New Credit Card (Again): American Express Blue Cash Everyday

I didn't even last a month using my BankAmericard credit card. I bought a whole lot of things on it (boy 0% interest is nice) so they got a lot of my spending. But I got $100 for free. But I'm off to a new card, which is kinda my old card.

When I was looking up credit card reward programs, I found out that American Express quit offering Blue Cash's old way (0.5%, then once you spend $6500, 1.5% or something) and now has Blue Cash Everyday. This gives, well I'll copy and paste:

Get 3% cash back at U.S. stand-alone supermarkets*, 2% cash back on gasoline at U.S. stand-alone gas stations, 2% cash back at select major department stores; and 1% cash back on other purchases.

In under a month, I went from getting 1% on groceries to 3%! I should go shopping. I'm hungry. Maybe I'll return to writing about groceries instead of how you should pay for them.

Cookie Butter

My sister is a big fan of Trader Joe's Cookie Butter.

Maybe I'll try it someday. I like cookies, and I don't like chewing.

I'm switching to BankAmericard Cash Rewards

I applied for this card this morning and was approved. I currently use Chase Freedom, which gives me 1% back on everything and rotates through different categories every quarter when it offers 5%. That was my old recommendation. BankAmericard Cash Rewards offers 1% on everything, 2% on groceries, and 3% on gas. So I'm going to double my rewards on my favorite thing to buy!

It also is offering $100 when you sign up and you spend $500. Just yesterday I was thinking about buying a $100 food processor. Perfect!

(I have so many credit cards. Chase Freedom, Chase Slate, PNC, 1st Financial, American Express Blue Cash, Discover. I don't have any store cards though.)

Cheese Louise

I need to stop. Or stores need to quit putting cheeses on sale.

 Key Food had this on sale 2/$5, must buy 2. So I did. I've been meaning to make pumpkin ricotta gnocchi anyway.

Tilt your head to see my savings. I forgot to rotate it.

Pumpkin Pasta using Trader Joe's Ingredients

I just invented a new pasta dish. I'm not even done eating it yet. As I was making it, I realized almost all my ingredients were from Trader Joe's. It's pretty good. Here's the recipe.

1 lb (1 bag) whole wheat penne $1.39
1/2 can pumpkin (1 can is $1.99)
1/2 stick of butter
a bunch of diced onion
a bunch of capers (a jar is $3.69 at Trader Joe's)
oregano ($1.99 for a jar at trader joe's)
grated parmesan (parmesan is $6.49/lb)
15 oz (1 can) cannelini beans (optional. $0.89)

Melt the butter and cook the onions until you can smells them. You can add salt and pepper and oregano at this point. Then add the pumpkin and capers. Beans if you want them. I like adding beans to pasta because the same things that make pasta taste good make beans taste good and beans are healthy. Add some of the pasta water to thin the sauce out a little. (Dip a coffee mug in that pot, pour it in the sauce pan.) Once you mix it all together, grate some cheese into it and stir it, then grate some more on top of your plate when you serve it.

I like whole wheat for this because it's nuttier than regular. I don't ever really want to eat whole wheat pasta with marinara sauce, but it's great for this pumpkin sauce. Likewise, I like parmesan over pecorino romano for this because it's nuttier. Romano is my go to cheese, but parmesan's better here.

Ok, time for another bowl.

Food Stamps

One of the better grocery shoppers I know recently qualified for food stamps. I suggested he make ceviche because he could afford limes now. He said he refuses to encourage Giant Eagle's lime prices, no matter what.

I also encouraged him to buy local products to help the economy. I wonder if those local brands think about how the government gives people money to buy the food they sell, and if that stops them from pretending Romney's "I built this" lie is true.

Studies show that food stamps are one of the most effective forms of economic stimulus the government can undertake. But I wonder if some benefits should be reduced to increase regular welfare. If you still need food, you could buy it with your money.

Tomatoes

It's tomato time. They are $0.99/lb at any store that wants you to buy tomatoes. They are more than that at farmers' markets where they are better and more than that at grocery stores that don't care if you buy tomatoes. (Just like how Associated, Food Bazaar, and Western Beef never care if you buy pasta from them. Some stores just aren't interested. You have to get pasta from C-Town or Key Food. Whole wheat pasta from Trader Joe's.)

