Hmmm. What to cook for the Super Bowl

It's the only time of year I can ever remember seeing wings on sale. Food Bazaar has a 5 lb bag of frozen ones for $10. Which is still a rip off compared to the usual $0.50/lb I like to pay for quartered legs. But it's a special occasion. I think someone else might bring wings to my party and save me the trouble of spending $10. If I make the wings, I'd make a variation of Melissa Clark's green goddess roast chicken.

Key Food's sales are lackluster, except a pound of Galbani mozzarella for $3.

C-Town has Frank's Red Hot on sale, which I will need for my infamous Buffalo Chicken Jello Salad.  And Wishbone salad dressing for $0.79. Bleu cheese dressing is another ingredient in my masterpiece. C-Town has sour cream on sale for $1. I'll need that since I am going to make nachos. I can't inflict only savory gelatin on my guests.

Sriracha

While I was eating my fish tacos, I noticed the price tag on my old bottle of sriracha.  $3.99. I bought a new bottle in Chinatown for $2.29 yesterday. What a deal.

An interesting note about this blog is that all of its hits come from searches for sriracha, rooster sauce, chinese hot sauce, chinese rooster sauce, and misspellings of the same. My favorite hit so far is the search for "Chopin stage fright" which was a post about how I was nervous to shop for Thanksgiving. Here is the last week.

Here's all time.

The Situation at Food Bazaar - Baccalà, Mussels, Rodriquez, Valentina, and Checking Out

Yesterday I made Italian-style mussels, eggplant parmesan, garlic bread (2 ways), and carrot cookies. I went to Food Bazaar for this because Key Food made me feel bad/gross/repulsive for buying mussels there and because the mussels are $3 for 2 lbs (instead of $5) and because Timmy wanted me to get him Christmas presents from there.

They have a whole table of "baccalà," but it was labeled as Alaskan pollock, not cod. I looked up cod on my iHorn seafood sustainability app, and it said cod is overfished. I didn't buy any.

The mussels were in ice and were much cheaper than Key Food. They had a label that said they came out of the ocean in Maine on Sunday. The seafood section at Food Bazaar's really busy, but that's because it's good.

That whole store was too busy. There were too many people with carts just milling about. Navigating the produce section was like a video game. Every time you come to the end of a table, someone with a cart blocks you in.


Timmy wanted me to get him some Rodriguez. It's a fudge or something. I spent forever searching the Hispanic dessert aisle and couldn't find it. Then I did. It was hiding in the next aisle over.

 Rodriquez. Lots.

 

Not Rodriguez.

I was very very pleased to find Valentina Black Label (tied with Cholula for best hot sauce) on sale. $2 for 34 oz. I got it.

The normal size doesn't last long enough.

Then I circled back around to pick up my mussels (I didn't want to tote creatures around a whole store) and went to check out. It sucked.  After the jump, I will rant. I rant about how the lines are managed. Then I rant about the people in front of me.

On Assignment: Find Franks

Since Thanksgiving left me in a bit of a food and shopping hangover, hardly even hungry enough to cook, I've cut back on my visits to grocery stores. I'm trying to end that because on Saturday night I made the stupidest soup out of what little I could find. It had macaroni, black beans, yogurt, spiciness, and salt. I did better yesterday with chili. It helps when people ask me grocery questions so I have some purpose when perusing the stores. Today Kristy asked me where to find Hillshire Farm Lit'l Smokies. I don't think I've ever seen them.

Well, Kristy. Here's my best result so far. I found Nathan's beef cocktail size franks at Key Food. I suppose they could work, but at $5.29 for 14 oz. I don't think they are a very good deal.

Some other slightly interesting recent finds after the jump.

Key Food's Redeeming Qualities

Despite generally having higher prices than the other grocery stores in the neighborhood, Key Food is good for some things. It is the easiest place to take my plastic shopping bags to recycle. I usually bring my own bag since the day I realized that I was filling up my garbage can with plastic bags and taking one reusable bag saves me 4-8 plastic ones. But I still end up with some bags in my life and Key Food is the best place for that.

And among stores I can walk to, it has the best selection. Since its expansion by one aisle, it's the least cluttered. It never enforced a credit card minimum on me.

You can get an 8 oz block of Key Food brand pepper jack for $1.99. They want at least $2.19 at any other store unless you wait for a sale, but I eat hunks of cheese every time I don't know what else to eat, so I can't wait for a sale.

Finally, I can get Colavita crushed tomatoes for $1.50. I don't really even find Colavita at other stores, and I'm picky about my crushed tomatoes.

On to the shortcomings I found yesterday.

Food Bazaar's the Second Best Place for Garbage Bags

After yesterday's fiasco, I still had to find some garbage bags. Walgreens wanted $5 for 15 bags. The other Walgreens had the same prices. Walgreens also bought Duane Reade and shut down the one near here, which I didn't know. I couldn't risk going in the tiny stores because I only have $3 in cash because I spent all my other dollars on beers and pizza on Sunday. I couldn't go back to Associated because I would be embarrassed and I already bought everything I wanted yesterday. So Food Bazaar it was.

 Food Bazaar has one of the best potion sections around.  You have to look these things up to find out what they're even supposed to do. Beef, Iron, & Wine? Oddly enough, this is now where they keep the Marmite which is a legitimate, though bizarre-tasting, foodstuff. Maybe this is how they show what they think of it. I think it would be better off in the MSG aisle that has every variety of Ac'cent msg seasoning on one side and a wall of ramen on the other.