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LIFE WITHOUT A KITCHEN
Where do I eat?~what do I eat?~how about scrumptious fast food, terrific takeout, fabulous frozen dinners~Total Wine treats~how cool Costco is~lastly, naming your dog after your favorite food
Fast Food
My wife and I recently exited a two-year condo lease. We moved into an only partially renovated home near my son and his family on the West Coast. The home was supposed to be ready for us. However, only two bedrooms, an office, and one of two bathrooms were actually close to being completed. Critically, no kitchen. So that meant we were going to take a couple laps around some circuits we never traffic in before. . . fast food restaurants, take-out and dine-in Mexican, frozen dinners, grocery store food bars, and roasted chickens from anywhere we could find them.
At first, we had been introduced slowly to the wonders of Taco Bell by our grandkids who really dig the place. But soon they surreptitiously entered our dinner routine at home. Why? I actually came to like the tacos. A lot, as it happens. Unusually tasty.
For fast-food curious minds, at 8th place Taco Bell is far from the largest restaurant chain in the U.S. For the heck of it, here’s the top 10 ranked chains by the number of stores each has.
Subway: 24,798
Starbucks: 14,608
McDonald’s: 13,914
Dunkin' Donuts: 9,419
7-Eleven: 7,937
Pizza Hut: 7,482
Burger King: 7,330
Taco Bell: 6,588
Domino's: 5,876
Circle K: 5,852
I never go to Subway. Starbucks, which my wife and I mostly grab coffee there, save the occasional ham and cheese croissant or the sausage, egg, and cheese English muffin, is in second place on my hit parade. While I haven’t been to McDonald’s or Burger King in a long while, my wife and I used to take almost weekly trips to watch our son play college baseball at various campus locations all across the Southeast at Atlantic Athletic Conference schools, stopping at those burger joints on such a road trip for lunch was a natural a fit as, say, a soup and sandwich. Mostly burgers and fries. Sometimes for a fish sammy. Dunkin’ Donuts; don’t do it. Ditto for 7-Eleven, Pizza Hut, Domino’s, and Circle K. And it’s only lately have I been reintroduced to Taco Bell after decades of absence. I was surprised to find their tacos are very, very good! They are a refreshing change of pace from cooking tacos at home with ground beef and Old El Paso original taco seasoning mix, plus homemade guacamole, most any brand of salsa, sharp cheddar cheese, and whatever lettuce happens to be on hand.
Since we still have workers at our house during the renovation, one recently treated Sara and me with a Ultimate Cheeseburger, the signature dish from Jack in the Box, primarily a West Coast chain founded in 1950 in San Diego, where it is headquartered, with 2,200 locations. Jack in the Box innovated a two-way intercom system, the first major chain to use an intercom and the first to focus on drive-through. We’d never eaten food from there in our entire lives. The burgers were O.K. I think his gesture was to reciprocate for us giving him a couple brewskies on a previous lunch break.
Slower Food
Taco Bell actually opened the door for us into the wonderful world of Mexican foods. While we had made a regular habit of making homemade tacos, increasingly and rewardingly punctuated by Taco Bell, we’ve ventured out to taco bars and restaurants in our town with spectacular results! Fast forward a couple months and I’ve been on the hunt for more in my Mexican meals. And I’ve found it. For dinner for a couple nights of late, with the help of recommendations of friends, I’ve come across some way cool new options. One made their own soft corn taco right in front of me with a pressing machine and a grill, then filled them with the meats, veggies, and sauces I specified.
Guisado, or guiso, is a term for something braised, stewy, homey, and delicious. It’s eminently worth searching for decent guisados in your city. Finding the best versions of these luscious, saucy Mexican stews takes some searching but will be as rewarding as foraging for morels and finding a mother lode not far from your home.
What’s more, quality masa is paramount for great guisados. It not only serves as the vehicle for consumption, it also comprises the majority of the dish, be it taco or gordita, burritos or some dish made with masa and stuffed with cheese, meat, or other fillings. The best masa is made with yellow maize—also known as corn, which is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago—that has a resonant taste of corn, like freshly made popcorn. The best Mexican restaurants may well offer numerous varieties of guisado at a time—grilled or shredded chicken, shrimp, grilled or beer battered fish, brisket, carne asada (grilled beef), lengua (beef tongue), chile verde (several types of meat with three types of chiles), chicharrones (pork belly), tripas (made with the intestines of cows, pigs, or goats), carnitas (pulled pork shoulder or butt), al pastor (pork marinated with chiles), chorizo, grilled veggies, refried beans, or “beyond meat.”
While my taco journey is still in it’s infant stage and I’d never heard of it before, Taco Tuesday will soon be a thing with my wife and me.
