Depending on your age, you may think that I am referring to the popular catch phrase people say when posing for a picture. As a photographer I love catching an authentic smile, maybe even a laugh. And then of course, get the Instagram version. I actually am about to give a scathing review, related nothing to posing for a photogram. <- that would actually be a cool app name for a photography rival app.
I recently had a big bag of “Great Value” mozzarella cheese show up in my kitchen and I am very unhappy to say that it is horrible cheese. If you weren’t aware that is the house brand name for Walmart. The cheese doesn’t melt correctly. So there must be something “in” it to cause it to react that way. Hey, I’m not a chemist or a biologist, but I am a chef and I do know when a cheese is funky when you put it on a pizza. So the other day I stopped by Target, to you know, get some good cheese, and they did not have a single package of Kraft or Sargentos. They had this off the wall house brand, and only had Mexican cheese in stock. Wow. Overall I find that Target is always a huge disappointment. They never have what I want … and the overall selection is pretty bad. Artichokes. I’m not grasping for anything fancy. NEITHER stores had artichokes.
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Artisan flour. Again, neither store had artisan flour. If you want to have delicious entrees you need to have high quality ingredients. Needless to say, my quest ultimately ended at my local Safeway. Yeah, I know, as crazy as it sounds, they carry the Red Mill brand, which has EVERY possible kind of flour you could ever dream of. I was asked what do you use all purpose flour for, if it wasn’t good enough for my kitchen. Gravy. It is good for thickening sauces and making gravy. Children paper mache projects. Yeah, that would probably be it. I mean, if you are eating something, do yourself a favor and don’t go cheap. And actually, the artisan flour was on sale, 20% off so it was just a little bit more than all purpose flour. I tried using some all purpose flour for a pizza and it was soft and chewy. It wouldn’t even crisp up when baking it alone for a few minutes.
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Last week I made Italian Runzas. If you don’t know what they are, they are basically a calzone, but with an awesome bread wrapping. They are from a restaurant out of Nebraska, which actually discontinued this version of the original runza, which is ground beef and cabbage. Artisan flour made it amazing. I don’t know what kind of flour they use in the restaurant, but mine tastes exactly like theirs. Lard and sugar in the dough recipe, instead of using butter — like what copycats use. Sadly over the years, the restaurants got cheap and used less meat/filling mixture and all you get is a mouthful of expensive bread/flour. Seriously. I think they cost about $4 a runza. As much as I love Runza, they lost me as a customer as I can clearly do it better.
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If you weren’t aware there is a massive snow storm headed to the Colorado Rockies and they predict it will be feet of snow. So of course everyone is buying tons of groceries like they are all going off grid for a month. And if you missed it, Good Girls on NBC started up again, and it is totally worth watching. Love that show. As much as some readers would like my thoughts on the British scandal, … all I can say is I am pretty naive because I don’t usually see “color”, and I had no idea she is half black. The world, our own homes have their own problems. Sorry Meghan is having a hard time. I am sure the Kardashians are rolling their eyes and laughing.
In a world of rock paper scissors, ginger trumps the skinny latte. If you want a seriously entertaining review, go watch Ben Shapiro. I did and I laughed out loud.