Since Friday, I learned how to make panzanella. I had heard of it, but before I looked on wikipedia before making it Friday, I thought it might be soup. It is a salad. It's a salad of stale bread, tomatoes, cumbers, red onions, basil, olive oil, and whatever. I made it Friday and I thought "this is going to be the kind of thing people ask me to make more." And then Agnes loved it so I was right

On Sunday, I had some more stale bread but not much more inclination to cook besides missing my panzanella, so I went to get more ingredients. C-Town's circular said it had plum tomatoes for $0.99/lb and diet Mug Root Beer for some good price I don't remember (but it was probably 3/$4).

When I went there, I found slicing tomatoes for the same discounted price. I like plum tomatoes for sandwiches, but for a food that you want a bunch of extra juice to soak your stale bread, these were better. (The cashier rang them up as plum tomatoes. Maybe their inventory will be off, though the price was the same.) Basil was $2.59 or so, which is absurd ($1 at Jesus, $2 at Food Bazaar) so I improvised my recipe using herbes de provence. It was good.

Tonight I had a leftover tomato and still half a cucumber ($0.50 at C-Town. Off and on I see them cheaper, but it's not worth shopping around. I was happy with that price.) so I diced them and put them with a can of chick peas (probably $0.80 at Western Beef) with some olive oil that I am now out of. And capers ($3.49 for a big jar at Trader Joe's. No one can touch that price.) That was a good dinner.

It's the height of tomato season now, so I should find a famers' market to buy some. I thought I was living ok with tomatoes until 2 years ago when I ate a tomato my cousin grew. Tomatoes are supposed to taste great! I would pay $3/lb for a great tomato (I would only buy 1) but I would be jealous that my cousin gets them for free. And so does my brother by visiting him. He also grows basil. And dill. I never want to move, but sometimes I wish I could have tomatoes and basil and dill. And mint.

Let Me Tell You About Associated

I meant to tell you about C-Town, but I'm telling you about Associated first because that's where the story starts. I've been shopping there more lately. I mostly liked it, except when I walk out without buying something and they question me about that. Sometimes I just don't want to buy something! Sometimes I'm just perusing prices before I make my big purchases. Sometimes your tomatoes are ugly.

Today I went in to get some stuff and saw their ATM was still broken. When I went to check out, they told me the credit card system was on and off. The cashier tried. It was off. I left. If you want me to buy groceries, give me a way to pay. I just left all my groceries there for them to put back because they should pay me to work there if they want me to do that. But I don't know how they'd get money to pay me if they won't even take my money.

So maybe I have to go shop at C-Town more, even if it is gentrifying faster than I am, if only because it will take my money. (Except I didn't shop at C-Town after this. I went to Bravo. But Bravo has a $10 credit card minimum and I can only commit to about $7 so it will never be my regular store.)

P.S. I am 30 years old and I am bad at cooking rice, so my new rice store is the Chinese restaurant next door. It was $2.95 for a "large" of brown, but it is already cooked and I cook rice so infrequently and so poorly that this makes sense for me. I'm stuffing some peppers.

Ceviche Times

One of my goals this summer was to make ceviche (also spelled "seviche," especially by me). On Monday I finally did. Food Bazaar has oysters and mussels for me in the winter and now it has my seviche creatures. Medium white shrimp are $5.99/lb, as are bay scallops. Bay scallops might be too small for ceviche, but sea scallops are $11.99/lb and I'm not made of money. Tilapia is $4.99/lb. That's what I put in the first time I made it, but I'm about to make another batch to which I'm adding squid at $4.99/lb.

Limes got cheaper since Monday. They were 13/$2 but now they are 15. I bought 30 of them because I want to feed people micheladas when I feed them ceviche. I also put the juice of a small grapefruit ($0.67), some tomatillos ($1.29/lb), very fine slivers of red onion ($1.29/lb) and maybe some jalapeño pepper ($1.29/lb) and cilantro. Food Bazaar wanted $1.50 for that, but the going rate is $1 so I didn't get that yet.

I like foods based on festering.

A Bazaar Attack

From the Brooklyn Paper:

An unknown assailant who claimed to be a security guard at a Manhattan Avenue supermarket accused a man of stealing and slashed him on Aug. 8.

