Tom Yum Laziness

For dinner, I had a "Trader Ming's Tasty Thai Meal" and a glass of nero d'avola.

My TJ's infatuation is beginning to fade- they just make it too easy to be lazy. At the same time, it's impossible to stop going there- when I go somewhere else, to buy "real" groceries (like, you know, produce), I invariably find something I want, grab it, look at the price, and *damn*. It's twenty cents cheaper at TJ's. I know my compulsion to not buy them, then go to TJ's directly afterward to save twenty cents each on three or four things is neurotic and insane, but I really can't help myself.

In any case, we went to TJ's today, and found ourselves stocking up on all the lazy prepared foods we shouldn't buy (and never used to buy), but somehow got lulled into buying because TJ's is so darn charming.

Come dinnertime, it was lazy, scary prepared food, or spend more than an hour roasting sweet potatoes and defrosting frozen salmon. Scary food won. It was pretty scary: tom yum sauce with rice and those pickled mini-corn things. They were apparently going for Thai. Not awful, but overwhelmingly salty, and not nearly spicy or flavorful enough. The topmost layer, which I apparently didn't mix with the rice effectively, had very strong sour flavors, like Indian lime pickle. I was also getting strong undertones of cheesiness throughout the dish. With the carby rice, it could have been some strange midwestern take on mac n' cheese, a la Minnesota's hotdishes. Not a repeat TJ's purchase on my part, but maybe Jon will like it.

Crab Cakes at Home

For dinner, I had homemade crab cakes with a side of fava beans and a nice Chianti Sicilian red.

I used the same recipe as last time. The recipe comes from a tiny, poorly copy-edited cookbook labeled "A Taste of Charleston, South Carolina Restaurant Recipes" that we purchased while visiting several years back.

I always follow the recipe rather loosely, especially considering they forgot to include the unit of measurement for the Worcestershire sauce. "1/4" what?!? I stick with this mangled recipe only because it is relatively unadulterated by weird fillers, and because it calls for much less (gloopy, disgusting) mayo than other recipes- 1/2 cup per pound crab. I could just make my own mayo, but it's messy and takes a ton of oil, and I'm lazy sometimes.

The crab cake mixture tasted boring this time, so I quadrupled the amount of hot sauce called for. I was using Louisiana Hot Sauce, which proved to be overpoweringly distinctive. Not bad, but next time I'll try using Marie Sharp's. I suspect its citrusy undertones would yield a less obtrusive heat.

I was also slightly disappointed with my crab. I used canned crab from Trader Joe's, which was about $8 for a pound; previously, I used canned crab from Costco for about $12/pound. It could be completely random, but there were no stray shells in my Costco crab and a TON in TJ's.

Overall, it wasn't bad, and relatively quick and easy to make. The Sicilian wine I had with it was the 2006 Fourplay- a blend of four traditional Sicilian grapes (including my much-loved Nero d'Avola). It was, predictably, a little heavy for this meal, but I had been dying to try it after I found it at the (awesome) local Italian market and couldn't wait. It's a nice, slightly tannic wine, with candied fruit undertones, but it could have a little more structure- it seemed to wilt after a few hours of air.

Spaghetti at Home

Tonight for dinner, I had whole-wheat spaghetti with red sauce, arugula, vegetarian Italian "sausage", and some leftover Nero d'Avola.

All of the components were better together. I was particularly happy with the veggie sausage from Trader Joe's. I used it in the other night's pizza, and was thoroughly unimpressed, but here the pasta sauce disguised its texture so effectively I could *almost* pretend it was real. The sauce was TJ's "rustico" sauce, chosen for its imported Italian tomatoes. I know that sounds snobby, but I really can tell the difference, and I prefer the Italian ones for their lower acidity and more plummy, round flavors. This particular sauce had the mellow acidity I like, but was quite overshadowed by red pepper flavors when eaten alone- which I do, often, as a weird snack. So it was a nice surprise to discover that the whole-wheat pasta and arugula (which I mixed into the sauce) balanced the sweet pepper flavors perfectly.

A note on Trader Joe's. I had never seen one before moving here, despite wishing for one for the last five or so years. I had expected something resembling a Whole Foods- a traditional grocery store model, turned organic- but cheaper. TJ's, with its emphasis on prepared food components, pre-made meals, and house-brand staples, is not at all what I expected, but I'm still finding its presence has completely supplanted my Whole Paycheck fixation. I haven't set foot in the local Whole Foods in my entire month here, even though it's less than a mile from TJ's. It just seems TJ's has almost everything I'd want from that sort of grocery store, and other things are best purchased at the ordinary market. My only complaint so far is that, while TJ's makes a delicious-looking array of granolas, NONE of them have less than 10g of sugar per serving. I hate sugary cereals. Otherwise, good job TJ's.

Pizza in St. Louis

For dinner, I had quasi-homemade St. Louis-style pizza with arugula and red wine.

First, let me digress to point out how ridiculous this article is, particularly in light of its title. More than anything, I think the technique of cooking has been lost. We don't need more recipes, we need explanations and education. Good cookbooks teach technique. If you buy all your cookbooks for recipes alone, perhaps the problem is yours and not the cookbook's. Moreover, if you are a new cook scared off cooking completely by Julia Child's lengthy, detailed recipes (rather than, say, finding a less onerous cookbook), perhaps you are the problem.

