Friends took my husband and I here last Saturday knowing we love international stuff. It reminded me of Jungle Jim’s International Market back in Cincinnati, so I’m happy there’s a replacement. It’s 45 minutes from our current location, but we plan to move in further eventually. They had Korean food items I hadn’t found anywhere else and a nice vegetable selection. I bought their jarred kimchi (vegetarian/no fish sauce & no MSG) and simmered tofu, both of which were pretty tasty for store bought. The place is big and organized by item, not location the way Jungle Jim’s is. This way is better because you find other items you didn’t know about!
Saraga International Market
North
3605 Commercial Drive
Indianapolis, IN 46222-1681
South
2308 East Stop 11 Road
Indianapolis, IN 46227
Yelp
While one of the new multigrain Pringles flavors is called ‘Truly Original‘, I doubt that the founding fathers of potato chippery ever grew their own supplies of triglycerol mono-oleate. Yup, it’s still junk food but with the appreciable removal of dairy products and that annoying MSG these new chips finally give us an excuse to Pop the Top. Whatta ya mean, they don’t say that anymore? That was the last time I ate a Pringle!
The look of these chips is decidedly multigrain with little seedy things and a slightly browner color but the crunch and flavor is pretty authentic to my mouth memory. Salty, crispy, kind of oily and hard to put a lid on. I’m glad that Pringles finally came around and offered a tube of snacks without MSG coating its shiny innards but for the same price nowadays you can get a bag of infinitely more wholesome chips like almost anything from Garden of Eatin’ or Kettle Foods.
I’m sure there are years of embarrassing hand-in-tube rescue scenarios ahead for me but I’d be much more supportive of Pringles if they’d done this ages ago instead of hopping on the eco-green HealthWagon like everyone else.
Made this recipe from the kind diet book by Alicia Silverstone. It turned out yummy with a tweak. In the past I haven’t had luck with the use of lemon juice so instead of 3 tablespoons I used 2. I think it could have done without or with less. Then again, I’m not a fan of sour taste. I’d never used arborio rice before. It was great and different from our rice use prior. Next recipe I’m planning is hearty pinto bean stew. It sounds delicious! In other news I think the Whole Foods bulk food section is our new friend!
Cincinnati Locavore says The Northside Farmer’s market will be moving indoors for the season! New location is North Presbyterian Church Auditorium at 4222 Hamilton Avenue on Wednesdays 4:00- 7:30pm. Glad to know it will still be happening off season!
So, back in December I got some kind of stomach virus that I’ve been battling ever since, we went to Disney World, my computer flaked out, we got hooked on Fable 2, then I got the computer going again, I killed GameLuv and partially crippled FoodLuv, I had an ultrasound and a CT scan done on my adbominal area, and I bought a new PC with my tax return. How’ve you been?
Things really piled up there but I think (I swear! I know that) the rest of this year is going to be a-ok. Think positive. Through all this emo turmoil my daily diet has taken a back seat. Who feels like preparing a meal when all the music and photos you’ve collected over the years may be lost? Lately I’ve been doing the pre-packaged thing at work but I’ve had quite a breakthrough and don’t feel nearly as bad spending $3-$5 on the good stuff. Well, the better-than-a-TV-dinner stuff anyways.
Healthy Choice put out a line of “All Natural” entrees, of which I’ve had one so far. As best I remember the ingredients were good but the taste was only a step or two above your typical frozen meal. What I found most surprising was how flavorful their French Bread Pizza was. It’s one of their regular meals and has more lines of ingredients than some ‘Terms of Use’ agreements but I don’t recall anything too bad. Plus, did I mention it was incredibly tasty?
We picked up several boxes of Swad brand Micro Curry this past weekend including Dal Tadka, Mutter Paneer, Sarson ka Saag, Paneer Makhani, and Aloo Mutter. I had the Paneer Makhani for lunch today and it was pretty tasty; not nearly restaurant quality but very good coming from a bag that sits in the microwave for a couple minutes. We also finally found some ramen noodles without MSG so we’ll be trying (and hopefully raving) about those soon.
Just wanted to post and let everyone know I’m still alive and eating and will hopefully be back a bit more regularly, even if it’s only to justify the sub-par frozen meal I ate for lunch.
When we went on our mini trip to Slade, KY we took food along. We brought Trader Joe’s wheat tortilla wraps, mayo, Lightlife Smart deli turkey & bologna both of which we were thrilled with. The texture & taste of the bologna is authentic in the folds of a sandwich, Shawn felt the same about the turkey. Last grocery trip I bought Yves’ Salami and I’m very sorry I did now. I had a wrap yesterday with it and it tastes nothing like salami other than having a tiny spiciness to it. I plan to just throw the rest away, it’s that bad. It crumbled in the wrap, unlike the Lightlife slices.
