Wowie Walmart

Walmart gets a bad rap. I laugh just like everyone else when those "People of Walmart" posts circle around but I still go to Walmart to shop for lots of things (even though we live just a few blocks from the Publix where my husband works). We actually have three Walmarts in my town. I especially like the Neighborhood Grocery Walmart not far from home that sometimes feels like my own secret store. It's further away from the main drags and doesn't ever seem to be super busy. How many times on Christmas or Thanksgiving, when most stores are closed, have I said "Oh, no, I need brown sugar!" Or olives. Or cranberry sauce. Or butter. And my husband makes a Walmart run to get whatever we need.

My little Walmart has been undergoing some renovations over the past few months. Aisles were blocked off,  grocery items were moved from their usual places, and there were pallets and plastic tarps and ladders strewn about the store.

We did a little Walmart shopping over the weekend, and oh my goodness, what a transformation! It is beautiful. Everything has been rearranged, but the carriages now include a store map. The shelves and coolers all look shiny and brand new. There are Holiday decorations at all the registers. Even the floor has been resurfaced.

The reflections of the ceiling lights are so bright that it looks like underground lighting. I can't wait to go back here again when I have more time to wander around.

Way to go, Walmart! 

And Sometimes Martha Stewart Doesn't Want to Be Channelled

By now I'm sure you know I like to take pictures of my food when I try new recipes. Here is the latest update. My husband actually made most of them!

Peanut Butter Honeycomb Pie (Bon Appetit): I saw this recipe in an old magazine in my office and KNEW I had to make it. It looked wonderful.  All went well until I made the honeycomb. I boiled the corn syrup and honey with sugar and poured it out on parchment paper to set. But it never set. It remained in a perpetual state of warm taffy. Because I had detoured ever so slightly from the recipe in cooking the honeycomb, I tried it again. I tossed the first batch, much to my future daughter-in-law's consternation. She claimed she would have eaten it.  My second batch of honeycomb turned out exactly the same way. It never set up hard. So.... I put it in the freezer. Once it was hard, I hit it with a knife several times to break it into little pieces to sprinkler over the pie. I also substituted milk chocolate for the bittersweet chocolate drizzle, because......well, I just don't like dark or bittersweet chocolate. Here is the finished pie:

 

Not everyone in the house loved it, but it quickly disappeared, eaten by our resident peanut butter fans.

 

Shepherd's Pie with Potato Crust (Southern Living): LOVED this. We used ground turkey instead of chuck and I found it so delicious I almost sat down with a spoon to eat it like it was a carton of ice cream. It's got a layer of sweet potato slices on the bottom and a layer of Yukon gold potatoes on top. This was for my son's benefit, who tries to eat turkey, whole wheat pasta and brown rice when he can.

 

 

Notice this was baked in the same pie plate as the Peanut Butter Honeycomb Pie. The plate was a gift from my son and his fiancée and I use it for lots of things other than pie. The first time I used it was for a round loaf of garlic bread and dipping sauce.

 

Pork Cutlets with White Beans and Roasted Peppers (Woman's Day): No picture. After reading this recipe again, I realized it was just fried pork chops with a side of bean salad. We just followed the part of the recipe that applied to the pork chops and found them a little too vinegary.

 

Picadillo-Style Chicken Taco Salad (bhg.com): This is a "not quite there yet" dish. We made the filling using ground turkey but didn't set it up on lettuce or sprinkle the cheese or crushed tostado shells on top because we figured that wouldn't heat up well. Who likes warm wilted lettuce? So the filling is a little bland, but probably would be very nice once the cheese and chips are included to add some saltiness.

 

Stay tuned for the next round of recipes. We constantly try new recipes. When they don't work out, there is always peanut butter and jelly!

 

Twinnie Time

They say everyone has a doppelganger somewhere in the world. I recall many years ago going to the Circus in Sea Girt NJ with my friend Carroll and in the bleachers across the tent I saw a girl who looked just like me!  Of course, I lost her in the crowd after the tent emptied out. Not that I would have said anything. I think I was 14 or 15 years old at the time. I think I just wanted to get up close to her and see if we really were that similar looking.

This week I met up with a friend of mine visiting Florida from NJ and we spent some time standing in the waves at Lido Beach, near Sarasota. I noticed some girls sitting on the beach and I swear one of them looked just like my daughter Alyssa. In my usual creepy manner, I staged a fake photograph. I asked my friend Sandy to stand between Beach Girl and me, and then I took a shot of the girl behind her. It wasn't really close up so I didn't get her facial features.

 

I showed it to Alyssa when I got home and of course she scoffed at the suggestion that the beach girl was her twin. When I showed it to other family members, they said "Oh, yeah, the hair!"

 

So I guess Beach Girl and Alyssa's hair are twins. 

Lovely Lettering

We received a check in the office this week that nearly took my breath away. No, not because it was a large amount, but because the handwriting was so striking. It hearkens back to Old English times when writing was an art form and also reminds me of when I dabbled in calligraphy. Nowadays most correspondence is done via computer and I'm constantly reminding others and myself to keep the font SIMPLE because older/tired/strained eyes simply can't read fancy fonts with excessive serifs and swirls. If your audience isn't able to read your message, no one benefits from it.

My older sisters have lovely handwriting because they attended Catholic schools where that was the only acceptable type of handwriting. I'm able to make my handwriting pretty but don't often take the time anymore.