The victim told police he was at Food Bazaar between Varet and Moore streets at 5:30 pm when the knife-wielding lunatic came up to him and declared, “You came here yesterday and stole,” slashed him, and ran away.

Very weird. I went there Monday to buy fishes. I might write about that.

Western Beef had a lot of empty shelves

But I lived. I also had my bag fly out of my bike basket on the way there. Some girl picked it up for me so I got it back. And I realized I forgot to wear my helmet when I got to the store and went to take it off and it wasn't there.

I spent about $14. I got a tomato ($0.99/lb), three beets ($0.99/lb), a gallon jug of red wine vinegar ($2.99) because they didn't have Colavita on the shelves, Gulden's mustard in the squeeze bottle ($1.50), light wheat bread ($1.89) because they didn't have my normal wheat bread, 6 English muffins ($0.88), Dr. Brown's diet root beer ($1.19), a bag of Great Lakes shredded mozzarella ($1.99 for 8 oz) and 2 cans of chick peas ($0.67 each).

I ate English muffins for dinner. First I made pizzas like Agnes did Saturday (hers were better) using Colavita crushed tomatoes I had on hand, frozen Trader Joe's peppers, and the cheese. Agnes's were better. I think she let them get toastier. Or maybe her sauce was better. Then I ate another English muffin with my dilly egg salad.

I hope I like the red wine vinegar. I own a lot of it.

Dandelions and Fruits

Fruits are in season, so that means they taste as good as they're gonna taste all year and it means they're on sale. Last week I got blueberries and strawberries for $1.50/container each. I think they were 8 oz and 1 lb respectively.

I also learned about the technology of the food processor, so now I can make beet salad in 4 minutes instead of a half hour. It does my grating. Beets are $0.99/lb loose. Sometimes they have their leaves attached. The price is the same, so sometimes if I want leaves I get the leaf ones. Then I can make beet salad with grated beets and carrots, lemon juice and oil (canola or olive, depending on what I want it to taste like) and parsley. When I visit my parents, I add goat cheese and toasted nuts. But recently here I have been adding blue berries. What a lot of colors that has. Probably pretty healthy too. Raw colorful vegetables are healthy.

My usual side salad is chicory or escarole with a dressing made with olive oil and either lemon juice or red wine vinegar. Lately I've taken to adding slivered fennel and quartered strawberries to that. It's pretty good. Agnes likes strawberry salad.

The other day she was coming over, so I was going to make strawberry salad for her. Jesus didn't have the chicory or escarole out yet, so I bought dandelions for $1.49 for a bunch. I never had them before, but they looked interesting. I got home and tried and leaf and it was SO bitter. Too bitter for a strawberry salad, especially one for Agnes. So I went back later and got escarole.

I decided I could use dandelions in a pasta. I used whole wheat pasta, sausage, a shallot, and some fennel. Top it with lots and lots of grated cheese. The dandelions get less bitter if you cook them down and if you salt them and if the sausage is fatty. I tried making it again with chicken sausage a week later and it was too bitter.

Most stores sell whole wheat pasta in boxes that are only 13.25 oz instead of 16 oz and they still cost more than regular pasta. I found a bag of whole wheat pasta that was 16 oz and only $1.33 at Trader Joe's, so that's where I'll shop next time I made dandelion pasta. I don't know what else I can use dandelions for yet, but I like them.

Never thought I'd say this: I'm getting sick of going to grocery stores!

In the past 2 days, I have gone to:

• Trader Joe's wine store
• Bravo, to try to find something to break a $20 bill and check prices
• Associated, to actually break that $20 and get dried chick peas
• C-Town to look for $2 apple juice, which wasn't there. But I got cheese, orangeade, and orzo.
• Key Food where I got hot dog buns and I can't remember what else
• Western Beef for hot dogs, chicken, some vegetables, etc.
• C-Town to look for apple juice agian. Wasn't there, but I got oil and Diet Mug root beer
• Associated, where I did get apple juice. And jalapeno peppers.
• BQE liquors for liquor

My bike quit working while I was at BQE, so I walked home. I still have to go to Key Food for hot dog buns tonight, Gem for aluminum foil trays (unless Key food has a good price) and probably some bodega to get beer to bring to a party tonight. Tomorrow I have to go to Jesus for vegetables and herbs and Associated for ice. And then I am done.  Except for cooking.

