reese’s cup and the pint was littered with them. The ice cream itself, well, it was pretty great. It wasn’t overly sugary or gritty, but it’s “not a light food”. Under the nutritional info it says “The Light Ice Cream in this product 50% less fat and 20% less calories then regular ice cream”. So, basically they say the ice cream is a little bit better for you but we won’t talk about the sugar.
What really cracks me up is on the nutritional info label, it says a serving is a 1/2 cup and there are 4 servings. Do you know anyone who can get 4 servings from a pint of ice cream? Let’s get realistic, people. I ate this thing while watching a dvr’d episode of “The Closer” and was done before the episode was over. With 18 grams of sugar times 4, you end up with 72 grams of sugar, more then a days worth. But then again, if you are buying something like this, the last thing you are thinking is “what a healthy snack”. So there ya have it.
If you have a hankering for Peanut Butter Cup ice cream, you could do yourself well by picking this ice cream up. It was $2.99 at Wawa, compared to $3.29 for Wawa brand and Edy’s and the $3.99 for Ben and Jerry’s.
An Ode, Of Sorts, To Sriracha
Sriracha
I’m sure you’ve probably seen this bottle before (usually without the ham hand holding it). People have all sorts of names for it: “fire sauce”, “rooster sauce” (courtesy of Matt), “crazy hot sauce” and the actual name “Sriracha”. While it used to just appear on tables in hipster eateries, southeast asian places and, well, that was it, it now appears anywhere good food appears.
Sriracha is a Thai chili sauce involving, but not limited to sun-ripened chilis and garlic ground into a paste. Or, as I call it: fantastic-ness.
Let’s back it up a second and we can talk about my relationship with Sriracha.
I am, and have always been, a fan of hot sauce. Wings? More hot sauce please! Chili? Make it hotter please! I used to use Sriracha all the time and then kind of forgot about it until I was at a bar one nite and saw it sitting in the collection of condiments. Forgetting how HOT this stuff is, I proceeded to cover my fries with the stuff, while proclaiming to the bartender how much I missed Sriracha and love it. The bartender looked at me like I just proclaimed myself “king of the ant people, Ma!”. She also started filling up a water glass for me.
One bite and I remembered exactly how hot this stuff is, but being a hard headed Polock, I was going to finish my meal because money does not grow on trees (as was screamed at me constantly as a kid). Hours later, when the firey heat in my fingers and mouth went away and I stopped all the eye watering, I was making plans on picking up a bottle to keep in the fridge.
I enjoy regular hot sauces, like Frank’s Red Hot (and the wing kind as well) as well as Crystal Hot Sauce and most other hot sauces. The problem I have is the absolute ridiculous abundance of salt that is in the recipes of these sauces. When I am done eating whatever I have just slathered the sauce all over, I need to drink a bathtub amount of water in order to not dry up like a slug drenched in, yes, salt. I hate that feeling of being dehydrated as much as the feeling of low blood sugar.
I also can’t really eat peppers anymore also because the seeds turn my body into a festival of terror. Ahem…moving on…..
This is where Sriracha really shines. I’m sure there must be some kind of salt in there, but not nearly as much as the above mentioned sauces. You only need a little bit and it really mixes with other condiments nicely (for example, my new favorite dip is sour cream and Sriracha. Mix and chill and it is delicious with crackers or whatever you’d like). Plus! No seeds!
I tend to put it on everything. Chicken? Dip it! Chili? Add some! Spaghetti Sauce? A few drops will perk it up! Put some in cocktail sauce. Mix some mayo with it and dip your fries in it! Making Buffalo Chicken dip? Meatloaf? Go for it! The list goes on and on. The heat goes on, but if used in small amounts, can bring a recipe alive! If you really like heat, use a lot and rock on my friend!
As you can see from that picture, my bottle is running really low. This really makes me nervous, but have no fear, I am on it! My local Shoprite now carries it, and so does any store with an international aisle. Go grab a bottle and keep it in the fridge and experiment. Your food doesn’t have to be on fire, like I like it, but it can come alive with a little bit of heat to make a boring meal more interesting.
Pretty Fiery Peppers
I was chopping jalapenos the other nite for my potato, cheese & jalapeno pierogies, and it struck me how nice the colors look in the bowl. And so, I share with you.
Bowl O' Jalapenos
And in case you’d like to know, yes, this time I wore gloves.
PS,
Last time I didn’t. I never said I was smart.
Thoughts on Julie and Julia
Last month I housesat for my cousin Chrissy. It was almost like a vacation for me except I had to work my ass off the whole time. But, I did get to hang out with her cats, who were friendly. The one friendlier cat was fat and my best buddy. One night I was having a beer, sitting on the sofa with the cat and decided to watch a movie. I perused all her pay channels and found Julie and Julia, which I didn’t even know was on cable yet.
