Sorry for the later post this week - we’ve been dealing with a feeble internet connection lately. It was too frustrating to try and make blog posts when submitting the form could send 2 hours of work into Nowhereland. When it finally got fixed, I realized I didn’t have anything lined up to talk about.

So I turned to an old standby: Pico Pica Hot Sauce.

I don’t mean that I’ve written about this before, but I’ve been meaning to make a post about it for a year or so now. I call it a standby because we always have a bottle of this sitting in the fridge. My parents always had a bottle of this in their fridge. Actually, it seems like it was the same particular bottle for about 10 years…

Although it’s currrently distributed by Juanita’s Foods, it has been in production since 1937. According to the website, it was “one of the original bottled Mexican hot sauces in Southern California.” I believe that Juanita’s is also the number one seller of Menudo (not the band, the stomach pieces) in the U.S. as well.

What I always liked about Pico Pica’s hot sauce was that it IS an old standby. I originally got into it in the 80s after I discovered it tasted remarkably like Taco Bell hot sauce. It’s a little less watery and thin than I remember Taco Bell’s being, but not as thick as some other hot sauces. It’s a blended hot sauce made primarily of red chile peppers, tomatoes and spices.

On the heat scale, it’s not unbearably hot - I can take a lot more heat than this. But it’s pleasant to eat when you’re just hungry but want to add some zing to a bland burrito. It has a mild afterburn, but I wouldn’t call it mild hot sauce. The flavor has a fairly strong cumin or chile powder scent, and a bit of a “raw” taste to it that I suspect some people might not like. I think compared to Tapatio it’s milder and less of a cumin taste to it. But I haven’t tried them side by side.

What I like about it is that it doesn’t have as much of a vinegar taste like some other hot sauces - I mean I dig dashes of Tabasco for certain things like eggs and breakfast skillets, but if you want something to pour liberally on top of your meal then I like Pico Pica better.

Continue reading “Pico Pica Hot Sauce” …

Hello. Ugh, shoulder and back issues again. Despite that, I still decided to try and create a new header for Cheap Eats. See above. Wonderful. Except I foolishly deleted the original photoshop file which necessitated recreating the whole darn thing which did take a toll on my shoulder (also, left-handed mousing for graphics works at the speed of sloth - unless you’re left-handed).

Because of that, pics are all you get again today. Hello, what have we here - it’s homemade “beer” batter fried fish. Actually, I made this so long ago (on desperate days like this I just go through the camera for old pics of food that haven’t been posted yet), that I’ve since forgotten if I actually did use beer in the batter. It might have just been some sort of pancake-type batter instead, perhaps with leftover buttermilk.

In any case, this is much different than the usual flour, egg-wash, panko method that I grew up with. It came out OK - this was my first try at it. I think the type of fish I used was some sort of faux sole. Let’s not get into what I mean by faux sole - but it was cheap. I was pretty surprised how nice the coating turned out, though it looks awfully orange in the photos. I had it with a side of quick-cook couscous. Not a bad lunch, although veggie-less.

Time, time, TIME. There’s little of that today, so here is another cop-out post on vegetables in order to save time. These are actually Crimini (or Cremini, or Baby Portobello, or Portabellini) mushrooms I sliced up and cooked for a bit. Great for toppings on hamburgers and other Cheap Eats.

One of the most distinct memories I have of as a child is going to a mushroom farm. I remember jumping out of The Beast (a pre 1970s Ford Ranger truck, that only got sold last year) and into piles of fertilizer and soil and mushrooms that were just all over the ground. It was pretty insane. If I remember correctly they just scooped you some by the shovelful, dirt and all. I can’t remember exactly, but I think it was very cheap compared to the supermarket.

Anyhow, fast forward to today and you most often see mushrooms packed in those little styrofoam boxes. White button mushrooms are the most common, though portobellos are popular and sold separately. Farmers markets have them too. The thing is - mushrooms are pretty darn expensive, and they have a comparatively short shelf-life. I’m not even going to get into some of the more expensive types of fungi. So you need to look out for sales (Trader Joe’s has them usually for $1.50 to $1.80 which is surprising, but keep in mind they’re unwashed). Or find a mushroom farm - I don’t even know how they run those now or if they let people just walk in and buy some in bulk.

The thing about mushrooms is that they go well with so many breakfast, lunch and dinner recipes that I’m inclined to cut them just a little slack for being such expensive buggers. You just have to remember to use them up in a timely manner. Mushrooms in gravy, omelettes and spaghetti are a favorite for us. Stuffed mushrooms are a lot of work if you use the little ones, but pretty amazing as appetizers. I usually try to plan to use them in at least 2 or 3 meals straight so they don’t have a chance to go bad.

Price: $1.59 for box
Found At: Trader Joe’s
Cheap Eats Score: 6/10

Let’s face it: those reviews of candy, snacks, processed foods and Banquet frozen dinners are way more exciting than simple reviews of fruit and veggies. I get a ton of comments with those reviews, but readers pay less attention to plain old “nature-al” foods. After all there’s only so many epic blog rants that you can write about beets. (To all you beet-lovers out there, I’m not hating on beets!)