I'm done until Thursday when I have no food because all these trips are for a party that will be over.

Cheating on C-Town

I cheated on C-Town today. With a different C-Town. My main C-Town, the one I mean when I write C-Town, is about 4 blocks from my house. It's not very big. It's produce is increasing--a while ago, it had none, then it got some cabbages, tomatoes, peppers, and lettuce on a stand in a space in the back, and now it has a real section. But the prices are gentrifying faster than I am. I still go. I like all my stores. But I find myself buying less.

Usually when I shop elsewhere, it's at Key Food, Associated, Western Beef, Food Bazaar, or Bravo. In that order of frequency or money (but not geography, because Bravo is the closest of all. It used to be called Cat Pee). With so many stores, I don't go to extra C-Towns.

But there were two forces that led me to another one this week. One is that Chase Freedom gives 5% back on groceries from April through June. June is almost over. So I should buy pasta and sardines and whatever won't go bad now. C-Town's circular said Ronzoni was $1, but when I went in twice, that wasn't true. Second, C-Town's circular said they had Heinz mayonnaise (new). I went twice, and didn't see it. If any of my other stores had had pasta this week for $1 or less, I would have just bought it there. I checked them all. None did. So I went to the other Williamsburg C-Town.

Now, I've been there many times. I used to be good friends with someone who lived near there and shopped there frequently. And since I'm an avid shopper and he was an adept cook, I accompanied him often. I didn't think much of it then. Today was different. Today I liked it because it respected the weekly circular. But it also had the best price on tomatillos I've seen ($1.49 instead of $1.69) and the best price on jalapeno peppers ($1.29 instead of $1.49). I didn't buy those things, but I liked it. It carried braunschweiger. It didn't carry Iron City. It doesn't tweet to me or have tumblr. But it's a nice store.

I bought 6 boxes of pasta (they were out of spaghetti, so I got thin spaghetti, which is worse. And I don't eat as much pasta these days). I got strawberries ($2.50), leaf lettuce ($1.59?), Heinz mayo (on sale for $2.99), Fresca ($1.67... eh), chamomile tea ($3.99? $2.99? I don't know the correct price for that, but needed it for the Gin test kitchen), and maybe something else. I don't recall. I spent $20, which is a big trip for me.

I wouldn't have bought so much, but Agnes said she'd come over for the Gin Test Kitchen and I needed to make her dinner. I had just eaten so I wasn't clever with ideas. I went for the strawberry/fennel salad I invented on Sunday. It has a bitter green  (ideally, but I used leaf lettuce today), strawberries, fennel, and red wine vinaigrette. I put some balsamic in it today too cause I had too much oil and didn't want to use the rest of the red wine vinegar. It's pretty good. Agnes agreed that it's pretty good. I forgot to serve it with pecorino romano. I bet it would be good with some croutons too. This is a salad I want to build upon and create variations of. It's the best salad I've invented since apple coleslaw.

Grocery Disappointment

It is very hot. I haven't been leaving the house much. Yesterday I went to grocery stores. I didn't buy anything at Key Food because they seemed to have taken down all the signs saying what was on sale for the week and I didn't want to operate from memory. At Associated I got a bunch of things, but I'm happiest about the ham. At Jesus, I was going to buy tomatoes, but they were all a color between pink and white.

Maybe today will be better. I still have 8 days to get 5% back on groceries with my Chase Freedom card.

Limes, etc.

Western Beef's lime prices have been plummeting. Before I went to Pittsburgh for Memorial Day, they were 15/$2. I know all about Pittsburgh lime prices ($0.50 each at best, $0.69 or $0.79 more frequently) so I brought my own. When I got back, Western Beef dropped its price to 8/$1. And this week, they are 1/$10! (And spelled wrong). I have been drinking many many Moscow Mules with them and the Good-O ginger beer which is $1.25 for 2 liters. It's nice and spicy too. But with limes at these prices, I might make ceviche.

I haven't been shopping much otherwise. I have only used the stove once in the past week. I eat tomato sandwiches because tomatoes are $0.79 or $0.99/lb and I eat ham sandwiches because I love the Hormel Ham from Associated that is $3.99/lb. (I don't like ham with crust on it. I like cheap good ham. Boiled ham. Cooked ham. Not baked ham.) I eat hard boiled eggs because eggs are way cheaper these days than I've ever seen them in New York.

