Tag: cheese

The Costco Report: Eating My (Cheesy) Words

I received some criticism for yesterday's post - some silly ("Why do you even shop at Costco?"), and some quite fair ("Maybe it's uneconomic for smaller local dairies to supply Costco."). I like to think that I can take it as well as I can dish it out and, while I sometimes like to play rough, I also like to play fair, so here's my mea culpa de fromage: While I may decry my inability to source local cheeses from the Santa Rosa Costco, and while I may now have to drive further and pay more to procure some of my favorite products as a result, that is not necessarily any fault of the Big C.

The Costco Report: Who Moved My Cheese?

The Costco Report: Episodic observations on where to port safely, and what to avoid like a pestilence, when navigating an ocean of consumer non-durables... In today's edition, a big finger wag at the Big C for abandoning some of our local dairies, and Taquitos From Hell.

Savory Onion-Cranberry “Jam”: My New Favorite Condiment

Yesterday, as I was blabbering about cooking with friends, I tried to argue that the biggest prize from letting another cook into your kitchen is, aside from some help with the dishes, the potential to eat a meal that you'd not otherwise have thought of. A case in point comes courtesy of a dear friend's torrid love affair with thermal immersion circulators and my new favorite condiment: A pitch-perfect finger sandwich of pork loin sous-vide, local blue cheese, and savory onion "jam".

Last-Minute Thanksgiving Upgrades

With less than 36-hours until the feast hits the table, I'm sure we all have too much to do and not enough time in which to do it, so today's is a post with a purpose: Fast, easy, small little things you can do to elevate some of your Thanksgiving Day standards - mashed potatoes, green beans, glazed carrots, cranberry sauce, stuffing - from the delicious but possibly tired to a more lively yet still traditional level.

Mac-n-Cheese, Cheese, & More Cheese (v2.5)

Can you imagine playing Russian roulette with the crust at your favorite pizza joint, the done-ness of your steak, or the hardness of your egg? Take away the obsessive cooks, and we'd all be eating Swanson's Hungry Man or instant ramen with a spork, which is a roundabout introduction to Why I'm Still Trying To Perfect Mac-n-Cheese. The mountains of grated cheese, the errors like some pagan fortune engraved in burnt milk at the bottom of sauce pots, the sweet, nutty smell of flour frying in butter that fill the house, and - finally - today's installment, in which I learn that, unlike Crisco or tickling, if some is good, then more is better.

A Plate of Strange Bedfellows

Pickles, cheese, and chocolate: Three ingredients, three possible pair-wise combinations, two really good and interesting tastes, and one impossibly disgusting mouthful of gag reflex. If I like cheese with pickles, and (somewhat surprisingly) I like chocolate with cheese, then why don’t I like chocolate with pickles? I mean, other than the painfully obvious – in […]

Cold Food for Hot Mamas

As most any mom will tell you, there is a world of difference between "cooking for moms" and "cooking for moms": The noun implies more of her time spent over a cooktop, while the verb at least suggests the possibility that she might end up on the receiving end of the culinary goodie bag for a change. To wit: My wife recently put in a special request for the Moms' Night Out she was hosting for a small cadre of mamacitas sans kids and husbands, a professional dance instructor, and a trunk full of pink bubbly...