food

Give yourself a present for Christmas 2011: A well-stocked pantry.

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The food ads are mighty attractive at this time of year even up here in Anchorage, where prices are noticeably higher than in the Lower 48.

A few of the items currently being offered at decent sale prices: bacon, eggs, cheese, soup, canned tomatoes, flour, chicken broth, coffee, yams, canned and plain frozen vegetables, crackers (I’m partial to the cracked pepper and olive oil Triscuits), potatoes, butter, apples and canned beans.

The idea is to get us to buy extra ingredients for holiday meals and those homemade sweets. But why not buy extra ingredients for ourselves?

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Christmas 2011: Ho-ho-homemade sweets.

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Since getting my candy/jelly thermometer from Amazon.com recently I have learned a new and entirely dangerous skill: making caramels for Christmas gifts.

I know they are dangerous because:

  • Somebody had to scrape out all candy that stuck to the saucepan, right?
  • I couldn’t in good conscience give a gift without making sure it tasted OK.

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Ain’t no tomato like a Jersey tomato.

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Yesterday I bought a couple of tomatoes. I shouldn’t have: They were mushy and nearly flavorless. It was like eating catsup-tinged oatmeal.

Or maybe I’m just comparing them against the love apples I ate for a couple of weeks while visiting my dad, which would be unfair. Ain’t no tomato like a Jersey tomato.

Most people perceive New Jersey as merely a bedroom community for Noo Yawk, a state defined by traffic-jammed highways, obnoxious accents and, thanks to the creators of “The Sopranos” and “Jersey Shore,” organized crime and tippling imbeciles.

Fact is, New Jersey’s motto is “The Garden State.” We South Jerseyites considered North Jersey “The Garbage State.”

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Goal-oriented groceries.

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Yesterday I filmed my first “Ask A Money Expert” video for MSN Money. I’d done several videos for MSN in the past, but this is a different format: Readers post questions on Facebook, to be answered by people like Jim Jubak and Liz Pulliam Weston. And now by me too, also (as the cat from Mutts would say).

The challenge was giving good information succinctly, since I had just 3½ minutes to answer a trio of questions. I’ll post the link once the finished product is available. In the meantime, I want to talk about one of the responses I gave.

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A real armpit of a place.

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Last evening we visited the Forget-Me-Not Nursery in Indian, Alaska, then got a guided tour of plantings at the Alyeska Resort in Girdwood. Really, though, it was just an excuse to enjoy a sunny summer-evening drive along beautiful Turnagain Arm.

All that scenery made us hungry. On the way back we stopped by a local eatery, the Turnagain Arm Pit BBQ. I haven’t had that much fun since downing the Salmon Dill Dough Pizza up in Talkeetna.

 

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