Grocery Shopping by Database

This woman who works for the NY Times created a database of her recipes and prepares shopping lists very specifically.

My database constructs my shopping list in three phases: First, I push a button that produces a checklist of recipes by name, along with other household items. I then select the recipes I intend to prepare in the coming week, as well as other things I need to buy. The tags make it easy to select a dish from each category.

When I’ve made my choices, I push a second button, and all of the items, including the recipe ingredients with their quantities, appear on one long list. If two recipes call for one onion each, my list will indicate that I need to buy two onions; it won’t list onion twice. I flag items that I already have and don’t need to buy.

She certainly takes grocery shopping seriously, but I think she's taking the joy out of it. Her husband says she has Just-In-Time inventory. I kinda do too--I go to grocery stores several times a week and buy what I want right before I use it.

Maybe if I were shopping for a family, I'd appreciate her approach more.

Tomatillos!

I just learned about tomatillos. By that, I mean I finally bought some and used them. I made salsa verde. It was the best salsa verde I ever had. Then I made more salsa verde by adding new things to the old, but it wasn't as good.

I got tomatillos at Associated for $1.69/lb. At Jesus they are $1.99. At Western Beef they are $1.99. At Key Food they are $2.99. At Giant Eagle in Pittsburgh, they are $3.99. I lucked out by buying them at Associated without comparison shopping. But you make your own luck--they seemed like they'd be cheapest there based on how their other prices go.

I didn't really look up a recipe for salsa verde other than to check wikipedia to see if I had to cook the tomatillos. (You don't, but you can.) I ended up using this many tomatillos, a jalapeño pepper, some shallot, some cilantro, and some lime juice.

 They come in papery wraps. Tear it off.

 Inside it is not like a tomato. It is more like an eggplant. They are all members of the nightshade family.

Then I put it all in my quart container for Chinese soup take-out (I don't usually go to restaurants, but sometimes I want a quart container and soup is a good way to get one) and used my immersion blender. And it was done.

NY Times Magazine writes about coupons

I don't really use coupons because I don't like talking to people, but I do like reading about grocery shopping.

Coupon Clipping as the Key to Economic Rebirth

Forty-five minutes before midnight on a wintry Tuesday evening, Cathy Yoder and Monica Knight, a pair of 30-something Boise women who run a popular coupon blog called Fabulessly Frugal, strode with purpose through the parking lot of their local Albertsons supermarket. It was the third and final night of “doubles” at Albertsons. This biweekly happening, during which the store issues coupons that double the value of manufacturers’ coupons, is to dedicated coupon clippers what the full moon was to Druids. Yoder and Knight, who are Mormon and have nine children between them (Yoder: seven; Knight: two) had spent the day working on their blog and then taught a three-hour couponing class — all without a drop of forbidden caffeine. Yet with the supermarket in sight, they grew visibly jazzed, like Vegas high rollers entering a casino. “We’ll have it all to ourselves, and we’ll know all the cashiers,” Knight said.

This article is so good. They know the price of everything! This is my favorite part of the whole thing.

Later I asked Knight whether she ever buys a brand of ice cream or shampoo, say, at full price. “I don’t really,” she told me. “Cathy does. Like, she admitted that she buys chocolate-chip cookies just because she likes them.” 

Cinco de Pie-O Shopping

Tomorrow I am hosting Cinco de Pie-O. It's exactly what it sounds like. I am going to make pizzas, a lentil-based shepherd's pie, a quiche, a kool-aid pie, and a shoofly pie. Other people are bringing other pies. I might make guacamole too.

I lost my to-do list on the way to the store, so I don't know if I bought everything or bought it right. On the way home from the second grocery store, I lost my money. Someone ran a couple blocks down the street to catch up with me and give me my $4 back. No one runs down the street for your to-do list. Someone is probably out there achieving all my goals and throwing the party I want to throw.

That's a lot of stuff I don't usually buy, so I don't know if I got good prices.

Key Food's having its 75th birthday this week, so I got a dozen large eggs for $0.75. I don't know how much I paid for frozen pie crusts. I paid $2.49 for a graham cracker crust. (I'm making too many things, including a crust for shoofly pie and all the pizza doughs to make all my own crusts). Crushed tomatoes were $5/3 as usual.

