hungrybunni

[hungrybunni]

Stater Bros

I love grocery stores and grocery shopping.  Because, remember, I love food.  I want my food to be of relatively good quality (not rotting) and a brand name if possible.  Like Heinz, not “generic ketchup”.

All right, background: Grew up living on food from Lucky’s (anyone remember them?) and after they closed, Ralphs and Albertsons.  When I got married, it was Walmart and Ralphs.

Wait I want to take a digression to talk about Whole Foods.  I looooove Whole Foods.  I have been to many.  If there is a Whole Foods nearby, I want in.  Just to look around, give it a sniff.  They all smell the same, and it is always great.  I went to college pretty close to one so sometimes I would go get lunch there.  Honestly, EVERYTHING there is amazing in the hot food section.  And if you’re in a good location where they have a sushi bar or a sandwich counter, you’ve just hit the jackpot.  And the dessert counter.  I think Whole Foods was where I discovered macarons, sadly they don’t have the best ones, but they’re good in a pinch.  The produce...wow.  I do not eat very many vegetables or fruits.  Almost none.  But the only thing better than a Whole Foods fruit is having it straight off the tree.  I’ve had stuff OUT OF SEASON there and it is still juicy and fresh.  Truly Whole Foods is another world and deserves it’s own post but this is about Stater Bros.  You need the comparison of my grocery life though to fully understand.

POP QUIZ QUESTION - Is Whole Foods cheap?

ANSWER: Heck no.

I have gone there for 6 items and spent $50 and none of it was on alcohol.  I would do it again that’s never the point.  The point of going there is to get things your grocery store DOESN’T already have, like special salt or some weird spice or a pinch of strange flour.  Or dessert.  Or handcrafted beer.  Or fun meat, like duck or swordfish.  The quality of the meat....okay okay sorry I drifted.  Stay with me.  

DISCLAIMER: Even if I were wealthy, I would not be able to shop solely at Whole Foods or Gelson’s.  Because I don’t eat half the stuff they sell.  It’s meat and dessert and one carrot maybe, that’s IT.  The carrot was just to marvel about how perfect their produce is.  I eat rice and beef jerky and Lay’s potato chips and gluten.  I already have to go to 3 different stores to get everything I eat ANYWAY, because only Ralphs sells Kroger brand toilet paper and only WinCo sells the corn I eat (have you BEEN to WinCo??  Stop reading and go right now.  You won’t be sorry!!) and only Costco sells the paper plates I like.  Okay, so see how I already have to go to different stores for just a regular grocery trip?  Yeah.  All right.

So our Stater Bros is across from the Ralphs. I have been to a different Stater Bros once before, maybe in college or my last year of high school because a friend’s mom got Rice Krispy Treat Cereal there and I hadn’t had it in like 5 years.  Not yet being a professional grocery person, I did not notice much of Stater Bros as I dashed in and out with 3 boxes of cereal.

I thought, Let’s give it a try!  It’s not any farther away than Ralphs, and I heard their meat is a good price (my main diet).  My husband was agreeable.  

Stepping in was like going back to the 90s.  The 90s were great.  But it doesn’t always look great on a grocery story.  It looks like you haven’t updated or modernized in...let’s see..almost 30 years?  I know my personal Ralphs location has remodeled a few times and I’ve also been in Ralphs locations that look more like Whole Foods.  There’s one in, where?  Santa Monica?  Malibu?  That one is fancy.  So stepping back into the past was a bit of a shock.  My husband and I commented on it right away.  After a mere 2 aisles I had decided we were never coming here again, and husband agreed but for different reasons.  The aisles are too small for more than 1 person at a time and he was pushing the cart.  Very frustrating.  Especially since almost no one has good cart courtesy these days anyway.  They leave it in the middle or they can’t decide very quickly.  I, too, have my aisles where I can’t decide what I want, and it’s usually the paper plate aisle and the cleaning supplies.  So that was my husband’s reason.  Small aisles.

My reason?  SUPER EXTREME EXPENSIVE.  Eggs?  $1.99 at WinCo.  $2.99 here!  Whole Foods is expensive because they’re quality.  Ralphs can be expensive on certain items and give away other items.  Walmart is the same but they have a lot more than just groceries which is convenient.  WinCo is basically flawless but not as much variety.  I would just shop there every time but they are pretty far from where I live.