Julie and Julia Theatrical Poster
Julie and Julia is a film about Julie, a woman who has a seriously shitty job who decides to cook all the recipes in Julia Child’s cookbook after becoming, at first interested, then admiring, and then downright obsessed with Julia Child, much to the chagrin of her super hot and super understanding husband. Her story parallels with Julia Child & her husband in France after the war and her trying to figure out what to do with herself. Oh, and it’s all a true story, because she blogged the whole thing (which turned into a book which turned into this movie. See?)
Amy Adams plays Julie like a lost squeaky elf, looking for meaning in her life. I am not sure if that was her real job, but in the movie she plays a phone rep who has to talk to the angry families of 9/11 victims. I don’t know if she could have had a worse job. Anyway, they lay it on thick (in true Nora Ephron style) and YOU WILL FEEL FOR HER! WE HAVE WAYS OF MAKING YOU FEEL FOR HER! DON’T YOU FEEL BAD FOR HER?!!
Ahem.
15 years ago, Julie would be Meg Ryan. Just sayin’.
Sooooooo, as she gets more and more into cooking in her teeny kitchen (which she complains about) in her giant NYC apartment (ok, it’s in Queens but it’s HUGE), which she also complains about, she becomes obsessed with making all Julia Child’s recipes from her book. Her husband gets mad because she won’t sleep with him or talk to him or acknowledge his existence, and really treats him like crap. He leaves, she freaks out, he comes back, some other things happen and she is a happy camper.
The way they wrote Julie made me want to reach into the television and smack her in the head. If the real Julie Powell actually acted like that, at minimum to her husband, she is an awful human being.
On the flip side, they also chronicle Julia Child’s life in France with her husband and her eventual immersion in cooking and writing her cookbook. Meryl Streep is Child and Stanley Tucci plays her husband (his second food themed movie. The other is one of my favorite movies, Big Night, with Tony Shalhoub.)
As much as an annoying twit Julie Powell’s character is, you just cannot help love Streep’s Child. Even the high-pitched voice is endearing. The colors, the costumes, even the cars, are gorgeous. Tucci is fantastic as her supportive husband, even as he has problems of his own.
Honestly, if they shot more, it could have just been a biopic of Child, and it would have won even more awards then Streep ended up winning. It looks that good and is that much fun to watch. Watching her deal with the sexist chefs at the Cordon Bleu, find friends to write the cookbook with and even making dinner for her husband is fascinating. I do not particularly like Meryl Streep but she deserves every award she got for this role.
Was it worth watching? Surely. I do like food (duh) and Julia Child (yup) and even tho Julie Powell was super awesomely annoying, it was worth my time. Check it out on a rainy day.
Gobble Gobble
We had dinner at my cousin Michele’s house Sunday for her sister Judy’s birthday. As usual, we stuffed ourselves silly. Michele made a kick ass turkey. Check it out!
Happy Birthday Turkey
The Grey Lodge
I really want to like the Grey Lodge. Super, super badly. I hate going downtown to drink and I am not particularly in love with the jackass hipsters in Fishtown either. I also do not mind the northeast too much, so it is a decent change of scenery sometimes. So, when I had heard of this place a long time ago, and realized it is next to my dentist (oddly enough), I was kind of excited.
This place is a bar on Frankford Ave in Mayfair that stocks, what can only be described as, a shit ton of beers. In the cooler they have your regular array of Boddington and other recognizable overseas beers (for those who pay attention to this sort of thing). But they have, on tap, a great rotating selection of beers that range from local PBC to California microbrews to everything in between. They also offer them in different sizes so you can just have a smaller glass of a beer and then have a few different ones as opposed to one giant beer. They have done their homework and it shows. They even have a nice selection on their second floor, which could have gotten the shaft and had the usual Coors, Bud, whatever sucks crap.
I had arranged with one of the managers to reserve some space upstairs for a reunion, and the guy I talked to (Patrick) was super awesome, incredibly accommodating and professional. When we all showed up, everything was exactly like he had promised, and everyone had a really good time.
My problem is the staff behind the bar and the food. First off, this was not my first time at the bar. I had been there before, in the middle of the afternoon. The place had 4 people in it and a very short, young looking girl. She wasn’t too interested in taking my beer or food order, which annoyed me. Then when the cheese fries came out, they were limp and not fried very well. Mushy, would be a good word to describe them. But! It was the middle of the afternoon, so I cut the kitchen some slack. But if you don’t want to be at work in a service job in the middle of the afternoon, please do not take it out on the customers.
The second time I was there, I strolled in around 6:30 on a saturday. It was dead, but there was a lineup at the bar watching the ballgame. When I popped up on the barstool, the bartender literally sneered at me from behind his bushy beard and took my order like I was asking him to pick fleas off my cat. Again, I was annoyed. When I paid the fellow and he got his tip, he seemed relieved, which I thought was bizarre.