At Jesus, I got 12 limes for $2. That's about as good as you'll ever see. Avocados were $1.99. I guess if I want to make guacamole, I need to go buy avocados now so they ripen some. I don't think I will. I got a big bottle of sriracha for $4.99. A container of tomatoes was $1. I think I'm going to cook them on the pizza so they don't have to taste great. I couldn't find basil, so I have to go back. I got cilantro for $1.

At C-Town I bought a 101oz can of extra virgin olive oil for $14.99. I never had a can before. Mozzarella was $3.99/lb.  I wanted to get the $2.99 kind they had in their ad but I didn't see it.

Now I still have to get avocados, lime juice, and booze. Or maybe just booze.

Chase Freedom

Chase Freedom gives you 5% back on groceries starting today and up through June!

I'm not entirely sure, but sometimes I think it treats the liquor store like a grocery store.

No More Chewing

After a grueling day of numbers today, I went for a walk. At the liquor store I bought 2 bottles of cheap whiskey and 1 bottle of cheap Scotch. At C-town I got a half gallon of milk, 2 liters of root beer, 2 liters of ginger ale, and 2 cans of chick peas. Lest you think I might chew them, I am turning them into hummus.

Fish and Bean Pasta. Pungent Pasta 2.

I have eaten a variation of this every week since I made it up. I usually make it with sardines, but I made it with tuna today. That's what you see in the picture. It turns out that everything you put in a sauce to make noodles taste good also makes beans taste good. And beans have protein and fiber. I rarely have whole wheat pasta around, but I think it would go well in this.

Here's how to make it.

Nouns:
2 tins of sardines or 2 cans of tuna, drained
1 can cannelini beans
1 lb/1 box pasta. every shape has been good so far
pecorino romano
olive oil
dried parsley

Optional nouns:
diced onion, a little crushed red pepper, a lot of black pepper, anchovies or fish sauce, fresh parsley

Verbs:
Boil some water with a lot of salt in it. Put in some garlic powder if you want.
Drain the pasta. Save a coffee mug of the flavorful water if you think of it. It can help thin/make your sauce.
Add olive oil to the pan and heat it and add the onions and anchovies if you're using them. Then add the sardines/tuna and beans and let it cook a bit. Stir it to break up the sardines and anchovies. Add the red and black pepper now.
Add about half the pasta to the pan and stir it. Add dried parsley and fresh parsley if you're using that. Add the rest of the pasta and grate a lot of cheese into it. Stir it. Serve with more grated cheese.

Note about the parsleys: As famous cookbook authors accurately point out, dried parsley is no substitute for fresh. However, dried has its uses. Namely, it's very small and coats the pasta in a way that makes it greener and nicer looking. Without the green flecks, you're looking at a food made of up of shakes of white and ecru. I used fresh parsley once in this when I had it, and it tasted good, but I didn't cut it small enough so I didn't like how it looked and added dried parsley too.

The cheapest cabbage I've ever seen.

Must be on sale for St. Patrick's Day. Apparently the Irish have a cuisine. The lowest price I had ever seen before this was $0.49/lb.

Tuna Microeconomics

My price of tuna went up, so now I eat more of it. How does that work?

I used to pay $0.75/can for tuna at Western Beef. That was the chunk light variety in water, though I'm not very particular. Then Western Beef raised the price of its store brand to $1. At first, I cut back on my tuna consumption, but now I see tuna on sale at every grocery store for $1. It's frequently higher, but with all my grocery stores and all the brands of tuna, I can always find it somewhere for $1. Now I don't have to make a special trip to Western Beef, so I tend to buy tuna frequently and I'm spending 33% more per tuna-unit.

Rich People Discover Grocery Shopping

In this article about insufferable whining of Wall St. rich types, I found this paragraph that warmed my heart. He learned how to grocery shop!

“They have a circular that they leave in front of the buildings in our neighborhood,” said Arbeeny, 49, who lives in nearby Cobble Hill, namesake for a line of pebbled-leather Kate Spade handbags. “We sit there, and I look through all of them to find out where it’s worth going.”

...

He reads other supermarket circulars to find good prices for his favorite cereal, Wheat Chex. 

It's so cute! I wonder if any of them are poor enough to read little ol' Grocery Chopin.