Yves’ Lettuce wraps are amazing (almost exact to PF Chang’s chicken lettuce wraps), so it makes me sad the salami is so bad.
In other news, I loved fried chicken when I ate meat. It still smells pretty good to me and I know it is only that fried batter that smells so good. I want to find faux chicken that can be fried up to satisfy the want.
Vitasoy Holiday Nog
I love egg nog, but it’s so bad. It’s thickness can be a little gross and I picture people drinking raw egg like body builders in the movies. The calories are horrible too, depending on the brand it can have 400+ calories a cup.
We bought Vitasoy brand Holiday Nog the other day, and I have to say, it will substitute the real stuff just fine for me! It’s sweet, and more the consitancy of soy milk than egg nog. The calories are around 60 per 1/2 cup so I don’t feel as bad having it. I hear they make a chocolate peppermint flavor too. I should buy that too!
When you take a sip of soda these days you pretty much know what to expect. The gritty carbonated bubbles almost burn on the surface of your tongue and the flavor sorta washes over your taste buds with a dull, metallic flourish. There may be juice (or at least caramel flavor) inside but the gulp drops down your throat with all the excitement of licking a Post-It.
With drinks more about formulas than flavor these days it’s not hard to give up (or dramatically cut back) on the classic carbonated soda once you really look and think about what you’re drinking. But I’m stubborn and still want a flavorful drink to offset the tasteless and thirst-quenching water that I drink every day. Whole Foods has a tasty line of sodas and Hansen’s brands do the trick, but nothing tastes as amazing as these Walgreens Gourmet Sodas from the mysterious Deerfield Trading Company.
Mysterious only because I can’t find much info about them and they produce an extensive line of drinks exclusively for the nationwide drug store chain. Conspiracy theories aside, this line of surprisingly chemical-free drinks tastes incredible and are reasonably priced around $1.20 a bottle. Flavors include Vanilla Cream Soda, Juicy Orange Cream, Strawberry Cream, Black Cherry, Root Beer and Diet Root Beer, and each comes in a recyclable 16 ounce glass bottle. Tasty and plastic-free to boot! The best part of all these drinks, the one “claim to fame” that each label calls out is that there’s no High Fructose Corn Syrup inside.
Besides some food coloring and Sodium Benzoate (the questionable preservative) the ingredients list is short and simple. Most of the drinks include carbonated water, sugar, natural and artificial flavor (they don’t get any more specific here), and citric acid which gives them all about 240 calories per bottle. The diet root beer uses Sucralose to replace the sugar and calories so I won’t be trying that one.
The taste of each is exceptionally sweet with only a light bubbly carbonated feel. The Vanilla Cream Soda really hits you, the Orange Cream tastes of a creamcicle, and the Strawberry Cream is almost overpoweringly sweet. I haven’t had the Root Beer yet but the clear winner is the Black Cherry. I’ve tried for days to think of how to explain it’s sweet syrupy flavor. At first sip it’s almost like cherry cough syrup; powerfully flavored as if to mask a gross medicine taste. Then it’s like super concentrated Dr. Pepper without the carbonated bite. It’s like Walgreens was determined to show the world that high fructose corn syrup isn’t required in order to get a super sweet flavor. In the famous words of President Bush, Mission Accomplished!
Hit up your closest Walgreens (I’m sure there’s about ten of them within a mile of your home) and give these flavorful drinks a shot!
Just a fun little fact before I start; I never thought I’d use eBay as a source of information in regards to a products’ ingredients, but there it was. I can vouch for their accuracy too. I just had another box of these recently and looked at the ingredients but didn’t think to write them down before tossing the package.
Anyways, not only are they attractively colored and shaped like Chinese takeout boxes, the food cooks right inside. Minimal packaging and simple instructions mean you tear open the noodle and sauce packets, dump them back into the takeout box, close it up, and nuke it for two minutes. Then, eat.
Several flavors are available including Peanut Satay, Pad Thai, Kung Pao, and new Green Curry and Tom Yum. I’ve only had the Satay and Pad Thai so far, both of which fall somewhere between just edible and stupendous. There’s plenty of flavor but neither seemed especially delectable. It’s far and away better than a pack of chemical-filled ramen noodles and for $1.99 there’s precious little else you’re going to find that’s as easy to fix and still Vegan.
The ingredients are mostly wholesome but somehow they’ve managed to pack in an insane amount of calories. I don’t have the box with me and can’t find much info online but each box will plump you up an extra 400 – 600 calories. Filling, affordable, and healthy hardly ever coincide and in the case of these noodle boxes you’ll get plenty of filling food at a decent price. They’re definitely worth trying but if the middling flavor and the calories are a bigger factor in your food equation you may want to look elsewhere.
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