Re: Starbucks Americano

ant wrote:

The Real Bev wrote:
ant wrote:
The Real Bev wrote:
pigo wrote:
"The Real Bev" <bashley101+usenet@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

OK, I have a Whole Foods market a mile away. When I run out of
the Starbuck's stuff I'll try what they have to offer.

That sounds like one of those places you will be able to get those
$20 beans.........but they'd be $10 everywhere else.

I disapprove of Whole Foods on principle -- they sell overpriced
stuff. They gave free samples the day they opened several years
ago, and the stuff was very good. Not good enough to buy at those
prices, though.

I have to go to places like that to get a decent range of rice and
grains.

We have a number of health food stores and Asian stores which sell
rice and various grains and flours for very decent prices.

I'm used to finding these things in normal supermarkets (ie not american ones). rather irritating to have to go to "special" shops to get normal food.

Buck a pound in nice packages in the supers. Half that in bulk at the health food stores or rice in >5-pound packages in Asian stores with a huge variety to choose from. Not as big a choice with brown rice, the Chinese regard it as poor-people food.

Got me a big bag of red lentils the other day! Now I have a freezer
full of Dhal, to go with the latest curry. I can't seem to find
dried beans and pulses in the normal supermarket here, and a
suspicion is dawning that they don't have them.

What's dhal? What are pulses? Dried beans are pretty common in the
local supers -- lima, red, black, pinto, soup-combos, etc. I wouldn't
think that that stuff would be big-city items...

Can never remember if it's dhal or dahl. anyway, it's lentils simmered until they form a thick mass, and you can adjust it to your own tastes. I put in some ground coriander (as I was running out of cumin), and a chopped up thin green chilli. Very nice indeed, and I use it as an accompaniment with curry.

I cooked lentils once, and put in way too much coriander (cilantro seeds, and I HATE cilantro), resulting in garbage. I guess I should try again...

"Pulses (Grain legumes) - Leguminous plants or their seeds, chiefly those plants with large seeds used for food." So I guess one form would be lima beans, which shouldn't be difficult to find. Lima beans and hamhocks or other ham product are very good.

Meanwhile I'm running out of coffee, and due (I think) to the
holiday, nothing's on sale. Bugger. Might have to reduce my ration
until they mark something down.

Went back to the 4-measures-8-cups method. No different. Guess I
wasn't born to be a coffee gourmet. I'm a pretty good cook when I
feel like it, though. Every couple of years the spirit hits me...

Well, bugger gourmet, but good food is part of life. all I know is, when I cook, I cut stuff up. When the person I rent from "cooks", she opens packages and generates vast amounts of rubbish.
also, I have never experienced indigestion or heartburn or any of those weird complaints. sometimes I have hiccups. That's about it.

Good open-package food: Corn tortillas toasted on the gas burner. Cheese, olives, onions, Pace extra-chunky salsa, whatever else sounds good. Nuke for 30 seconds. Eat.

Good constructed-with-actual-raw-ingredients food: mu shu pork -- shredded pork, scrambled eggs, bamboo shoots, tiger lily buds, cloud ears, cabbage, sesame oil, spring onions, water chestnuts, cornstarch, ginger, mandarin pancakes (or flour tortillas if there are no handy mandarins about) and plum sauce.

I got some tomatoes today, they were meant to be on sale but evidently weren't when I reached teh checkout. $7 for tomatoes, fark. I'll go back and fight them tomorrow. However, i chopped them all up, and added half a large white onion (the red ones were just wrong, starting to rot), some salt, red vinegar and some lemon juice and a bit of oil, and cracked some peppercorns with the side of the knife, left it in a bowl for an hour, and it was just perfect. So maybe the tomatoes were expensive for a reason.

They're expensive because people will pay it and for weather/seasonal reasons. Even at the cheap Italian/middle eastern produce stores they're $2/pound and not very good. My mom splurged on some of those $4/lb tomatoes-on-the-vine at the super and said they were very good.

One reason winter sucks: the only fruit available is pears. I don't understand why Central and South American fruit sucks as badly as it does, but it does. Got some good strawberries for a buck a basket, though. Nearly at their eat-by date, which is good. Big and slightly deformed. Who cares?

--
Cheers, Bev
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