So, dinner. I have a fondness for Chef Boyardee's pizza kits which predates both the presence of a Trader Joe's (hello pre-made pizza dough) and also my own extensive pizza-dough-making capabilities. Dates, actually, to the mid-Eighties. Thanks, mom.

The pizza kit, if you are not familiar, consists of a box with crust mix, can of tomato sauce, and Kraft parmesan cheese. It's maybe $2-3 at your local non-posh grocery store. My camera battery died, again, so no photos. The idea is to mix the crust mix with hot water, mix, let rise a few minutes, press into pan, decorate, and bake.

My cooking proclivities, much like Julia Child's cookbook, are not that simple. I modified the process by actually kneading the (very sticky) crust mix, and using olive oil to keep it from sticking. I wanted to use my pizza stone to cook it, but lacked a pizza peel to transfer it into the oven without incident. I improvised by patting the dough out onto the underside of a pan lid, then flipping it upside down over the (pre-heated) pizza stone and peeling it off. I then topped the dough with Trader Joe's rustic pasta sauce (better than the crap tomato goo it comes with), cheese, and vegetarian Italian "sausage", and put the stone back in the oven. Speaking of cheese, St. Louis has its very own pizza cheese. Provel is a processed cheese blend of swiss, white cheddar, and provolone. It melts into a gooey, smoky, buttery mess reminiscent of really, really good spray cheese. Useful but plasticky. Kind of like Velveeta, but tastier. The pizza turned out well...the sausage wasn't quite dry, crispy, or flavorful enough to truly imitate Italian sausage, but it wasn't bad for soy protein, and the pizza stone created a nice crust. The arugula salad nicely balanced the processed cheese's sweetness, and the wine (Nero d'Avola, $6, Trader Joe's) was very jammy, if a little too sweet. Not bad.

Gnocchi at Home

Tonight, I was on my own for dinner. I still don't have a handle on Houston restaurants that are cheap, close, and do takeout, so on nights like this I head to the grocery store with sybaritic abandon. I ended up with about five pounds of grapefruit (sale!), blackberries, gnocchi, sauce, potato chips, wine, and chocolate.

For dinner, I cooked the gnocchi and topped it with Cento's arrabiata sauce, then had a glass of wine, some blackberries and chocolate, and some potato chips. The gnocchi was ok. I bought a different brand than I usually do, and it was a little gluey. Good pasta sauce makes anything better (although I've been known to eat good pasta sauce as a meal in itself); the Cento is hard to find, but really good and spicy. I can taste each ingredient, but it's still integrated into a cohesive sauce rather than tasting like a bunch of chopped veggies. The wine was "Notorious" Nero d'Avola. I suppose the name is a takeoff on the Mafia's strong presence in Sicily, where Nero comes from. I LOVE the grape. This particular wine is dark and tannic, with really full berry and pepper flavors, and is a good, but not amazing, example of what I like in Nero d'Avola.

I also had some pre-dinner potato chips, in which I was pretty disappointed. I usually completely avoid the snack food aisle, but I wanted something to munch on tonight. I really like Boulder Canyon Potato Chip Co's garlic parm chips, so I was intrigued by their crinkle-cut sour cream and onion chips, which I'd never seen before. Ick. I like their other chip varieties for their minimal ingredients and lack of weird fake seasonings, but apparently sour cream flavor is hard to execute without them. They taste papery and flat; I'm not sure I could distinguish them from something Frito Lay made in a blind taste test. Dessert was much better- very ripe blackberries and some chocolate.

Olive Garden by the Medical Center

Today, I had lunch at the much-maligned Olive Garden. Not my choice, but it was interesting after so many years away. Even their menu seems to have changed significantly from what I remembered; to me, it looked less classically Italian (if you could ever have labeled anything on the menu 'classic Italian') than ever before.

Not too much has changed otherwise. I tried to order a glass of their rose wine, but the waitress misunderstood me. I can't help but wonder how many people order wine by requesting "rosso", "bianco", or "rosato", as they are listed on the menu. Apparently the linguistics were sufficiently misleading so that I ended up with a glass of RED wine. Maybe I shouldn't expect someone who works at Olive Garden to know what rose is. It was very sweet and otherwise undistinguished, kind of like cheap wine from California. I was, however, encouraged to see that there is a Nero d'Avola on the menu, as this is not a very commonly imported Sicilian grape that I adore.

I could not decide on food. Their menu is kind of pricey (even at lunch) for my perception of the quality of what's served...$15 for grilled fish and pasta? I settled on the $9.95 cheese ravioli, which came with salad and breadsticks. No objection to the salad. The breadsticks were fine, even if I find the concept of spongy, greasy, wheat-germless "bread" kind of scary in general. The ravioli was decidedly not good. Olive Garden gets kudos for not overcooking them, but the filling needed help. It was particularly gross, as one lunch companion had just told me a story about 'The Simpsons' that involved Ralphie eating paste. Very chalky paste. They were covered with a very generic and salty marinara sauce and a little grated mozzarella. Not an awful meal, but nothing to change my mind about the chain. At those prices, I can cook pre-made ravioli at home with better sauce and wine.