This check makes me think that this client is an artist who simply writes like this all the time. I really think it's beautiful. Of course, if I didn't know what it said, I wouldn't know what it said. But it's still beautiful! It makes me want to dust off my artistic tendencies and create something.

Recipe Results

Although I have an entire bookcase filled with a vast collection of cookbooks with thousands of recipes I have not yet tried, I continue to subscribe to recipe lists and copy recipes from magazines and the internet. As a result, I have loose pages of recipes on top of my cookbooks, nestled between the tops of the cookbooks and the shelf above. The piles are (in my mind) organized into three piles: main courses, desserts, and sides/beverages. Once I try a new recipe, I informally survey my family of critics, mark the recipe with a smiley, sad, or indifferent face (and possibly some editorial comments), and file it away in one of the many binders I've created to (in my mind) organize my loose recipes.

Here are our most recent food adventures:

Parmesan Rosemary Oven Fries (from some weekend newspaper magazine): quite a hit with everyone and quite simple to make! Just toss potato slices with oil, rosemary, salt & pepper flakes, and bake 15-20 minutes. I was also thrilled to use my crinkle cutter, which may be the first time that's ever happened.

Ginny's Chocolate Chip Cake with Classic Chocolate Buttercream (from Country Living magazine): mixed opinions on this. I thought it was good, but too much work. A simple box cake mix would make me happier. My future daughter-in-law, however, claimed it to be RIDICULOUSLY good.

Ginger "Beer Can" Chicken (Southern Living magazine): very good. I did alter the recipe to use boneless chicken breasts in the oven rather than a whole fryer on the grill.

No-Bake Chocolate-Pretzel-Peanut Butter Squares (Trisha Yearwood): I made this in a square 8x8 dish rather than a 9 x 13 dish because I thought the squares would be too thin in the larger pan. However, in the 8x8 pan the pieces were just too thick and too much. They would have been great in the 9x13 pan - if I had followed the instructions. Just goes to show I should follow my own recipe rule. The first time you make something, follow the recipe. Once you've tried it, the next time you can adjust to your own particular taste.

Smothered Pork Chops with Smashed Potatoes (Ree Drummond): very good! Simple, tender, easy. The Smashed Potatoes were more popular than the Pork Chops, though.

Caramel-Peanut-Popcorn Snack Mix (Southern Living): huge hit. This is a mix of homemade caramel popcorn, peanuts and Reese's Pieces. The recipe is easily adaptable to use M&Ms or similar type candy rather than Reese's Pieces. Or you could leave the candy out completely. The caramel popcorn was disappearing from the counter while it was cooling before I even added the candy. Barely lasted through the night. My girls said "That was so good you should make it all the time, but don't ever make it again."

Steak with Roasted Vegetables and Mustard Pan Sauce (Woman's Day): fabulous. This is probably my favorite recipe from the past few weeks. I threw in some yellow potatoes with the roasted vegetables because not everyone in my house likes sweet potatoes. The sirloin steak was tender and delicious and the mustard sauce added just the right tangy taste.

Pasta ai Quattro Formaggi (Ree Drummond): okay. I made this because my daughter is a vegetarian, and also because I prefer a white sauce to a red sauce on pasta. This is made with fontina, parmesan, romano and goat cheese. It was a little thick and bland, and the consensus was just okay.

Baked Quesadilla (Publix): big hit!  I substituted ground turkey for the ground beef for my son. Very quick and easy and it has a bit of a kick!

No-Melt Sundae Pie (Kraft): another quick and easy recipe that was very popular with the family! The biggest problem was trying to figure out what to do with the leftover Sweetened Condensed Milk.  Fortunately, I came across a fudge recipe on Facebook that will take care of that!

 

 

It seems like removing these recipes have barely made a dent in my paper piles, but slow and steady wins the race, right?

Snark Attack - Professional Version

Well, now I'm going to snark about grammar and spelling errors on "Professional" documents. Of course, Chinese Restaurant menus don't count. Those are just like "Where's Waldo" puzzles for foodies.

For example, here is a snippet of a brochure for an insurance company with whom I do business:

 

Really? Was this done by a professional advertising service? Or a low level employee in house, printing on glossy paper? In either case, wouldn't Spell Check pick this up? Or is "aparments" really a word? What. The. Heck. And how many copies of this brochure were distributed to agents?  I would not want my Apartment Building insured by this company because the fact that they can't spell it makes me crazy.

Snark Warning

Fair warning, I am on a snarky rant. Maybe not politically correct, but I'm doing it anyway.

Yesterday, someone in management used the term "drownding" near my tender ears. This came from someone who is a well read, talented writer who normally impresses me with her grasp of grammar and spelling. (We already know I'm a spelling and grammar snob, so don't look so surprised.) Sadly for me, bad grammar and spelling seems to be the norm or I wouldn't be so surprised when I see something written correctly. And no, I'm not perfect, and yes, I make spelling and grammar mistakes, but I'm mortified when I see them, because I know better.

I'm reminded of those Facebook pictures that pop up regularly stating something along the lines of "Some days my greatest accomplishment is keeping my mouth shut."  So I did.

 

 

It was so hard for me not to say something, but I knew nothing good would come out of that for either her or me. Instead, I entertained myself searching for the appropriate visual response:

 

 

I feel better now. Thank you.