C-Town Visit

My visit to C-Town resolved many of my problems.

 I got my Cafe Bustelo instant coffee for $4.99 like it's supposed to be! I got Bumble Bee Chunk white tuna for $0.99. It's regularly $2.09. I don't even ever buy it because I've never seen it so cheap. I restocked my tomato juice can stash because I had a weekend of a lot of bloody mary pitchers. And I got more vehicles for thousand island dressing. Oh, and the Cannellini were on sale for $0.80. Usually you see only black beans, kidney beans, and garbanzo beans on sale. Now I can make my tuna salad and enjoy lent.

Employees

Lately when I go to Associated, I am not shopping for much and that has been causing employees to ask me if I need help finding anything. The first time I was just trying to find something that cost about $1 so I could break a $20 bill so I could do laundry. Yesterday I was just checking the price of some coffee but I got a phone call and wandered around the store answering questions about signing up for Ally Bank.

After I checked the price of the instant coffee and found it to be $6.39 and wanting to find it be $5.49 or $4.99, I walked to the door. A cashier said "were you looking for something?" My first reaction was to tell the truth: "I was looking for Cafe Bustelo instant coffee that costs either $5.49 or $4.99, but you have it for $6.39," but instead I said "no, thanks."

Earlier in the day, some guy tried to sell me electricity from a different company by knocking on the door of my apartment and talking to me. I hate that and I'm not going to switch electricity because of a person. I'm sure he's trained to deal with objections people like me have, so I told him that I like paying higher bills to Con Ed. You can't argue with that. And then he left me alone.

I guess the moral of the story is that I'm nice to grocery store people and not nice to people who invade my time and space.

Dreams of Baltika

Last night I had a dream I was interviewing at Gourmet Garage and was asked why I love groceries so much. It was a very exciting dream. I talked a lot about a new commercial Pepsi had that compares how good Pepsi tastes compared to Baltika. I thought it was funny because Pepsi is the American distributor of Baltika. (None of that is true in real life.)

In real life, Western Beef raised the price of a bottle from $1.88 to $2. It's still a good deal for 51 oz of strong beer if you are ok with the taste.

My brain was apparently thinking about Pepsi's distribution deal with Stolichnaya vodka in the 70s which was how Pepsi got to distribute Pespi in the Soviet Union.

Grocery Violence

This is my Key Food. Well, I'm not the Foursquare mayor anymore. Whoever is taking care of it now is doing a bad job.

http://gothamist.com/2012/02/13/teen_fatally_stabbed_in_brooklyn_pa.php

Onions

I was just at Western Beef where they had a 2lb bag of yellow onions on sale for $0.79. I've never seen such a price. For comparison, loose yellow onions were $0.79 for 1 lb. That's what I call free onions.

Here is the best song I know about onions. It's by Lou Christie's sister. She's from Pittsburgh.

Healthy Ham Salad Recipe

My brother posted this on Facebook.

People in New York don't seem to have ham salad. They're missing out. I love it, even the mayo kind. I love mayo though.

Dumpling Night

Ridgely reminded me to have a dumpling party, so I am going to do that tonight. Yesterday I went to Hong Kong Supermarket in Chinatown and bought ingredients. (Then I walked around and now my feet hurt so much that I don't think I can get to Key Food to buy pork.)

I bought 4 packs of dumpling wrappers (which makes 160-200 dumplings I guess. $1.50 each), a big Napa cabbage ($0.59/lb) , a bag of bok choy ($0.99/lb I think), 2 8oz containers of white mushrooms ($1.19 each. What a deal!), 2 bunches of scallions ($0.50 each), a bottle of Squid brand fish sauce ($1.19), a leek at a price I forget, and maybe that was it. I was running late so I didn't get to peruse. I spent about $18, which isn't bad for getting to feed 10 people or so.

I have been thinking about fish sauce a lot lately. I use anchovies when I cook pasta a lot. Maybe fish sauce, which is made of anchovies, salt, and water, would be easier or cheaper. I'm going to find out. I have no experience with fish sauce though so I don't know what brand is good. I bought Squid because it wasn't the cheapest, wasn't the most expensive, had an ok color, and had a squid on it.

I think I might fill some dumplings with ricotta and spinach and call them raviolis.

