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…

I got this Nature Valley Cereal for review in the mail quite awhile ago. My excuse for not reviewing it earlier is that there was no milk in the house. That’s a pretty lame excuse, because I’ve actually been snacking on this cereal plain for quite awhile now. It turns out that I’m just plain lazy.

No milk in the fridge is also the reason that all of the pics below show the cereal plain. This is actually good for pictures because when you pour milk into cereal you don’t have too much time before it starts to get soggy. Plus, I can never get the same sort of composition they do with the cereal perfectly dry on top while sitting in milk. Even more difficult: trying to induce the “magic raspberries” to appear in the cereal for their photo op. Those little suckers are hard to convince to come out of hiding… it seems like all the species of Cereal Fruit are nocturnal or something.

But anyhow, this isn’t a photo blog. You want to hear about the cereal. I’ve been seeing a lot more commercials and in-store displays for Nature Valley. They also have the obligatory “Website That Doesn’t Have Our Name In It So It Must Mean We’re Fer Real”. Seems like a big push to promote it is in the works.

There are two flavors currently - Oats ‘N Honey and Cinnamon. I got the former, which is good because I’m not a huge fan of cinnamon flavored cereal. Well - I probably did have Cinnamon Toast Crunch once in awhile.

The big draw for the cereal is supposed to be the granola bar pieces… I’ve had cereal before that had granola in it, but the pieces in here are actually quite substantial. They’re hexagonal shaped and nearly an inch across - the distribution of the pieces is quite good. I got quite a few in each bowl I poured. The ingredients label says the granola pieces contain whole grain oats, rice and honey, among other things.

I was actually going to take some separate close-up pictures of each of the different pieces and then decided that’s overkill. There are three different types of pieces, the granola bar chunk, a rice and oats dominated flake, and a corn dominated flake. The granola is hexagonal as mentioned. The rice and oats flake is pretty puffy and roughly circular in shape. It has a slight sugary glaze on the top. The corn flake is a bit smaller, more elongated and also coated with a sugar glaze.

Continue reading “Nature Valley Cereal” …

You might have noticed a “disturbing trend” in the last post and this one - is Cheap Eats going to turn into some kind of HEALTHY blog? Where’s all the chips, dips, chains and Banquet Dinners by gum? I want my Artificially Processed Food Product Review!

The truth is that while I’ll always feature the “fun” product stuff, lately I’ve been trying to eat healthier and cook more often. (**Everyone roll eyes** - like we couldn’t see it catching up with you) That might be at odds w/ the overall mission of the blog - but then again, this isn’t a magazine. And truth be told some of the cheapest foods can be healthy, or at least I’m trying to convince myself of that.

(By the way, I’ve learned they took the Trans Fat out of Girl Scout Cookies recently - so now you can eat all the boxes you want…)

Anyhow, I’ll try to keep it interesting no matter what the subject material and still throw in junk food reviews every so often. Uh, so you’re not tempted to turn me off and go and watch the latest Lowest Common Denominator chump (or chumpette) on American Idol. But the meals of hot dogs and frozen salisbury steak every night are probably over..

Like the versatile potato, you can get a lot of mileage out of Asian Vegetables. I’m calling them asian vegetables even though I think most of them may actually have English names… but where I live they’re sold at the Chinese market and are called by their Chinese names.

If you happen to live near an Asian specialty market, there are a ton that you can try out at pretty spectacularly cheap prices. They work pretty well in stir frys or steamed/boiled - like you would do broccoli or spinach. The ones that I’ve had most commonly (and the spelling on these vary widely, I’m not Chinese so feel free to correct it) in restaurants and at home are Bok Choy, On Choy, Gai Lan, Napa cabbage and Yu Choy.

One of my favorite things lately is to heat up some main dish restaurant leftovers from the previous night and then steam or stir fry a bunch of Yu Choy. I think this has various spellings as well including “Yao Choy” and “Yu Choi” (and maybe also known as “green Choy Sum”?). And actually, I believe it’s a variety of the Edible Rape vegetable (a super unfortunate name for a veggie if there ever was one).

Continue reading “Asian Vegetables” …

Oh wonderful Potato, how do I love thee let me count the Ways. And so on and so forth.

Seriously, though. Here on Thee Cheap Eats Channel you might think we’re more likely to talk about Potato CHIPS rather than potatoes. To be sure, those Lays may be way sexier and crunchier. But it’s difficult to beat the simple potato in terms of cooking versatility and longevity in the cupboard.

I had actually planned a big potato extravaganza entry, partly at the urging of several readers who wrote in to complain that their favorite starchy tuber was absent from the Cheap Eats listings. It would have involved a hot potato contest and people dressed up as Mr. Potato Head. But I got sidetracked by all the frozen dinners and free food items winging their way to our house recently.

Actually, very early on I DID mention a booklet I picked up called 250 Ways Of Serving Potatoes. So it’s not like we’re ignoring them completely.

I happen to be a big potato guy, er, no I don’t mean a couch potato. I mean I really like potatoes and will probably choose them over carrots any day (this makes things very easy at our house because my wife likes the carrots. No fights over veggies = a happy meal. No, not the McDonald’s kind!). I like them baked, twice-baked, mashed, smashed, fried, boiled, stuffed, scalloped, as potato salad, and in soup.

