Ribs, ribs, ribs...

Last night, I made my first go at doing ribs in the oven. I've been a strict wood-fired guy in the past. Soaked chips, cider drip pan, and all. Last summer, I made my peace with a gas grill. Last night, I made my peace with doing ribs in the convection oven.

The ribs in question were the pork ribs Trader Joe's sells. They aren't ideal since they're not from one of my local producers or butchers, but I tend to trust TJ's products. It was a little under three pounds — perfect for the kid and me and some leftovers. When it came time to prepare them, I mixed up a quick dry rub with flaked sea salt, smoked paprika, sweet paprika, cumin, parsley, cracked pepper, and sugar. I was satisfied with the rub, though I might try brown sugar next time to add a little extra caramelization.

I heated the oven to 300 degrees, applied the rub, and wrapped the ribs in foil. After twenty minutes, I raised the heat to 350, and then to 375 after another half hour. To keep them from drying out, I mixed up a quick mop sauce of cider vinegar, garlic mustard and bourbon. I mopped this on every fifteen minutes after the first half hour. After an hour, I opened the foil to let the skin begin to form on the ribs. Since I was working entirely on improvisation, I waited until it seemed like the ribs had also begun to develop a nice crust. At that point, I mopped on barbecue sauce for the last fifteen minutes.

The result? Stellar. The ribs were tender, and the combination of mop sauce, smoked paprika, and barbecue sauce gave them a good flavor. It wasn't quite as good as a few hours over a wood fire, but sometimes a craving requires improvisation.

Easter omens

PIcked this up from Serious Eats... Someone in Brooklyn bought a dozen eggs from TJ's, hard-boiled them, and opened them to discover this:


For some strange reason, this makes me think of the interestingly shaped, oddly colored eggs I used to buy at the farmer's market in Fayetteville.

TJ's and fast home-cooked meals

The latest easy-to-prepare meal turns out to be a variation on one of my mother's mainstays when I was growing up — a casserole we always called "Goo." Basically, it amounted to macaroni and some kind of sauce and meat in a casserole dish. My variation is an easy TJ's concoction. If you're only feeding a couple of people, you'll end up with at least two meals out of it as well.

Boil a pound of pasta — penne or fusilli work best. While the pasta water is coming to a boil, remove the casings from a few sweet Italian sausages — about a pound — and thoroughly brown the meat in a cast-iron skillet. When cooked, drain the meat to take some of the fat out. Let it cool while the pasta cooks. Combine the pasta, sausage and a jar of TJ's traditional marinara (shockingly good for the price and ease) in the pasta pot. Add a couple handfuls of shredded mozzarella, mix again, and pour it all into a casserole dish. Grate Parmiggiano Reggiano on top and put it in a 350º oven for twenty minutes.

Pasta : $.99
Sauce: $1.29
Sausage: $3.50
Cheese: minimal cost if you keep a stash around
Grand total: $5.78

Time of preparation: 20 minutes active; 40 minutes total.

TJ's finds

Among my favorite reasons for shopping at Trader Joe's are the new finds that seem worth trying. There are occasional misses, but in most cases the finds are hits. This week's was a grandslam. In their prepared foods cooler, Diner Classics Macaroni & Cheese. The cheese had a good flavor to it, and the breadcrumbs and panko on top were perfect. I added a little salt and pepper, but other than that, it was a perfect comfort food lunch at work. And at $4.29, it cost less than almost anything I could have picked up at our local (fill in the blank lunch spot).

I also dig the icons they're beginning to use on various products. It's a nice design quirk.

Madoff, the economy, collateral damage, absurdities, and other odds and ends

I've been remiss about updating things lately, and a little caught up in the juggling act of life. But I've been missing the chance to post, too. Things occur to me, and I make a mental note to conjure up a fully wrought post. Then life gets in the way again—the kid needs to go to school, dishes need to be done, a project crops up at work, sleep happens, the dog needs to go out, dinner needs to get made, and the list goes on.

Regardless, here's a quick addenda to jumpstart my brain at the end of the week:

• Brandeis's decision to close the Rose Art Museum — The news that Brandeis would be closing the Rose arrived in alum's email boxes before it hit the news wires. In the email, President Reinharz explained that it was a difficult but necessary decision for the long-term future of the university, its endowment and its ability to fund student need. More than a few alumni disagreed and a the hue and cry hit newspapers and blogs. I'm still split on the matter. I understand the university's need to secure additional revenue sources, particularly given the damage done to major donors by the Madoff scandal. At the same time, I fear that they will be mortgaging a part of the museum's cultural and intellectual currency for a finite gain.


