Potato-Free Meze Meze

For our last dinner in Naxos, we went back to Meze Meze, getting another table outside on a nice spring night. We had had such a good dinner the night before, and the menu had so many other things that sounded good, so we wanted to try more. But one thing was for sure - we were not ordering any more potatoes. The fries and potato salad from the night before were so good, but we had gotten our fill of delicious Naxian potatoes and now it was time for other stuff.

We started off with some drinks, a beer for A and some iced tea for M. Not too much to say about those.

The first thing to arrive was, just like last time, a basket of bread, which cost €0.80 for each of us. Same as the night before.

After all those potatoes, we wanted to get a potato-free salad, choosing to go with the traditional Greek salad - lettuce, tomato, cucumber, pepper, onion, caper, olives, xinomizithra local cheese, and Cretan crispy bread with olive oil and lemon sauce - for €7.50. This was very similar to the Naxian potato salad from the night before, but with the potatoes being replaced by lettuce, cucumber, and Cretan crispy bread. The Cretan bread was one of the things we were most interested in trying since we weren't going to Crete on that trip. Five years later, we remember the salad being good - light and clean and satisfying - but not too many specifics. It just didn't imprint in our memories the way the Naxian potato salad did. The bread also didn't leave a lasting impression on us.

Since we were in the Greek Islands, we also decided to get some fish, another thing we skipped the night before. We went with the grilled fresh mackerel for €8, which came on a platter with some rice. The issue with the mackerel was that it was a thinner fish than other fish we had eaten in Greece so it was harder for M to get much of anything skinned and also off the bone. The fish itself was very fresh, though, and most of the work went to A to get the meat out. Memories of the rice have sadly also faded over time.

The last thing we ordered came as a recommendation from the waiter. We weren't sure what to order between three types of fried seafood, and he offered to let us have some of all three just like some other tables were enjoying. What arrived was a giant platter of what looked like "popcorn seafood" - half orders of small fried fish, small fried squid, and small fried shrimp - for €12. You ate the fish and squid whole, but the shrimp, you tore the head off and then ate the rest. It doesn't look like an especially huge plate, and the size of the plate itself wasn't very different from some of the others, but it was packed full of really tiny pieces of seafood. It took us an hour to eat all of it, as it just seemed like a neverending plate. We had eaten so much shrimp, fish, and squid, yet every time we looked up, the plate still looked full. We were happy though that we had the option to try all three and weren't disappointed at all with any of them. Everything was really good, but it took forever to eat, an experience we certainly wouldn't forget from our last night. Good thing we weren't really in a rush to go back to the hotel to pack.

After we (finally) finished our dinner, they brought out more complimentary citron and yogurt to end the meal, which we appreciated. The hospitality and the food at Meze Meze were superb, and we were so happy that we had chosen to eat there twice to try a wide range of what they had to offer. We were trying not to overdo it for our last dinner since we wanted to make one last trip to Milkato to get some more gelato, so there were so many more things we didn't get to try. We would definitely return here if we have the chance to go back to Naxos.

Serrano Salsa Fresca

It was close to 90 degrees on one of my recent Trader Joe's visits, and all I could think about was refreshing salsa. That's probably why I ended up with both pico de gallo and this serrano salsa in the cart. I couldn't remember ever seeing this one before, but I don't think it was new. I think I just never spent as much time in the refrigerated salsa section as I did that day.

Product: Serrano Salsa Fresca

Price: $2.99 for 12 oz

Quick review: Looking at this salsa, for some reason I expected it to taste like that smoky salsa from Chevy's. Probably the dark color of the salsa. Not surprisingly, it didn't, since I don't think their salsa is serrano-based. Instead, this salsa is filled with tomatoes, onions, cilantro, serrano peppers, garlic, and a bunch of spices and seasonings (including paprika, celery, chili pepper, ginger, basil, cumin, cinnamon, thyme, and turmeric). The flavor is a bit unique and something I don't think I've had in salsa before. It was very fresh, a little bit floral, but also a little bit bitter. I've never tried a serrano pepper plain like I have a jalapeño (at least I don't think I have), so I'm not sure if that was the taste of the serrano or the combination of all the spices. The one thing I noticed was that the salsa had barely any spice at all to it, which was surprising since serranos are supposed to be hotter on the scale than jalapeños.