Later on, I moved upstairs and there were 2 women behind the bar that were nice, quick with the beers and food orders and tidy with the bar. I ordered my food and it arrived quickly.
The Lodge Steak
I got the Lodge Steak (Fresh-sliced ribeye with cheese sauce, roasted pepper mayo, and Genoa salami). I wanted to get the Surf and Turf Cheesesteak (fresh-sliced ribeye with cheese sauce and marinated shrimp) but honestly, it sounded a little too good and I didn’t want to slop myself up in front of people I had not seen in forever (that can wait for next time).
Anyway, it came in a basket and I was a little bit excited. I love cheese sauce (I have said many times, as my friends can tell ya). The meat was kind of chewy, the mayo was nonexistant and the salami felt like it was right out of the prep area and onto the sandwich with no grill action or anything (it was cooked, as you can see in the pic by the black marks on the edges but I think not long enough for the thickness of the meat).
The Lodge Steak Insides
It was the most disappointing thing I have eaten all summer. I had such high hopes, that maybe I ruined it for myself, that no one could meet my expectations? I don’t know. Perhaps.
I want to love the Grey Lodge. I love the beers. I even like the decor (they had a cool Okocim metal sign upstairs!) and it is a very clean bar with ample room for darts. The bathrooms have glass collages in them! The management are very nice people! But the food…I just can’t get with it. I’ll be back Grey Lodge, maybe we can make it work then!
Photo Essay: Greensgrow
Every Thursday and Saturday I work a table at the Greensgrow Farmer’s Market. Greensgrow is a working farm in Fishtown, full of local food, plants, garden stuff, chickens and really nice people. I like to wander around and take pictures of some of the offerings in the market. Here are a bunch of them. Some are in color, some in black and white and all were taken with the Hipstamatic app on my iPhone 4. (Please click the pic to embiggen!)
baguettes
Basil? I Think?
Jalapenos
green and red peppers
various fruits
friends! eggplant dip and arugula pesto!
figs hanging out
cherry bomb peppers...waiting for youuuu!
hot hot hot peppers!
eggplant convention
Shhh...shallots
heirloom tomatoes...lookin' good
the last lonely pumpernickel
cooped up watermelons
Eggplant Fries
As you all might have guessed, I make and sell Pierogies. On Thursdays and Saturdays I am at Greens Grow Farms and thier farmers market. A few weeks ago, one of my customers decided to offer me this trade: a few dozen pierogies for 2 weeks of thier CSA Share. For those of you who don’t know what a CSA is, it works like this: you pay the place a chunk of cash and every week (or every other week, depending on what plan you pick) you show up and take home a wide collection of fruits, veggies, dairy, proteins and other assorted goodies. It really is pretty sweet. Anyway, I had to say yes because, well, I like to eat! Duh.
Anyway, one of the things I had gotten was a round eggplant, about the size of a small soccer ball. I had stupidly let the arugula go bad so I wanted to do something with the eggplant asap, because I hate wasting and we are pros at growing mold in my house. I decided to peel the eggplant, then cut it into slices, bread and fry them.
This is what I ended up with!
Eggplant Fries
I only used egg and breadcrumbs with a little bit of pepper. When I took them out of the oil, I sprinkled a little kosher salt on them too! Oh, and this is tray number 2, that eggplant went a long way.
I was feeling extra crafty and thought they needed a dipping sauce, so I mixed some mayo, sour cream, salt, pepper and lemon juice together. After chilling for a bit, it was pretty darn good! My mom loves eggplant way more then I just like it, and she couldn’t stop eating it. A sure sign I did something right!
Next time I might batter fry them, but we’ll see! What do you guys think?
Doctor’d Pizza
Things are tough all over, so instead of ordering out, I made a cheap frozen pizza for dinner. You know the type: basically a large round Elios-type crust pizza, packaged in twos. I stood in the kitchen and looked at this thing and tried to figure out what to do to jazz this boring pizza up.
First I put a round of pepperoni on, and then I chopped up a giant heirloom tomato and stuck that on there as well. I had some leftover chopped up bacon so I threw that on and grabbed the bottle of Sriacha to splash that all over. Who doesn’t love heat on thier pizza? Ok, maybe not alot of people, but I do. I had a handful of cheese, threw that on and popped it in the oven at 400 degrees on the pizza stone.
This is how it came out!
Doctored Pizza
The tomatoes were juicy and hot, the Sriacha made it’s way all over the pie, the cheese wasn’t overdone and even the crust, which, if you remember, is just crappy Elios type cardboard crust, wasn’t too bad, it held together and didn’t fall apart with the weight of all the toppings.
Overall, it was delicious and is helping me stay concentrated on making Pierogie filling and my fantasy football draft!
DidjaEat? 