Trader Joe’s: cheese and beer

I went off to Trader Joe’s Thurs. night, having recently discovered there was one in the area. If Whole Foods is the Giant Eagle/Heinen’s of natural food, then Trader Joe’s is the Aldi/Save-a-lot. They’d probably be insulted by this, but it’s an accurate comparison: smaller stores, no ready-to-eat food, a big reliance on store brands, and low prices. Whole Foods is fun to go to, but they kind of lost my respect when I saw the varietal chicken eggs; sorry, I’ve raised a number of breeds of chicken, and there’s no discernible difference in taste between Rhode Island Reds, Araucanas, and Leghorns, and it isn’t really nice to fleece the city slickers who don’t know better, at 3/$1 (i.e., $4/doz). (To be fair, there’s a “brown egg mystique” out there too; brown eggs aren’t ipso facto better, it’s just that brown egg breeds are more likely to be ranged, and that definitely makes a difference in the product.)

Here’s what I love about TJ’s:

1. Cheese! They have a selection of raw milk cheeses for under $10/lb. Yes, WF has wonderful cheese too, but it’s a lot spendier. I’ve just had the Swiss Emmenthaler @8.99, and it’s wonderful. I also bought NY extra-sharp cheddar@5.99 and their regular cheddar @5.29. IIRC, that’s even lower than the lowest price I’ve seen for Heini’s raw milk cheddar. Yes, I wish they were Aldi cheese prices, but I’m willing to pay a little more for raw milk.

2, Booze! TJ’s became famous for Charles Wood wine, aka “Two-buck Chuck”. It’s $3.69 now. I bought some Shiraz, and a slightly more expensive ($4.29?) J.W. Morris Riesling

But TJs also does a whole run of craft/import beer knockoffs. I just finished a Simpler Times lager. This is an excellent, full-bodied beer. I’m reminded of what the old Frankenmuth Brewery used to say about their beer: “Pour it in a glass with 2 ice cubes, let the ice cubes melt, and it tastes just like Coors.” Except it doesn’t. there’s a hint of aged hops, sort of like the revival POC (alas, now defunct) but not as strong. It’s very drinkable but at 6.2% alcohol, you won’t want to overdo. $3.99/6 cans. $4.99/6 bottles…sipping beer at lawnmower beer prices. Buy! Buy! Buy!

They also have a generic lawnmower beer which I haven’t tried yet.

Black Toad is a “dark ale”…pretty much a porter, really. Not too hoppy, a creamy finish.

Trader Jose Light and Dark are their Mexican beers (made in Mexico). The dark is supposed to be a Negro Modelo knockoff, per the store advertising. Er, not quite. It’s too brash and fizzy to be a Negro Modelo. Not a bad drink, and would go well with Mexican food, just not Negro Modelo.

I have the Stockyard oatmeal stout and the Vienna lager yet to try…but 3 beers in a day is about my limit, lightweight that I am.

3. Other stuff. Their coffee looked interesting, and reasonably priced, but not competitive with the Aldi Beaumont French Roast I’ve been drinking. I’ll try it someday. The Euro-style Yogurt is a quality product at $2.99, but there again, Aldi has the better deal. I’d gotten some excellent chicken-basil sausages there on an earlier visit, $3.99 IIRC. This last time, they were demo-ing seafood sausage. Tasty but quite fishy, definitely something that would not appeal to the wife, and at $5.99/lb a little spendy for sausage. In general, their cured meats looked quite interesting and competitive. Some of their breads looked quite interesting, but I’m not eating grain products these days. Also some good frozen entrees for those who do that sort of thing, including some Indian dishes.

Balko nails the Whole Foods boycotters

..in 13 points. My fave:

9) John Mackey opposes single payer health care, preferring to keep health insurance private and competitive. Lefties are angry with his decision to write an op-ed in support of this position, so they’re going to take their business to other grocers whose politics are more in line with their own.

Huh.  Just curious, if we get single payer, and the government does something you don’t like, where are you going to take your business?

I think the cool kids call this irony.

Actually, I think the idea of a Whole Foods boycott was first broached by the scriptwriters for The Goode Family, but it was rejected as being too over-the-top.

Liberal bedwetters boycott Whole Foods over Mackey health remarks

And here I thought it was so moderate and reasonable. Not so to the nutroots, I guess.
It’s a spendy place, and I really prefer Trader Joe’s for everyday stuff, but I’ll have to shop there more often.

“Market encourages horse slaughtering, animal advocates say”

That’s the headline for this piece about horse rustling in S. Florida.

If there were a free market in horsemeat, this wouldn’t be happening. Old horses could be slaughtered, or young ones raised for meat. But because people in this country think that their cultural prejudices should be enshrined into law, that can’t happen. This is a disaster created by PETA, HSUS, and their ilk, and it’s time they were told to back off.

The letters are getting there…with or without the tea

Teabags are not stopping mail from getting to Congress.

It’s time to up the ante.  Why don’t we send them their pork back? Send every Congressdroid who voted for the Spendulus a slice of bacon with the letter.  Even if they’re Jewish or Moslem. That’s what they have staff for.

Life continues at Black Water Farm

Now that Nelly is in jail and we’re paid off, my darling has found a new burst of energy. This week alone, she’s put up a chicken fence, done large amounts of mowing, cleaned and cooked a wild turkey we were gifted with, stacked about $70 of free firewood (from the same source), vinyl-tiled most of the utility room, cleaned the garage.  She had a chimney sweep in and picked his brains about the stove (which, it turns out, has a backwards damper; “Lo” is “Hi”) and told me about helping “the man who’s going to keep me warm”, who said, “You aren’t a normal woman”, to which she said, “The gal you have your arms around is a Vietnam Veteran.” Vietnam-ERA, actually, but it was so much more ladylike than saying, “Yes, and if you make a move on me, I’ll stick this screwdriver through your eye socket and stir.” She is indeed NOT a normal woman, which is precisely why I love her.

