Food is Awesome

Kathleen at A Moment To Think tagged me for a meme thing, 7 things about you, but after four thousand years of blogging, I can’t think of anything I haven’t shared about me.

Seriously. I am thisclose to making up an alternate identity and blogging about him or her instead.

Oh and PS I am breaking the chain and not tagging anyone. Sorry. Wrath of meme upon all our heads, etc.

But then I thought: chips! I hardly ever blog about chips and yet I eat them all day! I couldn’t think of seven kinds of chips, though, so here are seven delicious foods that are on rotation through my body at any given moment.

1. Fresh is Best tortilla chips.

These are a treat because they are a small bag and cost $5.50 at my local Safeway. However, London Drugs has started carrying them and sometimes puts them on sale and when they do I go ballistic, buy twenty-five bags and stash them under my bed.

The chips are tri-coloured. The white taste like corn, the red taste vaguely of chili and the green taste spicy, because of the jalapenos. They are light and crispy and taste as though they have been fried in the best possible, most delicious oil of all time. They are perfectly salted. I could eat an entire bag without even dipping them in anything.

But when I do dip, I like:

2. Penny’s Pico de Gallo salsa.

Bought this at Costco once because it was a litre of fresh salsa for $5 and that made me happy. Usually I buy the Que Pasa kind of fresh salsa (as opposed to jarred; in a jarred salsa I really do love Pace Picante Medium the very best) but I gave Penny’s a try and it is so good. Nice big chunks of tomato and pepper and onion, with a nice bite of spiciness and a very good amount of cilantro.

I love cilantro.

What’s that? You don’t love cilantro? Carry on.

3. Guacamole

I used to prefer my own

(recipe: ripe avocado. Cloves of garlic, crushed. Tomato, chopped. Red onion, chopped. Lime juice, lots. Jalapeno pepper – maybe. Salt. Mush. Eat.)

to store-bought because a) often the store-bought has sour cream or other thickeners in it. EW. and b) it just doesn’t taste as good as mine,

One day in the heart of winter, I had a guacamole craving. I went over to Safeway and had two $2.50 avocados and two $0.69 limes in hand when I saw a pre-made guacamole in the cold case for $2.99. It was called “Wholly Guacamole” and it comes in spicy and non-spicy. I didn’t believe the spicy would be spicy but I bought it anyway and was incredibly pleased with how spicy the spicy was.

That’s right. The spicy was spicy.

People, it is the crack of dips. Dip crack. It is tart and creamy and spicy and garlicky and fantastic. I am full-on addicted to it. Yesterday it was on sale for $2.79 and I nearly bought nine of them because each package is only 7 weasly ounces and I can eat that much in an evening. I may never make my own guacamole again.

However, in my opinion, their Wholly Salsa is not as good. I bought it once, and it contained so much salt my face caved in.

4. No-knead bread

We eat a lot of bread. SA likes to make bread but sometimes weekends do not allow him the time he needs for this activity. This week was a week that came after one of those weekends so by Wednesday we were out of bread. Again.

Store bought bread sucks ass through straws if you are used to homemade, and also, is stupidly expensive for how bad it tastes. Suddenly I remembered no-knead bread, which we made a lot of back in the day. I made a batch and yesterday afternoon, I ate it, warm, with butter, and was re-addicted. I ate almost the whole loaf (they are small) and since SA was out last night and wouldn’t get more than the heel, I started another batch, which will be done in another two hours. Garm.

5. Hummus

What goes better on fresh, white, crusty-on-the-outside-chewy-on-the-inside bread than butter? HUMMUS. I really do prefer my own homemade hummus
(recipe: chick peas. garlic. tahini. lemon juice. olive oil. salt. food process.)

but since I started using dry chick peas (so much tastier than canned, but so much less convenient) I don’t make it as much because I want to make it NOW and the dry chick peas have to soak and cook and if I remember to soak and cook then inevitably something will come up to prevent me from making the hummus and I will use the chick peas in something else.

Most store-bought hummus is pretty good but remember to check the ingredient list. One time, there was a hummus that had no garlic in it. I didn’t buy that kind.

6. Quinoa salad

I bought a big bag of quinoa at Costco a few months? years? ago and only recently started using it. I cook it with chicken stock instead of water and then sprinkle it warm over a bowl of mixed greens. I grate a clove of raw garlic on top of the quinoa, then I grate a bit of cheddar or parmesan. Tuck some cheater focaccia toast around the edge of the bowl (see #7 below) and douse the whole thing with epic amounts of balsamic vinegar. Ta da! Delicious, nutritious, immune-system boosting, vampire-repelling LUNCH!

7. Cheater focaccia toast

My vegetable intake was low and I figured having a salad for lunch every day would help boost it.Salad + warm protein on top + some kind of liquid (balsamic vinegar or salsa or guacamole) = yum. But I can’t function without just a little bit of bread. This works best with SA’s homemade brown bread because it’s thick and chewy and hearty:

Drizzle oil on slice of bread. Sprinkle with kosher salt, dried basil, black pepper. Put in toaster oven & toast. Walla!

What things are you eating, internet friends?