Corduroy Orange

There once was a grocery store in Shadyside that had all kinds of gourmet ingredients available.  People flocked to it from all over Pittsburgh and its aisles got too crowded and little Goldilocks couldn’t find room to push her shopping cart and she complained, “this store is too small!”

So, the supermarket chain opened up a store in Robinson that had all sorts of room for anyone to push their shopping cart through a voluminous chamber that offered a bakery, a deli, a coffee roastery, hydroponic lettuce garden, and more.  Little Goldilocks pushed her carts up and down the aisles for hours on end until she realized she had no idea where she was or how to find the registers. “This store is too big!” she complained.

So, the supermarket chain opened up a new grocery store in Pine that had plenty of space to push your cart through a cafe and a bakery and a deli and a cheesemonger and a bulk foods section and an amazing selection of produce, and little Goldilocks said, “this store is still pretty big but I feel more comfortable in it.”

Giant Eagle has opened up a new Market District store in Pine Township.  It’s actually their fifth store under the Market District heading, and it pulls out all the stops, as has come to be the norm.

The produce section offers anything you’re looking for, from a Buddha’s Hand to dragonfruit to more run of the mill offerings like lettuce, tomato, onions, and peppers.

The bakery offers cakes in a variety of sizes, including a smattering of gourmet cupcakes with house-made buttercream icing, and many other appealing options (I put the bakery to the test by trying a blueberry muffin.  I’m inevitably disappointed with bakery blueberry muffins, but I was pleasantly surprised to find theirs had enough blueberries, good crumb, and excellent flavor).

The bulk foods department was by far the section I was most impressed with.  From dried morels to quinoa to excellently priced maple syrup ($10/lb!), and beyond, one could eat well based on the bulk offerings alone.

Even the dairy department has a wider than normal selection of products, including pasteurized/ non-homogenized milk (the secret to shaking the paperboard carton: scissor the top instead of pinching it).

Giant Eagle is justifiably proud of their newest store (actually a remodel of an existing Giant Eagle), and threw a huge celebration to show it off.  They had live music, demonstrations from celebrity chefs, cheese carvings, and a lot more that you wouldn’t expect at a supermarket.  I took pictures and had planned on posting them, but somehow managed to delete them off of my phone whilst (and at the same time as) not uploading them to my computer.

The hoopla surrounding the opening of this store was definitely a stark contrast to the shopping experience I get at my local Eagle (store 63, in Greenfield).  And there’s a large part of me that wishes I was able to get a fraction of the extras offered at the Market District in an ordinary Giant Eagle.

The growth areas in our local grocery shopping options tend to be at the fringes of the market: whether Aldi or Bottom Dollar swooping in to the bargain market or Market District and Whole Foods clambering over each other for the top.  Very little has changed in the middle of the road shopping experience.  I hope Giant Eagle might observe the enthusiasm with which shoppers greet the Market District offerings and provide some of the amenities to more of the stores, and help all of their customers to feel a little bit of the Market District zing.

Hey Jesse,

A confluence of events has led to me hosting Christmas dinner this year.

I’m planning to go all-out with a standing rib roast.  My question is, the rubs I’ve seen seem to call for a ton of salt.  Does that sound right?  Don’t want to dry out a $90 piece of meat.

Thanks much,

Alfie

Alfred–

I’d go with less salt in the rub, but I’d salt it 3 times:

• once a day before you cook it, so that as it sits overnight, the salt will have a chance to penetrate;
• once as you’re preparing to cook it so that there is a bit more immediate of an effect;
• and then a small sprinkle of sea salt upon slicing it for a finishing effect.

All in all, the amount of salt spread over the three applications may approach the amount called for in the rubs you’ve seen, but the overall effect should produce a better result because the salt won’t be concentrated in a crust on the outside of the beef.

Hope this helps, and enjoy your dinner!

Hello – Christmas is fast approaching and I’m planning to contribute a glazed ham. I’ve made this several times over the years but always find the spot to place the clove a real challenge as it’s very difficult to see the actual diamond shape in the white fat. Everything else is dead easy but I always groan when I get to that part of the procedure and feel there must be a simple solution. Last time I basted the ham for a short time so that there was some colour on it and then removed it from the oven and placed the cloves in. However, that was hardly a success either because the fat was then too soft to push the clove in! Do you have any suggestions to make my life a little easier?
Many thanks,
Jane (Perth, Western Australia)

Jane–

I will actually be doing my own ham this year for the first time in about 6 years, so I am glad you asked the question, otherwise I don’t think I would have even been aware of the concern until it came time to slice the ham and stick the cloves.

My mother has always been the one to handle the glazed ham, so I asked kicked the question to her. She says that she always has the same issue, but after she cuts the grid, she uses her sense of touch to find the first few spots to put the cloves. Once she gets a few of them established, she estimates where the rest would go based on the pattern of the grid.

I can tell you that the results are consistently very nice, and it sounds like a reasonable method to me, so I hope it is helpful to you.

If anyone else has questions for me (or my mother), email me to let me know! Your question may be featured in a future advice column.

So, Angstrom has a new favorite word: “Spice.”

