Category Archives: groceries

The Wegmans Cult And Jamon Iberico From Spain

H.A.M.

I’d heard about the “Wegmans cult” distantly for years, mostly secondhand or thirdhand from friends who’d attended college in upstate New York. It sounded like a mythical place, a far-off fantasy land of a grocery store with a full liquor selection and a prepared-foods section to rival even a Vegas buffet. A nice image, but one I’d likely never see because life has yet to take me to Syracuse or Ithaca or Rochester.

And then the geniuses behind the superstores decided to take their game to Central Massachusetts, opening their first New England location in Northborough last October. Shoppers camped out overnight to be the first ones through the door. I still didn’t quite comprehend the fascination. But then I finally made my way there in the spring. And now I’m a believer.

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Post-Snowpocalypse Recovery

It took six days for the power to come back on. Six. Days. And we’re among the lucky ones. As of this posting, there are still about 100,000 Connecticut customers in the dark, eight days after the Oct. 29 freak storm.

Even though we were doubly lucky to have a comfortable place to stay, it’s still no picnic to be uprooted for a week. It meant a flurry of canceled and rescheduled appointments, last-minute work accommodations and worries about our property from 70+ miles away. I woke up around 4:45 a.m. Thursday in a panic, remembering that the power had gone out Saturday while we were cooking dinner and oh my God, did I even think to turn the stove off? Would the power come back on while we were away and start a fire?

Rob returned to Connecticut Thursday for a work meeting and I stayed behind in Massachusetts. On Friday morning, I’d had enough and decided to just book a hotel for a weekend getaway. And in a classic case of “a watched pot never boils,” our power was restored around 1 p.m. Friday, just two hours after I secured reservations near the Mystic area. I got a jubilant text from Rob as I was driving home on the Mass Pike.

Our first order of business was to clean out the fridge and freezer. We’d trucked the “important” food (newly purchased milk, lunch meat, cheese and other perishables) around in a cooler for a week, but plenty more remained, thawing. Rob had most of the job finished when I arrived home, and as you can see by the photo, he tossed everything. Everything.

I’d been meaning to clean the fridge for quite some time. I guess it just takes a natural disaster to light a fire under my ass.

The week-long power outage is something I never want to experience again, but some sick part of me is thrilled by the pristine fridge, rid of old sticky stains and papery garlic skins and a leftover lemon wedge moldering in the forgotten back recesses of the shelves. At the same time, restocking everything in it is going to be a slow and expensive process. I lost my sourdough starter, for one, and frozen Connecticut-grown strawberries and herbs that I’d hoped to enjoy through the winter. Obviously, tiny inconveniences in the scheme of things, but not easily replaceable.

But I’ll tell you this – I have NEVER been more excited to cook again. Or do laundry. Or vacuum, or clean the kitchen. Electricity is the best thing ever.


Insert Any And All Crab Jokes Here

Yesterday, Rob and I hit up the seafood department at Big Y, looking for some fish suitable for grilling. We settled on halibut, which for the record is excellent topped with fresh fruit salsa.

That should have been it. But of course my eyes wandered to the shellfish on display. Among excellent-looking  jumbo shrimp and lump lobster meat rested two Dungeness crabs, on sale for $5.99/lb.

I first had Dungeness on a 2004 trip to San Francisco, where it was everywhere, from street carts to fancy restaurants. The meat is sweet and tender. Suddenly, the halibut wasn’t enough – I needed that crab.

(Rob is the master of going to a store and getting exactly what he needs, no deviation. The look on his face was nothing short of “Are you serious?”)

But what to do with it? Thankfully, the crustacean was pre-cooked. The seafood clerk advised us to toss it into boiling water for a few minutes before eating. I decided we’d eat it like boiled lobster – crack open the body and legs and hunt feverishly for meat.

As an homage to Homer Simpson, we nicknamed the crab “Pinchy” before we gave it a very hot bath.  It wasn’t until I took this picture that I realized Pinchy had a face. Oops.

But the crabmeat was delicious, especially when sprinkled with Old Bay seasoning and dipped into melted butter, then washed down with a 2007 Bonterra Chardonnay. California wine for our West Coast seafood. Yummy.


Sun Chips “Compostable” Bags: Loud And Clear.

File this one under “random.” Yesterday, I went to get some grocery necessities for our dinner of handmade turkey burgers. I picked up a bag of garden-salsa flavored Sun Chips. The bag emitted a noise so surprisingly loud that I jumped. The HELL was that?

Then I remembered that Sun Chips recently announced a commitment to make their chip bags from compostable material. And then recalled a Facebook discussion between some eco-minded buddies, who couldn’t believe that anyone would have the gall to complain about the bag’s decibel level.

In full disclosure, I would not call myself an environmentalist. I try not to do anything really egregious, like use too many plastic water bottles, drive a Hummer or club seals. And I give Frito-Lay a lot of credit for coming up with this new packaging. Apparently there’s something in the makeup of the new material that causes the noise.

But there’s no getting around it: this thing is loud. Loud enough to drown out normal conversation or television noise, depending on how vigorously you open it and grab for chips.  Forum posters describe the bag noise as “like a goddamn thunderstorm” or “a car crash.” Yes, hyperbole is funny. But they’re not that far off.

Will the volume of the bag affect sales? Who knows. Personally, I like Sun Chips enough to deal with it. But I wouldn’t bring a bag to a quiet office, or a library, or anywhere near sleeping babies…