Frozen Dinners
Over the course of hundreds of pizza dinners, we mostly had California Pizza Kitchen Sicilian with crispy thin crust, Italian sausage, spicy ham, Genoa salami, sweet basil, mozzarella and fontina, plus marinara sauce. We eventually got sick of having frozen pizza every Friday night regardless of the brand or the toppings.
In came Stouffer’s lasagna with double meat and sauce has been my go-to after pizza wasn’t. Sara likes the same but with a regular portion of meat. We might have this lasagna once a month.
I’ve always known the Marie Callender brand is in grocery stores everywhere and assumed it was good because of that. We had a microwave to cook it. Turns out, not so good. The heavy crust—although flavorful—overwhelms the dish that has far less flavor than is in a tasty homemade pie.
Our Small Range
The very first meal I cooked on the new Dacor stove was a ham and Gruyère on buttered wheat toast. Gruyère has become my cheese of choice, come rain or shine. No wonder since it’s known for a rich, creamy, salty, and nutty flavor. However, its flavor does vary depending on age: Young Gruyère has pronounced creaminess and nuttiness, while older Gruyère has developed an earthiness that is more complex. Emmental is also on my radar now. It’s a similar nutty, buttery, creamy cheese. So is Comté. For a similar cheese made in the U.S., Pleasant Ridge Reserve is nothing short of amazingly amazing! In fact, Pleasant Ridge is the most-awarded cheese in American history, having won Best of Show in the American Cheese Society’s annual competition three times (2001, 2005 and 2010), and having also won the U.S. Cheese Championships in 2003. It is the only cheese to have won ACS Best of Show three times, and the only cheese to have ever won both of the major national cheese competitions.
Can it be said that was the best grilled ham and cheese sandwich I’ve ever eaten? Yup. The best food I’ve eaten in the six months that the renovation of our new home has been worked on? Yup.
Our Gargantuan Refrigerator-Freezer
In August, almost six months to the day by now, our snappy Bosch refrigerator-freezer was delivered to our new garage and has been waiting—oh so patiently, bless its heart!—to be brought into our new kitchen and be placed near the new range, new dishwasher, new sink with its snazzy Brizo touch faucet, and not too far from the new stacked washer-dryer.
When it becomes operational, I’m gonna load it with lamb block. Fresh baby kale and spinach. Gooey cow’s milk Epoisses cheese. Rumor has it that this cheese is banned on the Paris Metro due to its unmistakable, inescapable funk that is a meaty, salty, spoonable paste that is aged in humid cellars and washed in salt water and Marc de Bourgogne, the fiery French apple brandy, to give it its immensely intense flavor. Those goodies will be joined by a 1,000 other goodies and I’ll begin cooking away to my heart’s content.
Big Box Total Wine
Having moved to a new city a couple years ago, our go-to big box wine store became Total Wine for its good selection, which includes more port wines, my new fascination, than any other store or shop I’ve discovered. Since I always look into the locked display glass cases wherever I shop at the wines there, I was almost knocked over when I found this extravagantly priced Dalmore scotch for $18,000. What’s more, it was the younger brother of another bottle from the same producer that was twice the price and kept locked up from view. Such a curiosity I knew nothing of and have a mighty hard time imagining anyone buying it.
Big Box Costco
Been cruising the aisles of Costco lately, only to find that they have dry roasted—way good!— almonds at a fraction of what I’ve paid at several conventional grocery stores. Naturally, I wondering what other steals are hiding in those aisles.
Naturally, I also went to the wine department in Costco near me, only to hear from the department manager about a six pack of ultra luxury Burgundy for $52,000. Obviously that isn’t one of those steals I was wondering about. That same wine guy led me to a 3 liter boxed wine that is the equivalent of a $3.50 bottle, the Kirkland Signature California Cabernet Sauvignon. I purchased a box and liked it. So, I’ve got my next appetizer of crunchy almonds and my next very affordable red figured out for my next gathering with friends. Thank you, Costco.
Something Silly
While watching MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” recently I became aware that Mika Brzezinski, co-host and spouse of Joe Scarborough and co-host with Willie Geist, has a Maine Coon cat she named “Meatball.” “Meatball” is also a catchy, mocking name a certain ex-president is considering naming a certain potential challenger from his own state, just sayin’. So what’s new? As it happens, numerous celebrities have named their dogs after foods. “Matzo Ball” and “Meatball” (Adam Sandler). “Mocha” (Hugh Jackman). “Fig,” “Olive,” and “Sage” (Victoria Beckham). And “Sushi” and “Sake” (Kim Kardashian). Made me wonder just what kind of pet matches well with the names Époisses or limburger cheeses with their strong, pungent aromas . . . .
Fish tacos, my friend. FISH TACOS--if you can find a place that does them well (probably not a fast food joint, though I could be wrong about that).
Love this newsletter! Congrats on getting your new oven in and operational. That first sandwich sounds swoonable.
A friend from long ago had a Mastiff she named Kuma for Kumamoto oysters. They were small. He was huge!