What's on sale? - it's cold edition

 I have barely been in my apartment for 3 weeks in a row for a long time, so my grocery shopping has been crimped. But now I'm back. So what's on sale? I need kosher salt specifically. And I got a new sourdough starter for my birthday so I need to start buying flour again.

Bravo: I've mostly ended my feud with them. Other stores overcharged since then. Quartered chicken legs are 69¢/lb. Red onions are $2/bag.

C-Town: Boneless chicken tenderloins are $2/lb. I paid that for chicken breasts last week. I think this would just save me a cut before I turn them into shreds for tacos. Broccoli rabe is $3.

Food Bazaar: They charged me $2.49/lb instead of $1.49/lb for tomatillos so it will take an exceptional sale to make me return here, even though I need to go to their parking lot to recycle some clothes. Or maybe when I make hot pot and need shrimp. But nothing's worth it this week.

Foodtown: I wonder when the new Foodtown 1 block away will open so I don't go to the one 4 blocks away. I can get 50 pizza rolls for $4.49. I brought that many to a NYE party and people ate them all. They're a good food.

Green Corner: Dried hibiscus is $2 for 3.5 oz. My parents asked me to bring some for Christmas because it's easier to find here.

Ozzie's: nothing

READY TO GO! (4th of July/Green Corner)

 I'm in Green Corner's DMs!

I don't know what to buy yet, but I am hoping for peaches, limes, cilantro, onions, scallions, jalapeños, and frozen corn there. And if they can have cheap chicken quarters, that is ideal. I haven't reviewed any circulars for real yet. This is just based on their reputation.

If they come through with a tofu sale, I might serve jerk tofu on the 4th. But last time they advertised a tofu sale, it didn't ring up that way. But it was still cheaper than the other places.

What a trip to Gala Foods!

The music was so good. The first song I tried to Shazam didn't work, but I got this one. Imagine me wandering around the store listening to this.

I got many deals. I got chicken quarters for $0.49/lb, tomatillos for $0.99/lb, ice cream for $3, diet pepsi and ginger ale for $1 for 2 liters, Heinz mayo for $3, and Polly-O mozzarella for $3. I just learned that Polly-O is owned by Kraft Heinz. Here's my receipt an a picture of everything I got.

Let's see what's on sale for the week of the Kentucky Derby and Cinco de Mayo

Not just Cinco de Mayo, but Cinco de Fry-o and Cinco de Pie-o too.

Key Food changed its website! Cottage cheese is $2.  Sour cream is $1.69. Cantaloupe is 3/$5. Old El Paso flour tortillas are $1.50.

Food Bazaar: Avocados are $1. Cantaloupe is $1.50. Clams are $4/dozen. Tomatillos and jalapenos are $0.79/lb. That's half off a typical good price.

C-Town: Avocados are 4/$5. Sour cream is $1.50. Bananas are $0.49/lb.

Associated: Website won't work.

Western Beef: They want me to download a new version of Flash or something, and I'm not.

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.

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.

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.