• Madoff, Thain, and Gordon Gecko — Can we put the Gilded-Age-style greed that came of vogue in the Eighties out of our misery, please? The damage done by hedge funds and Ponzi schemes to our common good (see above) is going to have long-lasting effects on the institutions that keep our culture alive and will do long-term damage to the non-profit organizations that support all ends of our society. The exuberant greed of Thain and countless other CEOs, investment bankers, and their ilk leaves them complaining over smaller bonuses while the rest of us see the value of our investments and employers plummet because they've sucked the money out of the system to line their silk pockets.


• The First Week — Two acts please me more than any other in the Obama administration's first week: their message to Citicorp that taking delivery of a new $50MM corporate jet would not be acceptable, and the message that banks were unethical in doling out billions in bonuses while taking billions in TARP funds.
  
• Waste Management — I've decided to reduce my contribution to the waste stream. This is not to say I am recycling more, because I don't think that would actually be possible. No. I'm taking every opportunity I can to use silverware, plates, bowls and mugs at work. At home, I've begun to use reusable containers in Banana's lunch. A co-worker asked me if I was doing this because I am "Green." (The quotation marks were audible in her voice.) I said yes, but the reality is that I see this as an ethical decision rather than just a green decision. By reducing the amount that must be moved to a landfill or recycled, I've reduced the amount of energy used. By reducing the amount in landfills even by a few items a day, I've contributed a bit to leaving Banana and her children's children a cleaner, nicer earth.


• Global Warming Is Irreversible. — A study was released this week that I can't imagine ever being released during the Bush administration. Basically, it details that global warming can't be reversed once it's begun. What makes this even more frightening is that all evidence collected in recent years points to the fact that warming is happening faster than expected. If all of this is true — and there is no compelling reason to ignore it any longer — our grandchildren's world is going to be a radically different place than the world we live in now. Unless we take stricter actions. Now.


• Mini daffodils make the kitchen a nicer place. — In the midst of last weekend's stomach-flu-addled Trader Joe's run, Banana asked for a pot of mini daffodils. We sorted through until we found one with a couple blooms and several more on the way. It now lives on the breakfast bar, and there is something very calming and pleasant about looking at growing flowers in the morning sunlight.

So there you have it. Stay tuned for a bit of Friday Fun...

Trader Joe's and evangelism

Anyone who's known me in the past few years knows how much I love Trader Joe's. Actually, anyone who doesn't know me but visits this blog from time to time probably knows this. I'm not sure I've ever actually spelled out the reasons why I love TJ's and why I will evangelize about them to almost anyone who will listen and who hasn't actually bought into the TJ's cult yet. Here goes...

1. Size This may not be the first criteria most people bring up when evangelizing for TJ's, but it tops my list. At 15,000 sq. ft., the average TJ's is far more manageable and scaled to human needs than your average grocery store (50,000 sq. ft.) or superstore (a terrifying 250,000 sq. ft.). At this size, I can get in and out in a reasonable amount of time. Banana is also easier to manage in a store this size. She can help with the groceries without getting bored. Because things are closer to her scale, she can also take it all in without being as overwhelmed by hundreds of options for cereal/bread/cookies/crackers/cheese/you-name-it.


2. Quality With occasional exceptions, the quality of TJ's products is good and consistent. They have eliminated high fructose corn syrup and unsaturated fats from most (if not all) of their product lines. To the best of their ability, they source even their non-organic products from GMO-free sources. Their non-organic milk is rBST-free, as are most other dairy items. They offer cheeses from grass-fed cows, and their meats are hormone- and antibiotic-free. As a companion pointed out, they even specify the use of animal rennet versus vegetarian rennet in the cheeses. Their frozen foods are generally very good and can be a godsend when you need to pull together a quick, healthy dinner for a tired little girl, or when you need to pull together appetizers for cocktail hour.


3. Cost We finally get to cost, which is where most people start. I can get out of TJ's with groceries for a full week (breakfast, lunch, and dinner for two) as well as a couple six-packs of decent beer and a couple bottles of wine for a hundred dollars. Certainly some items cost the same as they might at one of the large supermarket chains, but there are many staples like pasta, yogurt, cereal, cheese, and juices that I can buy for significantly less at TJ's.


4. Customer Service I cannot emphasize enough the importance of customer service in this list. When managers and employees show genuine enthusiasm and are consistently friendly and helpful, the whole experience improves. When they go out of their way to pay attention to children with (healthy) treats and hellos, shopping becomes more fun than a chore. And any parent who has ever taken a kid grocery shopping will probably agree that keeping a kid happy in a grocery store is priceless.


