Category: Food & Drink

When It Hurts To Eat

Food & Drink

I’m the grocery shopper in our household, not just because New Wife still hasn’t got used to the different brands and such in the U.S., but because as I’ve said before, there’s not much goes on in a Kroger or whatever that I don’t know about.

So you certainly don’t have to tell ME that grocery prices are going through the roof thanks to Bidenflation.

My average spend, or “ring” per visit has typically been around $40 – $70 each week (the upper end if I’m buying a little meat or deli), and it’s been in that ballpark for about the past five years.  The only time it would be higher than that was if we were buying for company, i.e. when family or friends were coming round for dinner.

Now?

Since the beginning of the year, I can count on one hand the number of times that my ring has been less than $100 — and that’s after cutting back severely on quantities, buying smaller packs and / or cheaper, buying certain items (e.g. deli or frozen foods) less frequently, using all the tricks of the trade I know from my four decades in the supermarket business to make my grocery dollar stretch further.  I probably buy, in item count, about 25% less than I used to buy;  and still the average basket ring is over $100.

Now too, I drive about twice a week less frequently than I used to — combining trips to the bank, say, with trips to the supermarket or farmers’ market, trying to stretch the fuel as much as I can, and over a month, I’m probably in the car about a dozen times less than my old average.

Here’s the thing, though:  gas prices go up and down, and we’re all used to seeing that.  When it comes to grocery prices, however, they never come down.  It’s just a fact of life.

Thank you Biden, you motherfucker, you and all your foul little government apparatchiks who have pooled their efforts to make America unaffordable in the Great Reset.

I Hate This

Food & Drink, Lifestyle, Two-Minute Hate

From City Journal:

Restaurants supply physical nourishment, but their ultimate contribution to life is spiritual. From the bonds forged with dining partners to the camaraderie shared with fellow patrons to the banter exchanged with staff, dining out is a social, aesthetic experience. But QR codes are ruining it. More than a superficial nuisance, they are a sign of cultural decline.

Whenever I go to a restaurant and am confronted with this nonsense, I ignore it and demand to get a paper menu.  Usually, I get strange looks from the staff and eventually get a plain photocopied list, with no pictures of the dishes.

Suits me fine;  I know what a burger looks like, ditto schnitzel, ditto spaghetti bolognaise, ditto pretty much everything I care to eat.

Although it hasn’t happened yet, if I’m ever told that I can only order a meal through my phone, I’ll get up and walk out.  I hate using my fucking phone at the best of times, and to sit there squinting at a list of dishes in tiny type with microscopic pictures is guaranteed to put me  in a terrible mood — not the ideal customer a restaurant wants, because then I’m going to find fault with almost everything that happens thereafter.

I’ve already griped about concrete walls/floors and loud music, so I’m not going to repeat it all here.

I know all about the cost of labor and the difficulty in finding decent waiters and waitresses nowadays, and I don’t care.  I want the personal touch when I go out to eat, and you can forget that drive-through shit, too — hell, if I ever go to a fast-food restaurant (a highly infrequent event), I park the car and walk inside to place my order.

I was never a fan of “casual dining” to begin with, other than as a family/friends event, or being out of town where I have no option.  But as this move towards impersonal- and remote service seems to be growing, the less likely I’m going to be found eating out.

A pox on all of them, and on this so-called modern life.

Food Roulette

Food & Drink

Apparently, Jif Peanut Butter has been “recalled” by its parent company (who knew?):

The J. M. Smucker Co. is recalling select Jif® peanut butter products sold in the U.S. due to potential Salmonella contamination. Salmonella is an organism which can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems. Healthy persons infected with Salmonella often experience fever, diarrhea (which may be bloody), nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain. In rare circumstances, infection with Salmonella can result in the organism getting into the bloodstream and producing more severe illnesses such as arterial infections (i.e., infected aneurysms), endocarditis and arthritis.

The recalled peanut butter was distributed nationwide in retail stores and other outlets. Recalled products include the products below with lot codes 1274425 – 2140425. Lot codes are included alongside best-if-used-by date.

Not wanting to deal with salmonella — take it from me, I grew up in Africa, and it’s fucking wicked shit — I inspected the peanut butter supply chez  du Toit (including the emergency hoard).

Every single jar we have falls into the fucking suspect lot code range.  What’s just as interesting is that one of the jars is half-empty, i.e. New Wife and I have been feasting on the lovely stuff for about a month already on our weekend breakfast toast.  With, of course, no ill effects… so far.

Needless to say, the supermarket shelves are already empty of all Jif products, having sent them back to the manufacturer for a refund.

Now:  are said supermarket companies going to refund We The Consumers if we take our unopened jars of Jif à la salmonella  back?

Don’t be silly.  (I tried yesterday, at both Kroger and Sam’s Club and was told to fuck off.  (Not quite what was said, but the outcome was the same nevertheless.)

Maybe if I open-carried my 1911 into Tom Thumb tomorrow, they’ll at least give me a decent hearing?

Watch this space.

Strange Choices

Food & Drink

In a recent survey, Britishlanders were asked to state their favorite sandwiches, and the results were as follows:

For those Murkins unfamiliar with the term, a “ploughman’s” sandwich (cheese, ham, pickled onions or pickles, chutney, and sourdough bread) has nothing to do with ploughmen nor even farming — it was a marketing term developed in the late 1950s, and the promotion of the Ploughman’s lunch was part of a campaign to promote the sale of cheese in pubs.

As for the other choices:  Murkins will also be surprised by prawn sandwiches, but the Brits use the tiny “cocktail” or “baby” prawns, not the normal large things we eat with hot sauce Over Here.

And there has to be a special place in hell for whoever came up with putting tuna and sweetcorn on a sandwich.

Strange Foods

Food & Drink

We’ve all had some fun in the past as we marveled at the various eclectic (ahem) dishes enjoyed by Brits (faggots, toad-in-the-hole, black pudding etc.).

Among these was the “chip butty”:


…which of course is just potato in a sandwich — carbohydrates squared, so to speak.

So if we carry the concept one step further, we get the “crisp sandwich”:

(made all the more confusing because of the chips/fries/crisps nomenclatures that divide us).

Actually, the latter sandwich is not too bad, simply because unlike here in Murka, Brit “crisps” are sold in a dizzying array of flavors — prawn, chicken, lamb, beef and so on — along with the various sub-groups (chicken tikka, steak, hamburger, sausage, lamb & mint sauce, etc.) as well as the staples such as cheese & onion and salt & vinegar.

Sometimes the crisp sandwich is not a stand-alone — you can add your usual sandwich fillings like cheese, salami and so on — with the crisps added for both flavor and crunch*.

Needless to say, this being Britishland, a whole bunch of !SCIENTISTS! decided to explore the latter to see which made the best option.  And here are the results:

Now you know.

*By the way:  the combination of bread, butter, BBQ brisket and jalapeno-flavored “chips” is a pretty tasty dish.