I also feel kind of bad that at least a third of the salsa went to waste since the package was pretty blown up on day 6 and we threw it out to be safe. The container says that it is perishable and it should be consumed within 5 to 7 days, so we did know that, but I thought it would at least make it to day 6 (and bought more chips specifically for it!).

Buy Again? Maybe. Not my favorite salsa, and probably prefer that smoky Chevy's salsa to this one, but I did like it enough that I'd consider getting it again if I were in the right mood for it. Right now, it's the only salsa I've tried from the refrigerated section so far (other than pico de gallo which we used to top tacos instead of as salsa), so I can't compare to the rest of the selection. Yet.

Corn Chip Dippers

I probably should have titled this post, "Ode to Corn Chip Dippers," or something like that, considering how many bags of these chips I've bought over the years. We've bought more bags of corn chip dippers than any other chips at Trader Joe's by a huge margin. I've always liked corn chips, but I never bought Fritos this frequently. These are pretty comparable to Fritos as far as nutritional value; these have a little less sodium and calories, but nothing major is different. I can't explain why, but for some reason, even though I like Fritos, I just like these better.

Bag of corn chip dippers in our hotel in Cleveland

Considering how often we buy them, I'm still surprised that we haven't posted about them yet (although I shouldn't be considering our backlog). We've definitely mentioned them before - about eating them with chili, with bean dip, and with black bean and corn salad. We've eaten them with salsa every so often. But more often than not, we're just munching on them plain. They're just that good.

Nice snack especially on the road

I really, really, really, really hope Trader Joe's never gets rid of these corn chip dippers (which, by the way, are $1.99 right now). Far too many products get retired from the lineup, but hopefully all of our purchases of corn chips keeps them on the shelves. This is obviously a yes as far as our usual "buy again" question, and it's definitely on our next shopping list.

Teixeira's Bakery

After our feast at Seabra's Marisquiera we took a walk around the area and also down by the river to try and digest a bit. It was a nice stroll because the weather wasn't too hot, and it wasn't that humid either. After a bit we walked back towards the main street, and M asked if I wanted to try the Portuguese version of the egg tart (蛋撻) that we'd both had while growing up. I'm not a huge huge fan of the Chinese version, but I like it enough that I wanted to see how it compared to the Portuguese version.

The place that we knew was supposed to be known for these pastries was Teixeira's Bakery.

Once inside we were greeted by the sweet, warm smells of the breads and pastries contained in their glass case. We took a quick look around to see if anything else caught our fancy, but in the end we opted for just the one of the pastéis de nata. At $1.35 it wasn't super cheap, but it also wasn't too expensive.

I liked this a lot more than the Chinese counterpart. For starters, the pastry crust is flakier and actually reminiscent of pastry dough as opposed to being doughy and crumbly. The pastry crust on the Portuguese version is also much lighter and airier. Finally, there's a hint of a savory, salty flavor to the crust on the Portuguese version that really brings out the flavor of the custard.

Speaking of the custard, it's much more of an actual custard consistency. The Chinese version is often more gelatin-like and far sweeter. The milder sweetness allowed more of the egg flavor to come out, and when combined with the slightly salty crust formed a perfectly balanced dessert. The charring on top didn't really add any flavor, burnt or caramelized, but it made it look nice.

Overall, I definitely think the Portuguese version (also the original) is better than the Chinese adaptation. While I wouldn't necessarily need to get one the next time we were in Newark, I would certainly consider it.

Coconut Water

We're huge fans of coconut water, and A especially loves it. The usual problem with coconut water is that it's fairly expensive. Earlier this year, we were looking into drinks that would replenish electrolytes instead of just drinking regular tap water, so we decided to pick up a 1 liter container of coconut water on our next visit to Trader Joe's. It was $2.99, so not cheap, but not as bad as some other brands.