Still, with us trying to eat a little healthier (emphasis on the “a little” for me), you might notice some posts added of plain old vegetables in between the pop-tarts and frozen pizza. For instance, here’s some tomatoes.

We’ve recently become addicts of the local farmer’s markets. One thing surprising about a lot of them (at least here in Southern California) is that you might think that since a lot of stuff is pesticide free grown at home or is ultra chic gourmet style, it is more expensive. That’s the case with some of things, but you can also find a lot of locally grown produce for good prices. It’s not ethnic-megamarket bargain basement cheap, but for the quality of the vegetables and fruits it can be pretty decent.

We get a lot of herbs, vegetables and fruits at some cheap prices, much cheaper than the average American Supermarket. These vine ripe tomatoes might have been 3 dollars a pound or so, and would have been sitting in the cold at the market for a long time. When we get them at the farmer’s market we just leave them out instead of putting them in the fridge.

Continue reading “Tomatoes” …

I have been getting so much cereal lately for review. The thing with cereal is that I hate to keep opening new boxes until I’m done with the old ones - otherwise there are 10 boxes of cereal open. And since I don’t eat a TON of cereal for breakfast, they sometimes can go a bit stale.

Which is why I only opened this box of Fiber One Raisin Bran Clusters which I received months ago today. There seems to be a huge push on the whole fiber thing lately for manufacturers. This cereal claims to have 1 1/2 times the bran of standard Kellogg’s Raisin Bran. For me, I’m pretty “regular” and I eat enough of it daily, so it’s not so much of a concern. I guess a little extra doesn’t hurt - although, judging by the number of people who wrote in regarding the Fiber One Chewy Bars you want to go very easy on fiber rich foods when you’re first increasing it in your diet. Otherwise, you’ll have many a date with the throne…

Anyhow, the Fiber One Raisin Bran cereal looks like standard bran flakes with the addition of some raisins and small “clusters” of what I believe are oats and perhaps some almond bits. I’ve since learned not to even attempt to get a box-quality snapshot of cereal with the milk in it (who can compete with using Elmer’s Glue for milk?). So here’s the old spoon and bowl setup shot of just the cereal.

The first thing you get when you open the package is a very strong scent of brown sugar or molasses or honey. It’s a nice smell, but it’s quite powerful. I just poured some straight out of the box into a bowl.

I’m going to have to admit that I had to hunt for a few more raisins and clusters and place them strategically to make the photos look “normal”. The raisins themselves were pretty nice and plump, although pretty skimpy in quantity. Oat Clusters were even worse - I don’t even know why they bother having them in there if they are going to be that size and so scarce. I’ve had quite a few oat clusters cereals in the past, and as far as that goes, this is probably at the bottom as far as the quality and quantity of the clusters. The rest of the cereal is all bran flakes which looked pretty normal and probably above average in quality and size.

Continue reading “Fiber One Raisin” …

Time for another trip down memory lane. It’s been ages since I had Froot Loops - I sort of associate those artificial fruit mini doughnuts with childhood because we used to only have them at my late aunt’s house when we were being babysat overnight. I remember Toucan Sam and his enormous multicolored nose uttering magical phrases like “follow your nose.” I think I may have been confused back then thinking he meant to put the Froot Loops UP your nose. They barely fit at the time. Ah, good times.

*** Disclaimer - I’m not responsible if you stick cereal into your nostrils.

I think the new Fruity Cheerios may be a better candidate for probing your proboscis with, since they are quite a bit smaller. But no, I didn’t try to install these as fruit air fresheners in my nose this time around. General Mills has decided their cereal empire is not quite big enough, necessitating their introduction of these faux-Froot Loops. How do I know they’re taking on Kellogg’s? They say so right on the box, in not so many words. Fruity Cheerios contains “25% less sugar than the leading fruity cereal”. (Addendum - hmm, I can’t confirm they are indeed talking about Froot Loops, but I’ll leave my suspicion as such unless it’s invalidated.)

As I said before, the first thing you notice about Fruity Cheerios (and I guess I’ll give them a little credit for choosing to call it “Fruity” rather than “Frooty”) is that they are quite a bit smaller than Froot Loops. They look just like spray painted Cheerios actually. For colors, they’ve gone with Purple, Green, Red, Yellow and Orange. I’m a little sad they don’t have Blue, because that’s the best flavor of fruit. I forget what colors Froot Loops are, but if memory serves me correctly (in true Iron Chef style) they were pretty similar. But I’ll give 10 Fruity Bonus points to the first commenter to tell me what they are.

Continue reading “Fruity Cheerios” …

I didn’t really feel like posting a whole lot today, but since Tuesday is usually Cheap Eats Posting day here’s a pic of a version of Chile Verde Pork that we make a lot at home. I managed to get an “action” photo this time around with the pork cooking on the stove. This is from about 1/2 way through our recipe; we usually cook the pork (chunks of “country” boneless ribs(?) from Costco) until it really starts to break down. It usually takes at least a couple hours.

I’ll try to get some more Cheap Eats coverage later in the week. For now, my thoughts go out to all the folks affected by the Virginia Tech tragedy yesterday…