Remember way back, when I said I went to Stater Bros because I heard their meat was inexpensive enough and good?  It was all over their labels: “Our meat made us famous!”  The meat seemed comparable to Ralphs in price.  They did have a pretty extensive selection at the butcher counter but that wasn’t why I was there - I just shop the meat bins.  Hahaha meat bins.  Anyway, chicken, steaks, etc.  I did pick up some meat for pot roast which was handily labelled (thanks!) and some carne asada which I don’t always find at Ralphs.

Because the price of eggs shocked me to my core and the unavailability of other things, I have NINE items left on my list that I still need to get from another store.  And that doesn’t even include bananas because I just forgot to get them.  Maybe you’re thinking, “But you ALREADY go to 3 different stores, so who cares?”

You are right.  HOWEVER, when I don’t buy NINE items, I SAVE MONEY.

I spent MORE on the items I did get than I have EVER spent at Ralphs.  Over two HUNDRED dollars.  And I still need to get NINE MORE items somewhere else.  I like to do the total price divided by total number of items bought and this is usually the break down: WinCO: $2/item.  Ralphs & Walmart: $3-$3.50.  Stater Bros: almost $4 per item.  It was ridiculous.  For the amount I spent, they should DECORATE THEMSELVES OUT OF THE 90s!!!  This happened like 5 days ago and boy am I not over it.  I SHOULD’VE LEFT.  Ralphs was just across the street!!!  I guess we were just lazy.  “We’re already here” attitude.  Well I paid through the nose for that attitude.  NEVER AGAIN!  And they don’t have a phone number rewards program so there was none of the excitement you get at Ralphs seeing your total skim down from the discounts.

I can’t even IMAGINE what I could’ve gotten at Ralphs for an extra $80.  EGGS PROBABLY.  I’m not saying never go to Stater Bros, but, really.  Never go.

And if you haven’t been to WinCo, find the nearest one.  You won’t be sorry.

[hungrybunni]

When Cake Betrays

Had some cake today.

Well, I thought it was cake.

Actually I knew it wasn’t real going in.  Never mind, let me tell you the story:

I have a coworker who is vegan...or vegetarian (one of those) which is pretty much the opposite of myself, but our other coworkers are very kind and brought her in some special cake.

Hold on I wrote the name down...it’s...Flax 4 Life Gluten Free Dairy Free Chocolate Cake (IS it cake anymore at this point?  What is the definition of cake, exactly?).  It’s NEW and I heard it came from Sprouts.  It didn’t have frosting on it but rather chocolate shavings.

Back story: I went to the cake owner and inquired about it, and my OTHER coworker, who knows how I feel about all things vegan/”free”, whipped her head around so fast to see my reaction I thought her neck would snap.

I only narrowed my eyes, so she was probably disappointed.  Sorry :D

Anyhow, I basically took a forkful wedge off this cake and put it on a plate, alongside with some not-cheese cheesecake (I’ll get to that in a minute), and took a small bite.

A little dry, but I grew up eating dryish chocolate cake, so no big deal.  Consistency a little chewy, texture a tad bit grainy, hard to describe.  In small bites, not half bad.  My coworker was watching from the sidelines at my reaction, but honestly it wasn’t that bad.  Until...

I drank some water.

WHAT???

Water is from NATURE.  It’s the most “free” food out there.  So good for you.  Water.  Pure.  WATER.  LIQUID AIR.  WA TER.  I can’t stress this enough.  I drank some water after my bite and oh no.  It tasted so bad.  Bitter and weird.  Probably how flax tastes in the wild.  So so bad.  Thankfully I had only taken about 2 bites worth of cake to start with so I wasn’t wasting any.  I ate the chocolate shavings left on the plate.  Definitely the best part.  Cake: C.  Shavings: A+.

Then I moved onto the not-cheese cheesecake.  This one had no label so it could’ve been anything.  I had it described to me as “not very cheesy, made with coconut oil which is sweet anyway, more like a chocolate mousse”.  Great!  I love coconuts and chocolate!  Sign me up!

Also, I confess, I don’t like cheesecake.  It is really too rich for me and has about 1000 calories per bite.  No no I’m not a healthy person, I love calories.  Calories = flavor.  But I would rather eat 1000 calories of chocolate lava cake or steak.  I also don’t really like cream cheese in large quantities so there’s that.

All right.  I was ready.  The chocolate coconut mousse dream train awaited me.  I had about an inch-wide piece of this ready to go.  Looked great.  Even had a small chocolate crust on the bottom.  I put it in my mouth.

Oh no no no.  No.