One thing we noted once we tried it was that the TJ's coconut water wasn't as sweet as other brands we've had in the past and also since. That's actually a good thing as it was even more refreshing since it was less sweet. If we ever find that TJ's lowers the price on this, then we'll definitely consider grabbing as many as we can to stock up, maybe even a case. It's really just that much better in our opinion.

A couple of TJ's trips later, M found herself dehydrated while shopping and grabbed a smaller sized coconut water on the way out, $1.49 for 500 milliliters. It was nice that TJ's didn't charge a premium to get a smaller size. The coconut water was a really refreshing treat. We would definitely buy this again, but for right now, we only pick it up every so often because of the extra cost.

Week 22 - East Asian

The theme for Week 22 was originally miso, but after a bunch of people complained because we already had Japanese week earlier this year, they switched it up to East Asian. I hadn't planned out something with miso before the switch, but decided to make something with miso anyway. It was easier to find something with that theme than trying to narrow down the vast amount of options that would qualify for East Asian. What I ended up choosing was a recipe for udon with a ground meat miso sauce from a cookbook I had borrowed from the library a couple of years ago called Everyday Harumi. I think the original may have been with pork but when I copied the recipe out for my own library, I just wrote ground meat (it's been over 2 years, so I don't really remember).

The ingredients I used for the recipe (as I adapted it) were:

- 1 tbsp canola oil ($0.10)
- 1 heaping cup of frozen leeks, divided ($0.70)
- 1 piece of ginger, about 1 inch long ($0.30)
- 1 lb of ground turkey ($4.30)
- 1/2 hothouse cucumber, seeded ($0.65)
- 3 bunches of dried soba noodles ($2.50)
for sauce:
- 1/2 cup dashi stock ($0.25)
- 1 tbsp sake ($0.10)
- 2 tbsp soy sauce ($0.10)
- 2 tbsp mirin ($0.10)
- 1 tbsp agave ($0.10)
- 4 tbsp miso ($0.55)

Since we got a lot of these ingredients a few years ago, most of the amounts above are estimates. But the total cost came out to about $9.75 for the entire dinner, which was pretty good. (It tops out a little over $10 if you count the other half of the cucumber which we ate as a snack before dinner was ready, but that wasn't technically part of dinner.)

The steps for making the soba with miso meat sauce were:

1. Prep - peel and finely chop ginger; finely chop about 2/3 of the leeks; slice the remaining 1/3 of the leeks vertically; cut cucumber in half lengthwise, remove seeds from cucumber, slice into rounds, and then into vertical slices; mix together miso sauce; boil water for noodles.

2. Heat canola oil in large skillet over medium heat. Add ginger and the finely chopped leeks, and saute for a minute or so.

3. Add ground turkey, breaking it up as it cooks, until fully cooked through.

4. Add sauce to turkey, make sure everything is mixed well together, and cook until sauce thickens. (It didn't really "thicken" so much as get soaked up by the turkey and/or evaporate.) Keep stirring periodically.

5. Make soba (or whatever other noodles) according to package instructions.

6. Add soba to a bowl, cover with the miso meat sauce, and top with garnishes (sliced cucumber and the remaining leeks).

I was skeptical about this recipe after I made the sauce in the beginning, because I tried the sauce and thought it didn't have much flavor. This was when I first mixed it together, before I added it to the meat. A noted that I should be patient because cooking it down would concentrate the flavor. He was right. I was so pleasantly surprised when I had the first spoonful of sauce mixed with meat, after it had cooked for a bit, as the flavor was completely different. The miso really came through, and the sauce was so much more robust and full of flavor. Adding the cucumber and the leeks gave it a lot of freshness and lightness, and overall, it was a really good, well-composed dish. We were pretty happy with this and would make it again. The only thing I'd do differently next time is to use the entire cucumber and even more leeks. It was pretty good as it was, but more vegetables for garnish would probably make it even better.

Week 21 - Cheap Meals

When the theme for Week 21 popped up as cheap meals, I figured most of our everyday dinners would probably qualify and I could just make whatever I wanted. I always prefer for our dinners to be under $10 for the two of us (although sometimes if they are meat or seafood-heavy, it makes sense that they don't), and like it even better when they come in under $5. I figured I would aim for close to $5, but if it went a little bit over, that would be okay.