She and the neighbor lady went to the auction at Rogers Friday, and we’ve decided that she’s not allowed to go without adult supervision. No, she didn’t bring home the $6 scrawny calf, though she wanted to. Nor English game cocks, nor silkies (both of which she has done in the past). She bought 40 Golden Comet chicks and came home with only 20. And those, I tell her, are male. She refuses to believe me. And 10 fertile goose eggs, which are now in our incubator alone with a few duck eggs. “DNA” is the watchword this year, leaning to get things to reproducing themselves. I’m trying to teach the rabbits to breed again…seriously, these girls have been having none of it, so I left the buck with them for a protracted period, figuring he’d score eventually. Due date is the 4th or thereabouts…I’ve got to figure out how to palpate them so I’ll know if they caught. I’m reading books on taking cuttings so that I can strew edible plants all over my property and half my elderly neighbors’ (she’ll thank me.).

No planting thus far. I did at one point catch a dry spell and tilled some, but nothing is in yet. The started plants are lame lame lame; I’ll have to buy more. I hope to open a third plot toward  the orchard. I want to plant like crazy because I really don’t know what the fall will bring, and I’d rather have too much than not enough. Of course, this assumes they don’t get around to the Liquidation of the Kulaks, which seems to be the goal of most farm-oriented legislation introduced this session.

I’ve been wanting to write about this miracle of spring for awhile. There are a number of bloggers falling silent, or switching to God-blogging, because they can’t stand the pain of politics.  I don’t blame them one bit.

Coon hunting in Detroit

Around 20th Century General Motors, life is getting a bit feral.  I hope that “Glemie Dean Beasley” is a pseudonym, and that he has covered his tracks,  because the Bludge will be after him for making the city look bad…as if that were still possible.

A beaver was spotted recently in the Detroit River. Wild fox skulk the 15th hole at the Palmer Park golf course. There is bald eagle, hawk and falcon that roam the city skies. Wild Turkeys roam the grasses. A coyote was snared two years ago roaming the Federal Court House downtown.

Only ONE coyote?

Hmmm, and I love that writing. Shouldn’t that be “There ARE bald eagle…”?  And while I’m sure that Wild Turkey roams the ghettos, the turkeys in the grasses are uncapitalized.

Bart Stupak roasts nuts

Martin Kanan of Solon’s King Nut Co. was a guest of Congress, and got a warm if not fiery reception:

Members of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations noted that Nestle USA refused to buy products from Peanut Corporation of America after Nestle auditors found bugs and rodent droppings at the factories. Other companes that bought PCA’s products, like King Nut, instead relied on positive inspection reports from a firm hired by PCA.

“Nestle didn’t rely solely on an auditor that was selected and paid by PCA, an obvious conflict of interest,” the subcommittee’s chairman, Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak, told Martin Kanan, CEO of Kanan Enterprises, which does business as King Nut. “They conducted their own audit with their own staff. Why didn’t you do the same?”

“We were distributors,” Kanan replied to Stupak. “I know our name was on it, but we bought a closed container. “

Here’s what Kanan should have told Stupak:
“If it’s our job to make sure the product is safe, why are we paying the FDA?”

It is his job, as it was Nestle’s, but Nestle did it and King Nut didn’t. If it’s their job, it’s not the FDA’s. So quit with the food safety kabuki, and next time a middleman passes on tainted peanut butter, sue them to hell.

Silver lining in the downturn

I’ve been unkind to urban fast-food restaurants, and with good reason — people there haven’t seemed much interested in getting the job done.

But I had an entirely different experience Friday around 11:30 at the McDonald’s on 23 Mile Road and I 94 (Utica MI). The first think I noticed is that 2 older ladies were taking orders. Then I noticed some grown men in back. There were a couple young women, but they were hustling as much as anyone. I placed my order, and the food was on my tray before I got my change!

On my way out, I made one of the ladies laugh when I said, “McDonalds is so much better when grownups run the place.”

I suspect we’ll be seeing this a lot more as people get desperate for jobs. When “Micky D chump change” looks better to more people, managers will be able to hold out for quality. And those who don’t will soon find themselves not managing.

Depression news

Yeah, I know, like you don’t get enough from the Lamestream media.

The McDonald’s From Hell (Euclid at E. 115th) has closed. Yes, I know, McDonald’s has been doing well. But note the sobriquet. It didn’t help that it had no drive-through, or that a bunch of better fast-fooderies have opened recently closer to the center of campus. But the real issue was the substandard service. They were hiring (and feeding) townies, not students, and the townies didn’t have much of a work ethic. And management wasn’t good at making sure that menu items were in stock,or at any other element of management for that matter. We can’t blame this one on the bursting of the Mother Of All Bubbles, but it didn’t help.

Down the road at the Food Co-op, there are changes. Deli hours have been shortened. There was a children’s play area, which now seems to be occupied by a woman selling jewelry. They are “phasing out” disposable bags of both sorts in favor of Einkaufstaschen that everyone will forget to bring when they need them — a decision which I suspect is economics masquerading as Green religion. Selection seems to be leaner, and prices are up. $2.39 for soft wheat berries? I can buy meat for less than that! Again, location and competition doesn’t help, with a Whole Foods in the Heights, and Wild Oats and Mustard Seed out where the money is.

On a brighter note, here’s an update of “The Monster Mash“. Not as good as it could be, but still cute.