He says it when he gets home from daycare and sees the spice rack on the wall by the back door, “Spice!” Sometimes he says it when he gets up in the morning and we’re trying to get him ready to leave the house, “spice, spice!”

We’ve brought it on ourselves, and far from discouraging him, we encourage him to explore flavors. Maybe not on weekday mornings as we’re trying to get ready for work, but in the evenings and on the weekends, we’ll pull out several (3-5, typically) while I’m cooking and give him a chance to smell them and taste them. Often, we’ll follow that up with a chance for Angstrom to help me stir.

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Turkey, gobble… the sound the bird makes seems to describe how we eat each Thanksgiving.  And yet, I have found myself disappointed of late with turkeys as a whole.

It’s not because of their source, necessarily–it’s been several years since I bought a supermarket bird.  And last year, I went all out and procured a heritage breed bird from Maggie Henry.  It was good, but it wasn’t the flavor experience I’d been hoping for (especially when viewed in terms of a cost:benefit analysis!)

So, this year, i’ve opted to return to the roots of the holiday, before Tom was a guest de rigeur at the table, when the foreign occupiers were beholden to the natives for saving their inexperienced selves from the harsh elements of a pre-industrial existence, and as the story goes, all came together to share a harvest feast.

The selection of meats at that table was varied, I hear tell, and while wild turkey was likely a course, other meats appeared too.  So, this year, I’m roasting a goose.

This will be just the second time I’ve done it, but the first time yielded a meal featuring all the flavor I wished turkey had, so I’m glad that I wrote myself such careful instructions for how I went about the process.  If you have the chance to choose this bird instead of the norm for your table, I recommend trying Jo-Mar meats in the Strip District if you’re a Pittsburgher—it’s been a couple of weeks since I purchased what had been their last goose, so they have likely restocked in the interim.  They sell the birds frozen, so buy this weekend to give it a chance to thaw slowly in your refrigerator!

As a result of getting this goose, I’m more excited about this meal than I have been for the past several 4th Thursdays in November!  I look forward to a rich, luscious gravy; goose fat for several cooking projects to follow; cherry pie from frozen sour cherries; brussels sprouts roasted with a maple syrup glaze; pan roasted turnips & sweet potatoes; and a corn bread stuffing my sister has been talking up for weeks.

Please share favorites from your menu—I’ve still got a few days before the meal that I could adopt some of your menu items for my house to enjoy!

In culinary school, we were taught to cook mushrooms over high heat with constant motion to achieve the best possible results.  Pedal to the metal, full speed ahead, keep ‘em moving so they don’t burn.

Based on my frequent cooking of various wild and cultivated mushrooms, I have determined that I disagree with this advice.  Instead, I think working in a cast iron pan over moderate heat and stirring the mushrooms occasionally/ intermittently gets better results.  The mushrooms, staying in direct contact with the heated surface for a longer period, develop a beautiful golden brown hue and a flavor that can’t be matched.  Coast along at a moderate pace: it’s both safer and more enjoyable, and permits you to pay attention to more of what’s going on around you because you don’t have to be obsessed with making sure dinner’s not about to crash.

You can’t tell by looking, but in the picture below, Angstrom is helping me to saute a mix of crimini, shiitake, and maitake mushrooms.

The first time I made sauteed mushrooms after Angstrom was eating a wide variety of solid food, I cringed as Aurora heaped them onto his plate, imagining how much value went into what I was sure would wind up on the floor.  But, as he crammed them into his mouth with gusto, I gladly gave him seconds.  If he’s willing and ready to appreciate good ingredients from his earliest dining experiences, I am going to encourage that at every step of the way.

From this quarter’s edition of The Journal of Taco Building Science:

There’s no need to limit your greens choice to lettuce when prepping the toppings for your tacos.  Going for a more flavorful green can add an extra kick of flavor to your taco mix.  For instance, I have mustard greens growing all over my yard, so when I needed greens for my most recent taco-making experience, I went out back and picked a handful of them.  Great choice!  The mustardy flavor of the greens provided substance in a venue where I have been accustomed to getting relatively flavorless roughage with a little bit of crunch to it.

I stopped at a Wendy’s for lunch today.  Hadn’t planned on it, but circumstances necessitated it.  I don’t normally get combos if I’m eating at such a restaurant, but the chain has been touting their new fries so much, i figured–what the heck, I’ll get a combo.

Small, medium, or large? the order-taker asked me.

How big’s a small drink? I asked her.

20 oz, came the reply.

Say what?!  How big’s a large?

40 oz.

Are you kidding me?  They ought to rename the sizes extra large, mammoth, and ridiculously huge.  And they ought to offer a small, medium, and large to go along with them.  I don’t know about you, but I find 8 oz. of soda to be just right, 12 oz. to be slightly excessive, and 16 oz. to be too much.  To just jump right into the deep end and label a 20 oz drink as ’small’ is mind-boggling, annoying, and just plain rude.