I thought some cheap options could be vegetable omelettes (especially since the price of eggs seems to have gone down recently), but I've made so many omelettes for previous challenges, or maybe something basic like pasta with some olive oil and garlic. Those would both probably come in under $5. But I had some soy chorizo in the fridge, so I decided to go with soy chorizo and mushroom tacos. The tacos would definitely be under $5 without the mushrooms (and we often make it without them), but I wanted to get more vegetables into the meal to make it more balanced. Working out the total costs of a lot of the other challenges really helped with this challenge, as I already had a pretty good idea of how much various ingredients cost and it wasn't a foreign concept to me to be keeping that in the back of my mind while meal planning. (I didn't realize until writing this post that I actually made soy chorizo tacos for the Mexican challenge last year, but that one was really more about the homemade tortillas. We also posted about tacos the first time we used the soy chorizo. It's clearly our favorite use of the soy chorizo.)

The ingredients for the tacos ended up coming out to a total of $5.33. They didn't put a cap on the cost of the challenge since cheap means different things to different people, but as much as I would have preferred to come in under $5, I'm fine with it since it was close. The ingredients were:

- 4 tortillas ($0.30)
- 1 package of soy chorizo ($1.99)
- 1 onion ($0.50)
- about 12 oz of mushrooms ($1.90)
- 1 potato ($0.49)
- olive oil for sauteing ($0.15)

Making the tacos was pretty easy. There was some prep - chop onion, chop mushrooms, boil potato until tender and then chop potato, heat tortillas in a nonstick skillet (without oil) - and then just cooking the onions, mushrooms, potatoes, and soy chorizo together in a large pan until it was all done. It's one of our easier dinners and works out well for Meatless Monday (or Taco Tuesday or any other day). Definitely part of our rotation.

Seabra's Marisqueira

Ever since we changed the way we approach our WorldEats challenge, we've been mostly visiting places out of "convenience," like happening to be somewhere and realizing it would work for WorldEats, or doing some other challenges like the Women's World Cup challenge (which we still need to finish recapping). While it's been great to try lots of new foods that way, there was something about the intentional trip to somewhere new that we missed. We remedied that this weekend. Instead of falling into the old trap of going someplace easy and convenient, M pulled out her trusty random number generator and let the numbers dictate where we would go. The numbers sent us to Portugal (technically, they sent us to Malawi first, but we are not aware of any Malawian food in NYC), and off we went to the Ironbound District in Newark specifically to explore Portuguese cuisine and culture.

Once the numbers popped up with Portugal, we immediately knew the place we wanted to visit in the Ironbound was Seabra's Marisqueira. We've been hearing about this seafood place for years, and it's actually the place we wanted to visit for the 2014 World Cup challenge until there were torrential downpours the night we planned to go. After looking through a lot of pictures and recommendations, we were relatively sure about what we wanted to order and were really excited for our Sunday supper.

After being seated in the dining room, they brought over a bread basket. The reviews that we read stated that it was a "crusty loafed bread" which made us think of something akin to a French baguette with a hard, crusty exterior. This couldn't be further from the truth as the crust itself was extremely pliable and matched the soft, spongy, and absorbent interior. We only ate a little of the bread before the food arrived, because we knew that it would be wiser to save the bread for soaking up all the delicious sauces of the dishes we ordered.

It was in the 80s and pretty humid outside, so a half-pitcher of sangria ($17.50) sounded perfect. Also, it seemed like every other table had a pitcher or half-pitcher of sangria, so who were we to break the trend? This really was refreshing. It had a nice mild sweetness from the added fruit juices, and just the right amount of hit from the wine. We each had some of the apple that was added in as well, and that was a nice, crisp way to end everything.

The first dish to arrive was the salada de polvo ($14), a cold salad of octopus in vinaigrette sauce. According to this Serious Eats piece, the octopus is flown in from Portugal and then poached. Joining the octopus in the salad were onions, garlic, parsley, and a light dressing of oil and vinegar. This was amazing, definitely in the top 3 for octopus dishes we've had. Every single piece was tender, and although the flavors were a simple combination, the quality and execution was just incredible. It was a great start to the meal. The remaining sauce on the bottom of the plate also made for an excellent dip for the bread.