Cheeses Christ! The Resurrection of my Pecorino Romano

Know how when you have a lot of cookies, you put a slice of bread in with them so the cookies remain soft while taking moisture out of the bread, which gives its life up to become the stale waste instead? Well I hope you knew that because otherwise you probably have been eating a lot of stale cookies in your life.

Yesterday I made pasta (with hot peppers, onions, tuna, and capers--it was ok) and was grating some pecorino romano on it. I am down to the end of my block and it's getting hard to grate. While cleaning up, I dropped my cheese bag in the sink. Rather than get a new one, I decided to stick the rest of my block in my leftover pasta container. I wondered if it would absorb some moisture and become easy to grate again. (Note: I have brought cookies back from being too stale by using bread. I have made cookies moist after overcooking them by using bread.)

Today I tried grating my cheese. It was easy! You can take moisture out of moist foods and infuse them back into hard cheeses. I guess I will try this with bread next since that's what this whole post was about.

job

My brother has an interview to be a stocker at a grocery store tomorrow. I guess we'll find out if this world is set up correctly or not. A grocery store that doesn't hire us deserves to go out of business.

Colavita crushed tomatoes got more expensive

They've been 2/$3 at Key Food for as long as I have been buying them (and were 2/$3 at C-Town for a while when they started carrying them for me) but now they are 3/$5. I guess I'll adjust.

Rabbit Stock

I made rabbit stock with the rest of my rabbit pieces and bones and some vegetables I bought at Jesus. It's pretty good, but it doesn't taste very rabbity. I bought Andrew a stock pot for Christmas and this was the first time anyone used it. (What a self-serving gift, eh?) It tastes like good vegetable stock though. I used all the celery you see, the whole bag of carrots, the onion, another red onion, the shallot, the fresh thyme, and the cremini mushrooms. And salt and pepper. The vegetables/thyme cost me $6. That seemed pretty good.

Now I have to figure out what to do with all this stock.

Rabbit Cacciatore

For my birthday, my friends Bill and Gideon went to some place in Bushwick and picked out a rabbit for me by pointing at it and had it killed for me. Thankfully they answered yes when asked if they wanted to have the fur removed. I received this thing in a plastic bag.

The day after my birthday I already had plans. Same for New Year's. The next day, Ravi invited me over to eat lamb. I was starting to fret that this bunny would go bad. So I cooked it yesterday even though Bill couldn't make it. He can come eat leftovers if he's less tortoise and more hare about this whole thing.

First I studied this Saveur guide to butchering a rabbit. The main differences between their guide and my rabbit were that I still had a head on mine, I still had organs in mine, and they have sharp knives. They also give instructions like "then remove the bones from the leg." Easier said than done!

I decided to make rabbit cacciatore. I thought it was familiar, but later I realized it only sounded familiar because I used to watch so much Camp Candy. The other rabbit dish I could think of, hasenpfeffer, is thickened with the blood of the rabbit, according to wikipedia. I didn't need all that. Yes, I use wikipedia for recipes. It told me what goes in it so I do it. I decided to serve it over polenta with a salad and some bread. Into my cacciatore I put 2 red onions, 8 oz of quartered button mushrooms, a green pepper cut into chunks, a thinly sliced carrot, a can of whole canned tomatoes mashed up a bit, a few glugs of whatever wine we were drinking, as much turkey stock as was melted and pourable by the time I wanted to add turkey stock, garlic powder (I thought I had real garlic around but didn't), and herbes de provence that Callie gave me for Christmas. I should have added more salt. It tasted significantly better when I salted it and the rabbit didn't taste as much like chicken.

In the end, it looked like this. Not bad.

I know it's impolite to ask how much something cost, but I really was curious about how much a rabbit goes for so I could think about doing it again maybe. So I asked. Gideon told me about $30 for that rabbit. "I'm not worth $30!" I recoiled. But I liked the stewing aspect of the meal a lot so maybe I will stew some cheap meats. I will stew eggs. (Bill and Gid also got me eggs.)

I still have the bones and organs and the meat I couldn't get off the bones so I think I'll make stock tomorrow. I got Andrew a stock pot for Christmas and I guess I will be the one to break it in. I don't let things go to waste much. I'm also probably better at making stock than I was butchering an animal.

There should be a lemon law.

Outrageous.

$1 for a lemon at the Gristede's on West 96th St.