5. Variety TJ's may not have hundreds of options for every item, but I don't necessarily want or need hundreds of options. They have the staples in enough variety that I can generally find what I need. Then there is the constant flow of new, interesting products. Whether it's cheese, prepared food, wine, ice cream, or you name it, there are inevitably moments in every shopping trip when I come across something new and worth trying. As a creature of habit who occasionally needs to be wrenched out of my habits, I appreciate this. I can say the same thing for shopping at Whole Foods, Ellwood Thompson (our local natural market), or the farmers market, but I cannot say the same thing for the standard supermarket chains.


6. Green awareness I've found them to be very good about the use of recycled materials and about developing and using smart packaging. They are also very good about sourcing from sustainable sources. That said, I do wish that their use of packaging for fresh items would be more limited. All the smart packaging in the world can't change the fact that you're still adding waste to the trash stream.

In the end, my only quibble with TJ's is that they are consistently going into locations that can only be reached by car and are often in the exurbs. Such decisions are short-sighted at best and indicate a strategy that ignores the smaller urban areas where their core customers congregate. In Richmond, for example, a store placed in or near the Fan or near West End would perform phenomenally — and would show a nod to green economy. All one has to do is walk around the neighborhoods on recycling day to see how many TJ's bags are out. Hell, you could have done that before the Richmond store opened and seen the numbers of people who made regular treks to Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads for their TJ's fixes. I know; I was one of them.

Notes from the weekend - Trader Joe's edition

Anyone who has been near me in the past four years knows how excited I am to have a Trader Joe's in Richmond. Many of us still think they should have landed in the city-proper, rather than putting roots in Short Pump*. Still, I have to admit that it's just nice having TJ's (and Whole Foods) in this city finally.

Frankly, it's shocking that it took so long for these stores to arrive. Richmond has a fairly cosmopolitan population and a diverse business community. There is a fair amount of old money running around and a strong, young creative class. But the city also has one of the strongest urban inferiority complexes I've seen. Considering all the places I've lived, this is not an insignificant observation. That complex jives well with a certain provinciality—civic structures and the corporate and governmental bodies are driven by a good-old-boy mentality that is further driven by a sense that only home-grown solutions work.

For this reason, I think, our local grocery chain was able to fend off inroads by companies that would hurt its business. Why, then, am I ecstatic about patronizing our recently-arrived chains? Because I do not feel that the local grocers really cater to me in the same way that TJ's or Whole Foods does.

That said... We finally have a Trader Joe's! In short order—shorter order than a similar trip to Kroger or Ukrops might take—I had satisfied most of what we needed, and thrown in a few extras besides. We have a nicely stocked pantry for barely more than I might have spent at either of the other stores, and I can feed Banana snacks and meals that are generally filled with wholesome ingredients. Is the stuff entirely organic? No, but that's not the point. The point is that I do my best to keep high fructose corn syrup and other artificial sweeteners and flavors out of her diet, and I do my best to make sure that the food we eat is processed as little as possible. And between TJ's (and Whole Foods) I can make that happen without having to read every label and worry about the sourcing of every product.

I do, however, need to make sure that I keep us within our budget. It would be so easy to slip...





*For those who do not live here, Short Pump used to be farmland, about eleven miles west of the city limits. The arrival of a "lifestyle" mall and many big box stores transformed it about five years ago, and it has been a hub of suburban retail sprawl ever since. Traffic is hell, and fallow soil has been replaced by a soul-less commercial crossroads.

tasty tofu

It took me a long to learn to enjoy tofu. In fact, it took traveling to China in 1996 for me to really understand all the different ways tofu can be used. Lately I've been playing with a new preparation—one that I completely blame on Trader Joe's.

Take one block of extra firm tofu. Press it to get some of the water out. Cut into strips approximately 3/4" thick. Marinate with the TJ's Soyaki sauce, just enough to cover all the pieces and leave a little liquid left over. Let soak for approximately half an hour, then lay the strips out on foil-covered broiler pan. Place under broiler for seven minutes, then turn the pieces and spoon the leftover liquid on the them. Broil for another seven minutes and drizzle the last of the liquid on them when you pull them out.

I served these with snowpeas and carrots steamed and tossed with toasted sesame oil, seasoned rice vinegar, and good soy sauce, and rice.

Lastly, drizzle a little sriricha on the side of the plate. Perfect!

Trader Joe's Hack

One of Banana's favorite foods--perhaps her favorite food--is Trader Joe's Pizza Formaggio Di Capra. She calls it the "Circle Cheese Pizza." Anyway, it's a nearly perfect thing, surprisingly so for a frozen pizza. The crust is thin and crisp, coated with a mild tomato sauce and cheese, punctuated by four olives--calamata or nicoise--and four discs of chevre.

On a whim tonight, I drizzled the pie with good olive oil and added some fresh basil. Banana pulled the basil off--she's at that irritating age when reliable flavors are no longer reliable--but we finished it off quickly.

Good stuff.