Next up was berbigão à bolhão pato ($16), cockles in a garlic, wine, and cilantro sauce. This dish as a whole was incredibly tasty. The cockles themselves were soft and easy to pry out of the shell with or without utensils, but it was the sauce that was the star of this show. It was a simple broth/cooking stock consisting of water, garlic, white wine, olive oil, and cilantro, but it soaked into the bread so well, and it was amazingly delicious. They also offer clams cooked in a similar fashion, and while we were there it seemed like every table had at least one of these metal tins full of cockles or clams.

The last dish we got, and it was enormous, was the açorda de marisco ($21), "a traditional Alentejo 'dry soup' consisting of a hearty mix of shrimp, clams, mussels, scallops, and cubed Portuguese bread. Flavored with an olive oil, garlic, and fresh coriander sauce, crowned with a poached egg." This was a rich, decadent, creamy, thick stew once the server finished mixing the raw egg and bread into the rest of the soup. When we first looked at it, it didn't look impossible to finish, but pretty soon after we started spooning it out, we realized that the dish was really, really deep, and because of all the bread, it was really, really filling. The 2 other dishes with the bread probably wouldn't have been enough for our meal, but this dry soup definitely filled us up (and we ended up taking the rest home).

Of all of the seafood, we thought the shrimp was the best part. The mussels and scallops seemed tougher and chewier, but they still had very good flavor. You also couldn't always tell the difference between the scallops and pieces of bread by looking at them, but everything was tasty. The egg was also interesting because, since it was added right at the end and mixed in, the yolk added an extra layer of richness to the soup, while the egg whites added a soft, creamy texture to everything. Overall this was a very rich and garlicky soup/stew chock full of delicious seafood.

We loved our meal at Seabra's and while eating, were already planning out what we might order when we came back as we looked at all the dishes arriving at tables around us. (There were, as mentioned, lots of cockles and plenty of octopus, but we already knew those were winners.) We had a wonderful experience, and we definitely want to return for some more excellent Portuguese seafood.

Seabra's Marisqueira is located 87 Madison Street in the Ironbound District of Newark.

Week 20 - Outdoorsman

I wasn't thrilled about the Week 20 outdoorsman theme. I think when it originally came out, it also mentioned camping and foraging in the title, which didn't make me any more excited, as I am not into camping (ugh, bugs) and have never been foraging. The official intro thread for the theme mentioned that this was about "connecting with the types of foods and cooking you wouldn't normally encounter in places like supermarkets and restaurants." Some of their suggestions included catching dinner out on the lake or buying exotic game meat or cooking over an open fire. None of those were happening here either.

We live in an apartment in the middle of the city and don't have a balcony or even a communal area where you could grill outside if you wanted to. The closest waterway is the Hudson River, and not only do I not know how to fish, but I would never fish there. I don't really cook red meat at home, so some sort of exotic meat wasn't going to happen. And all of our ingredients were going to come from the supermarket. I decided in the end to go with a recipe by Kenji for campfire chili in a Dutch oven, but with some adjustments for both convenience (in terms of ingredients) and cooking method (since the Dutch oven wasn't going to get covered with hot coals on our stove). The original recipe was cooked over a campfire, so that was good enough for me.

The ingredients for the chili, as adapted for our apartment stove and our convenience ingredients were:

- 1 lb ground turkey ($4.30)
- 1 tbsp olive oil ($0.20)
- 1 onion, finely chopped ($0.50)
- 1 jalapeño pepper, finely chopped ($0.09)
- a few tbsp (didn't measure) chili powder ($0.85)
- about 1 tbsp cumin ($0.10)
- about 1 tbsp dried oregano ($0.10)
- about 1/2 cup of cilantro, finely chopped, divided ($0.50)
- 2 cans cannellini beans, drained and rinsed ($1.78)
- 1 can diced tomatoes ($0.80)
- 1 can diced tomatoes with green chiles ($0.69)
- salt to taste ($0.03)
- 10 scallions, chopped ($0.86)

The main differences between our chili and the original were: (a) using canned beans instead of dried (just easier and faster, even if dried would have tasted better), (b) using ground turkey instead of pounds of pork shoulder and sausage (we already had the turkey and I didn't want to make a separate trip to the meat market), and (c) going with diced tomatoes instead of crushed (mostly because we have Costco cases of diced). It probably came out a little bit cheaper because of those changes, approximately $10.80 for the total, which was a pretty good price for a big pot of chili.

