Great Groceries!

So, grocery store free samples work! I was taking a gander through Giant the other day. Unwisely, I always go to the grocery when I'm hungry. So, when I saw the free salsa samples with multigrain chips, I decided to try it out. The salsa was not the jarred variety, but fresh! It was excellent, and it goes really nicely in salad. It has enough spice that the salad can be lightly dressed. My second is example is a bit attenuated. I was at Whole Foods the other day and was looking for good snacks. Sometimes my parents come over to help with our house renovations, and they always complain that I have no snacks. Whole Foods was giving out samples of kettle corn. I couldn't find the brand that was being given away as samples, so bought the store brand instead. It was delicious! Sweet and salty and lowfat. Finally, on a random parting note, Welch's has a new juice 100% juice out. It's Black Cherry Concord Grape. Totally yummy!

Garlic Fest

There are two schools of thought on garlic. Some people view garlic as a crutch, while others think that you can never really over-garlic anything. Aside from eating garlic raw, I've never had anything that I thought was too garlicky. I love garlic. It's universal and appears in so many different types of cuisine. A week ago, I went to the H-Mart (Korean market) and bought already peeled whole cloves of garlic. It was awesome! Apparently, pressing garlic takes away from the flavor, so ideally, it should be minced. I used to buy the jars of minced garlic, but it just doesn't taste the same as the fresh stuff. I then moved on to pressing because it doesn't require that the cloves be peeled. The peeled whole cloves are great because I can just throw a whole bunch in the mini food processor and have a ton of minced garlic in seconds. A warning, though. The peeled cloves make the whole fridge smell like garlic, so I'm trying to work on a way to contain the smell...

Humane Chocolate

I recently made vegan chocolate chip cookies, and I used Guittard chocolate chips. They were awesome! As good, if not better than Nestle's, which I love (but aren't vegan).