By the way, I was seriously considering a wholesale misspelling of the word “potatoe” as in the Dan Quayle lexicon just to see how many schoolkids would write in to correct me.

So, lately I’ve been trying to get away from Fried Potatoes and have discovered that baking them in the microwave is quite relaxing. By relaxing, I mean that you can just wash and scrub up a potato, forkerize it liberally and microwave it on the “potato” setting. No brain cells required, and it’s very quick. And probably better for you.

The first time I did this I was pretty surprised how well it turned out. I expected the potato to be sorta hard on the inside, but forking the hell out of it seems to help quite a bit. I don’t know how you like your baked potato but I subscribe to the “more cheese please” school of potato kung fu.

Continue reading “Potatoes” …

OMG. WTF. It has been colder than a Witch’s Frozen Banquet Dinner where I live. Yes, I represent the wimpiness that is Southern California’s winters. It got down to 29 degrees F the other night. Man! Ok, stop laughing now.

I can’t believe I actually haven’t done a feature on Quesadillas yet. I know I’ve posted about them as fast food before (believe it was Del Taco’s, which tasted like crap boogers to me). But the humble quesadilla is a great staple here at Cheap Eats and for many grocery-challenged denizens around the world.

I was going to write up a lame “recipe” for it a la the infamous Ghetto food line that was so popular. But in the interest of time, I’ll just say: take two flour tortillas and some cheese that melts. Layer them in a pan. Cook. Done.

Ok, so there’s generally a good deal more going on for most quesadillas. But you get the gist of it. There are several great things about quesadillas, but two of my favorite are that they are massively movable (i.e. portable) and they function as both snacks and meals. Many a long and boring commute to UCLA was livened up by a quesadilla in one hand and KXLU on the radio dial. How does the Dr. Seuss rhyme go? I would eat them in a house, I would eat them with a mouse. I would eat Quesadillas stuffed with ham, I would eat them Sam I Am…

Continue reading “Quesadillas” …

There’s probably nothing that will bias me more toward giving a food item a favorable review than it being free. When the jig is up, and you’re found out to be pandering something unworthy of a good Cheap Eats score, you can always fall back on it being free…

Like these Yoplait Whips (sorry in advance, Charlie). I got coupons for 3 of these free yogurt novelties awhile back. It actually took quite awhile to get a hold of them because they happened to be out for weeks at both of the grocery stores near me. And when I did pick them up, the crusty checkout lady gave me the evil eye and said “Did you print this off the internet?”

I had to explain to her that I review food. That seemed to placate her, though she did go to her supervisor to okay them. She also seemed in a hurry to get rid of me. Man, food reviewers get no respect. Or maybe I didn’t use deodorant that day.

I ended up getting the tower of three yogurt whips above: Dulce de Leche, Key Lime Pie and Strawberry Mist. They call this whipped yogurt “lowfat yogurt mousse”. I’m not so familiar with mousse, except the kind we used in the 80s in hair. I was sort of expecting maybe something along the lines of Cool Whip. I really don’t know.

(If I was writing for The Impulsive Buy, it would be at this point I would make some nice tie-in about chains and whips to jazz up the review.)

Here is the thing with the Yoplait Whips. Since the flavors and content of the yogurt exist in “normal” unwhipped versions as well, and they’re the same price, the only thing new to talk about here is the texture. And in my opinion, that texture was simply AWFUL.

I tried the Dulce De Leche Yoplait Whips first. I’m not going to get into what this looks like here, but do you know that Radiohead song “Fake Plastic Trees”? Now, replace “trees” with something less tree-like and more dog poo-like.

In their defense, as with all of these single serving yogurt cups, you’re not meant to dump the contents out into a clear custard dish like I did. But yeah, that consistency is like inconsistent curdled milk. The mouthfeel is sort of like someone mixed up cool whip with yogurt… in their mouth and spit it back into the cup.

I actually rather dig the normal Dulce De Leche flavored Yoplait. It has a nice caramel-ish flavor that’s a bit tangy and is rich enough without being overpowering.

Continue reading “Yoplait Whips” …

It’s funny how sometimes the people who write into Cheap Eats are on a mighty similar wavelength. In the past couple of months I have had not 1 person, but FOUR people write in asking why I haven’t featured the lowly but economically friendly Banana yet.

The answer is: Bananas just aren’t that sexy to write about. Oh, wait. Never mind - I’m not touching THAT one with a ten foot pole. Oh, wait… now I said POLE. Hurhhh.

Truthfully, bananas are just so excellent as Cheap Eats that I put it in that category of “Save For Rainy Day, When There Is Nothing Else To Write About.”

Today is definitely not rainy, and there are a ton of other food items backlogged at Cheap Eats. But I figured I’d better write about it since there were so many people who wanted to hear about it.

The Banana - Portable. Comes in it’s own wrapper. Kid friendly. Nutritious. Exercise pick-me-up. Damn cheap. Year round imports from warmer climes. Can be used in desserts. Overripe ones can be used in Banana bread. Green ones (or plantains) can be fried (yum).

It is seriously cheap… even at places like Trader Joe’s. I was there the other day and they were selling some really nice ones for like 15 cents or something each. They can be found in ethnic markets for even cheaper. I tend to buy them green unless they’re going to be eaten the same day. I sort of like eating bananas that are just on the cusp of turning yellow. Once they start getting speckled, I hand it off to my wife.

Continue reading “Bananas Are Cheap” …