The steps for making the chili were:

1. Heat olive oil in Dutch oven. Add ground turkey and cook until browned, breaking apart as it cooks.

2. Add onions, jalapeño, chili powder, cumin, oregano, and 1/2 of the cilantro. Cook for about 5 minutes or so until onions are softened.

3. Add beans, diced tomatoes, salt, and about 2 cups of water. Bring to a boil and then lower heat to allow chili to simmer. (I also covered it with the lid about 90%.)

4. Simmer for about 30 minutes and then remove from heat. Stir in scallions and the other half of the cilantro.

The chili was pretty good. It probably would have been better with some sour cream, but if you're going to make this chili over a campfire, it seems unlikely that you'd bring along a container of sour cream into the forest. The flavors were good, although in the future I might add a little bit more of each of the seasonings (other than salt). We would make this again.

Week 19 - Mother Sauces

The theme for Week 19 of the cooking challenge was mother sauces, which are basically the 5 sauces that are the bases for other sauces. I wasn't sure if I had ever actually set out to make one of these before, but it was certainly possible that over the last few years, I'd followed a recipe that went through the steps of making a mother sauce without actually knowing I was making that. In any event, this was an easier challenge to figure out since there were only 5 choices: bechamel, espagnole, hollandaise, tomate, and veloute. I decided to go with veloute since it used chicken stock, and according to Wikipedia, it served as the basis for a sauce called poulette which added mushrooms, parsley, and lemon juice. Sounded good to me.

I decided to make some chicken to go with the sauce, since it was chicken stock-based, and on the side, roast some carrots and onions. I also ended up adding a microwave Seeds of Change packet of brown rice and quinoa to the meal, since as the sauce was cooking, I realized we had nothing to soak up the sauce. The final list of ingredients for dinner was:

- 2 pieces of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, sliced ($3)
- 3 tbsp butter, divided (1 for chicken, 2 for veloute) ($0.60)
- 1/3 cup flour ($0.05)
- 4 cups chicken stock ($0.60)
- 8 oz of white mushrooms, finely chopped ($1.39)
- 1 bunch of parsley, finely chopped ($1.20)
- a few spritzes of lemon juice ($0.08)
- 1-1/3 lbs of carrots, chopped ($1.09)
- 1 large onion, chopped ($0.60)
- olive oil to coat the carrots and onions ($0.35)
- salt and pepper ($0.05)

All together, dinner cost approximately $10.38, after adding in the rice packet. I usually try to get it under $10, but that's not too bad for dinner for two.

After peeling and chopping the carrots and onion, coating them with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and putting them in the oven to roast, it was time to cook the chicken. A took care of the chicken while I went to work prepping the mushrooms and parsley. The timing actually worked out fairly well.

For the sauce itself, I followed the steps in this Martha Stewart recipe (mostly because it was the first one I found when I looked), and did the following:

1. Melt 2 tbsp butter over medium heat. (I used the same pan that we cooked the chicken in since I figured we cooked the chicken in butter and the sauce was going to use chicken stock anyway. I doubt this is how you are supposed to make your sauce, but whatever, I wasn't about to wash the pan or waste another.)

2. Add flour and cook for a minute, stirring constantly. (I was confused by the fact that the recipe said the flour should not take on any color. I don't know how that's possible. Maybe it took on even more color because of the chicken residue in the pan, but any time I've ever combined flour with butter, it doesn't stay white. Am I doing something wrong? Or am I misinterpreting the recipe comment?)