I don’t know if you’ve looked at a soda nutrition facts label lately, but the caloric and sugar information is given based on an 8 oz. portion.  For the root beer I wound up getting today because it would have cost me more not to get it, 8 oz of soda is worth 110 calories and 30g of sugar.  Doing the math, a 20 oz. ’small’ if fully consumed provides 275 calories and 75g of sugar; a 40 oz. ‘large’ is 550 calories and 150g of sugar.

Why is the average American fat and either diabetic or pre-diabetic?  In part because they can save money by consuming more sugar and more empty calories.

I’m sure Wendy’s isn’t alone in trying to pass off 2.5 x the suggested serving size as being ’small,’ but I’d allege that every corporation that has policies in place that push such ridiculousness on the public is culpable for the related health problems that accompany them.  I’d also allege that trying to advertise their way into being perceived as a healthful choice on the basis of offering fresh fruit on the menu is akin to taking one straw off the camel’s back and claiming to have lightened the load.

Deity-smitten, maternal-intercoursing, smug, nonsensical fast food corporations can stick their healthy images in their rectum so long as they participate in such undeniable and insulting foolishness.  I’d go so far as to allege that they were born out of wedlock and deserve to dine on fecal matter and decease.

I’m just saying.

Corduroy– My pseudo-granddaughter’s school lunch options consist of less-than appetizing processed foods.  She’s not a big sandwich eater.  One sandwich she does like is peanut butter and jelly–but nuts and nut butters are banned from the class due to allergy concerns.  Any ideas for what a 5-year old might enjoy at lunch that would travel well? –CLS

Depends on the five-year-old, I suppose.  Here’s a list of ten ideas.  Anyone else can free to leave a comment and start at number 11.  I bet we can come up with at least 25 ideas all told.

1) Hard boiled eggs.  Perhaps with a little packet of salt and a little packet of pepper.  Aurora would say forget the salt and pepper and give her a packet of mustard.  Greg would say a jar of hot sauce and a beer, but you’ll probably want to ignore his advice.  I’d say it’s fun to crack ‘em on your head.  Ramona would say watch out, your mom might have gotten distracted and put a raw egg in your lunch instead.

2) Whole Fruit.  such as grapes, apples, plums, peaches (in a small plastic container to reduce bruising), etc.  Bananas also tend to bruise.  Cut fruit tends not to travel well.

3) Vegetables.  Carrot sticks, celery sticks, cucumber sticks are some of the more obvious ones.  Depending on the kid, you might want to try broccoli florettes, leftover corn on the cob, cherry tomatoes, leftover roasted sweet potatoes, and so on.

4) Yogurt.  Hold on a second while I climb up onto a soap box. And please, please, please, buy your children real yogurt, and if they want flavors in it, mix it up with actual fruit, or even jams containing actual fruit, or real maple syrup or something like that.  I look around the grocery store at the crap that is marketed to kids and I think it’s (pardon me while I curse for added emphasis to show how strongly I feel) fornicatingly wrong to sell artificial colors and flavors to children who are too young and inexperienced to know what it is that they’re actually eating.  Kids get poisoned every year because they drink the green or the blue or the yellow dish detergent hat has a picture of fruit on the outside of it because they’re used to being fed food that has those shockingly false colors included in them. Beautiful, interesting, and flavorful natural colors can be added with inclusions such as blueberries, cherries, strawberries, peaches, and so on. Encourage and guide your children to eating food that is actually food.

5) Muffins. And think beyond blueberry, banana, etc. How about carrot; zucchini; bacon and cheddar; or ham, scallion, and goat cheese?

6) Bagels. I like cream cheese on mine. I’ve seen people eat them with peanut butter. You can’t do that. How about sunflower seed butter? I’ve also seen hemp seed butter, which I understand is actually nutrient-dense and a legitimate food, as opposed to something you’d spread on one of Alice’s brownies.

7) Lunch meat rolls. Spread a piece of ham or turkey with mustard. Top with a slice or two of real cheese (not that individually-wrapped plastic crap), roll, and hold in place with a toothpick. Also tasty is mortadella wrapped with cheese and a spear of dill pickle.

8 ) Cheese and crackers. See above rant on using real, actual cheese as opposed to something called ‘pasteurized process cheese food product.’ You might also use small pieces of lunch meat. You could portion each up in its own small tupperware and house those in a larger tupperware for a ‘lunchables’ style lunch that would actually be worth eating. (do you catch my drift on the level of absolute feces that gets slung toward our children by large corporations?)

9) Sardines. I know, it depends on the kid. And the kid’s classmates. But I totally take sardines in to work for my lunch and I think it’s grand. A tin of fish, a sleeve of crackers, sume mustard and/or hot sauce. Okay, so this is probably more a tip for moms and dads who take their lunches to work than grade schoolers who compare lunches and trade things and ridicule each other mercilessly.

10) Cookies. Preferably homemade so that you can control what goes in them. And can even do things like add oatmeal into the chocolate chip cookies in place of the forbidden walnuts. And spice them with a touch of cinnamon and some allspice. And use real butter instead of hydrogenated vegetable oils. That’s a good cookie. And because it’s made with real ingredients instead of false ones it’s the kind of sweet treat that kids ought to eat.