It had a consistency of peanut butter but less sticky.  My coworker got her money’s worth on my reaction then, because I probably looked like one of those dogs with PB stuck to the roof of their mouth.  Just smacking away, my face increasingly disturbed.  VERY cream cheesy, no coconut, I was so horrified I couldn’t even taste the chocolate.  The rest of the piece went directly into the trash, do not pass GO, do not collect $200.  Grade: F

At least I could drink my water without it messing up the taste!

To get over my trauma, ANOTHER coworker gave me a full fat, full chocolate, full gluten graham, melty s’more.  Which ended up all over my face.  Thank you <3

In related news, my great-aunt made my husband, who is gluten intolerant, a “free cake”.  I don’t know the exact free-ness, but I’m pretty sure it had no dairy, no eggs, no sugar, no gluten.  And it was DELICIOUS!!!  ANND it had frosting.  So there.

[hungrybunni]

Pizza

Let’s talk about pizza.  People are obsessed with it.  They swear by it.  They have to have it a certain way and from a certain place.  I can relate to this.  For a long time my favorite pizza came from a local place.  They had the best crust, sauce, and ranch for dipping.  Cheese was perfectly melty and stringy and extra cheese was even better.  I ate there for about 28 years - the owners knew us.

Just to clarify, I’d had other pizza before.  Little Caesars (let’s face it, only really good for Crazy Bread), Domino’s (yum garlic crust), Pizza Hut (hated ‘em until this year when they came out with those garlic knots), and Pieology (the other DIY pizza places don’t compare) had all been eaten before at parties or friends’ houses.  And I used to work next to the Pieology; side note, they introduced me to thin crust.  Ranch isn’t great though - always served at room temp and slightly watery.

Then I got married, moved, and discovered Pizzamania.  Blew my local place right out of the water.  The sauce was better, the ranch was perfect, couldn’t beat the cheese consistency, crunchy thick crust.  Local place who?  Pizzamania is now my local place.  Also has the perfect hot wings, but I’m not talking about wings today.  It was a little scary how fast my opinion changed.  I know the local place is still delicious.  Did I change?  Does Pizzamania give me something in my pizza that I didn’t know I was missing?  Is it crack?  Because I could eat it all day.

I need to digress about Domino’s for a minute.  To me, they are expensive for a cheap pizza place.  A step up from the Hut and Caesars maybe, but not anywhere near a professional pizza place.  Let’s examine it, shall we?

The Crust: garlic. A+

The Sauce: deep, thick, red. A little spicy, red pepper flakes maybe? Definitely pizza sauce, not marinara. A+

The Toppings: I only get ham, well I call it Canadian Bacon, but they don’t. It’s fine. B+

“Wait!” You might say.  “What about the cheese?”

It’s okay friend, I didn’t forget.

The Cheese: CAN you even call this cheese? If you did, what kind is it? It’s a mozzarella blend. SHOULD you blend mozz on a pizza? It’s weirdly thick. It melts because the temp is high and it has to, but then it congeals. Actually, ‘congeals’ is a better word. You know what else congeals? Blood. Yeah. So think about that. The pizza could come out on fire to you, and the cheese alone would be cold. It’s a weird phenomenon that only Domino’s has perfected. F

Let me talk about mozzarella for a sec.  It’s the cheese that really does it all.  Fresh mozz is so soft, so creamy, and very mild.  That’s why it’s so good for things like caprese and salads.  It soaks up the flavor around it.  Like tofu!  But better because it’s cheese.  Fresh mozz is a little odd in the fact that it doesn’t actually make one think of cheese.  When I think of cheese, I imagine a thick cheddar.  A slab.  Something aged, with a resistance when you bite it.  It tastes yellow.  It tastes sharp and cheesy.  Fresh mozz has no resistance.  It has a very clean bite.  Almost slippery.  Extraordinarily different from string cheese, which, TECHNICALLY, is the same cheese.  People actually do put fresh mozz on pizza, like Margherita, which is basically caprese without the balsamic and more bread.  However, Margherita pizza has chunks of fresh mozz.  So it’s a surprise.  You’re eating along and then: hey!  Different cheese!  Wow!  Don’t forget though, it’s regular mozz that’s cradling those soft bites.  The usual pizza cheese.  But one time, I had a pizza made with fresh mozz as its base cheese.  It was so, so bad.  Slippery in a gross way.  Highly unrecommended.  Sure...it could’ve been because it was made in the restaurant of a BOWLING ALLEY but hey, it could’ve been a hidden gem.  It wasn’t.  Give me aged pizza mozz; I’ll eat fresh with something else.

This post was actually supposed to be a rant about Domino’s and ended up as a love story to mozzarella cheese.  Ah well.  These things write themselves.