3. Pour in stock, stirring constantly, and bring to a boil. (The roux was pretty clumpy, and it took a lot of stirring to get it to break up in the stock, which A worked on while I attended to the parsley.)

4. Reduce to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes to allow sauce to thicken.

At that point, the mother sauce itself was done and the challenge was complete. I tasted it and it had a nice, rich chicken flavor. It made sense that this would be the basis for so many other sauces.

Once the sauce seemed thick enough, I added in the mushrooms and parsley, and let the sauce cook for a few more minutes. At some point, I also remembered there was supposed to be lemon juice, so I added a few spritzes in (basically whatever was left in the squeeze bottle we had). Then I added the chicken back to the pan and let it cook in the sauce for a few minutes before it was time to eat.

I really liked how the sauce turned out. The chicken flavor was really good, and the mushrooms and parsley were a nice addition to round out the sauce. The sauce worked on top of the chicken, the carrots, and also just the rice. I liked eating it with the rice on its own more than I thought I would. We ended up with about half a bowl (maybe a cup) of sauce left over (which I ate with some chicken nuggets for lunch the next day), so perhaps I didn't need all 4 cups of broth, but leftovers aren't a bad thing in our house.

I would definitely make this sauce again, since I thought this turned out well. I guess there's a reason these have been the classic sauces for centuries!

Birthday Frosting Chips Ahoy

We do most of our grocery shopping at Costco and Trader Joe's these days (as if that wasn't evident from all of the previous posts), since it's more convenient than making trips to 5 or 6 different stores every time. Recently we did stop by Stop & Shop to pick up some staples that we can't get at those places, and in the cookie aisle, we stumbled on a whole bunch of Chips Ahoy flavors we hadn't tried before, including these birthday frosting-filled chewy Chips Ahoy.

The picture of the cookie on the package looked like a chocolate chip cookie, but with colored chocolate chips, filled with a white cream that one would imagine was supposed to taste like frosting. There were about 18 cookies in the package which we got on sale for $3.

M's review:
I was really excited about these cookies since I love birthday cake frosting. When I looked up some reviews while in the store, a few commenters remarked that they were so incredibly sweet that it was hard to eat more than a couple of cookies in a sitting, but that sounded perfect to me because it would be an easy way to limit how many I ate at one time. After trying them though, I didn't really think they were that sweet. Sure, they were sweeter than what I remember regular Chips Ahoy cookies being, but they weren't so cloyingly sweet that I had to rush off to get a glass of water and stop eating them. But I just didn't like them that much. They were okay, but I guess I was just expecting more from them. Part of it is that I think I've been spoiled by the charmingly chewy chocolate chip cookies from Trader Joe's, and liked the texture of the TJ's ones so much better than Chips Ahoy. It's been a while since I've had chewy Chips Ahoy cookies, so I didn't realize how much of a difference there was. Sadly, the TJ's ones are now discontinued, but it just reminds me of how much more I liked them. I also didn't think the frosting tasted that much like frosting. The whole thing just tasted like a slightly sweeter Chips Ahoy cookie. It was okay, but I don't need to get them again, and I let A eat most of the package.

A's review:
I'm pretty sure I liked these more than M which is surprising. She's usually the bigger birthday cake frosting lover, and I expected that this cookie was right in her wheelhouse. I figured I'd like them, but I ended up really liking them. I thought that the frosting would be overly sweet and just be a complete sugar bomb, but it was fairly understated. I think that it was even less sweet than the filling in an Oreo. At the end of the day, these were fairly soft, fairly sweet cookies with chocolate chips and candy pieces in them. I liked them a lot, but I'm not sure I liked them enough to want to buy them again. I think I'll just stick to baking my own cookies.

Sushi Star

Last fall (I think), a new sushi spot opened up on 9th Avenue that I noticed whenever I would bike downtown, and I was intrigued by what they had to offer. It looked like there was takeout sushi, but they also advertised sushi to order. Recently, I noticed they had a discount through LevelUp, so I thought it was the perfect time to try something new.

There are 2 ways to order at Sushi Star (but I didn't know this until after I had already gotten my food). You can either get pre-made sushi or other food from the refrigerated cases on the side of the restaurant, or you can use their electronic menu and order from an even greater selection of sushi which is then made and brought out to you. Pretty cool idea. In any event, I had already chosen a pre-made "super salmon box," which had a 6 piece salmon avocado roll, plus 3 pieces of spicy salmon roll and 3 pieces of smoked salmon cream cheese roll, along with a small portion of edamame. The cost was $13.95, so after applying my $5 discount and adding tax (I forgot about tax in my initial calculations), it still ended up over $10 in total. I was trying to spend less than $10 after the discount, but didn't succeed.

The sushi rolls themselves were pretty good. I liked the flavors, everything tasted fresh, and the quality of the rolls was on par with sit-down sushi places that we've been to before. The edamame was fine, pretty standard, but a very small portion. My main issue with lunch was the price. That box was the equivalent of 2 sushi rolls plus a little bit of edamame, and without the discount, would have been over $15. Meanwhile, I could order a sushi lunch special to go from one of the sushi places in our neighborhood of similar quality, which would be 2 rolls plus miso soup and a salad, for a little over $11 (regular price). The prices at Sushi Star just seem very high for the amount of food you're getting, and I can't imagine I would be full without spending more than I would like. So while the quality was pretty good, because of how much I would prefer to spend (YMMV), I can't see going there again without a discount of some sort.

Sushi Star is located at 462 9th Avenue in Hell's Kitchen.

Week 18 - Brown Bag Lunch

The theme for Week 18 was brown bag lunch, which for me immediately screamed sandwich. Sure, I could have done something more creative, since you can pack up lots of things for a lunch, but considering we had a lot of bread in the fridge (bought a 2 loaf pack from Costco), it seemed like a better idea to just try out a new sandwich combination.

Inspired by this Real Simple recipe for an Asian turkey sandwich with hoisin mayonnaise, I decided to make a hoisin chicken salad sandwich. The ingredients I used (for 2 sandwiches) were:

- 4 slices wheat bread ($0.40)
- 1/2 cucumber, shaved ($0.65)
- 3 carrots, grated ($0.30)
- 12.5 oz can of chicken ($2)
- 3 scallions, chopped ($0.26)
- about 1/4 cup mayonnaise ($0.46)
- about 1 tbsp hoisin sauce ($0.20)

The total for the sandwiches was about $4.27. We ate it alongside our favorite Costco chopped salad, so the total for the entire dinner was $8.76. It was pretty filling, so not too bad of a price.

To make the sandwiches, it was really all prep work, which for some reason took a ridiculously long time. The prep work included:

- wash and peel cucumber; cut in half; use peeler to shave slices of cucumber for the sandwich (I also cut the rest of the cucumber and an onion for a pickled cucumber salad so it didn't go to waste, same prep as the pickling challenge)
- wash and peel 1 lb of carrots; grate 3 carrots (I also cut the rest of the carrots to store in the freezer for a future recipe so they didn't go to waste)
- drain canned chicken and microwave for 30 seconds
- wash and chop 3 scallions
- mix chicken salad by combining heated chicken, scallions, mayo, and hoisin sauce

Once all of that was done, it was time to assemble the sandwiches, some cucumber and carrots along with a few scoops of chicken salad. I probably should have picked some cilantro out of the chopped salad and added it to the sandwich, since that's another topping that's usually on a banh mi, which is what I imagine inspired the toppings of the Real Simple sandwich. Oh well. The sandwich definitely could have used some herbs. The original recipe used mint, but I didn't want to buy an entire batch of mint just to use a few leaves. I would have used cilantro, but I didn't want to get a whole batch of that either just for this. Should have just picked it out of the salad, but I didn't realize that until the sandwiches were already eaten.

Generally, the sandwiches were fine, although we both thought they would be much more flavorful than they were, considering the addition of the hoisin sauce. The part that had the most flavor was actually the scallions, and every bite with scallions was better than those without. It was nice that the sandwich had a lot of vegetables in it and wasn't just meat, but it just wasn't very exciting. Probably wouldn't make it again, but it was fine for dinner.