{"id":229,"date":"2009-11-08T18:21:16","date_gmt":"2009-11-08T22:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/halfton.withbloodandthunder.com\/?p=229"},"modified":"2010-01-30T19:23:14","modified_gmt":"2010-01-30T23:23:14","slug":"eating-at-home-cost-effective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/halfton.withbloodandthunder.com\/?p=229","title":{"rendered":"Eating at home = Cost Effective."},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been somewhat lazy with writing lately and I am unsure why. \u00a0The reason may be that I will be moving shortly and anxiety is driving me from devoting time here. \u00a0Or perhaps I have some mysterious disease that keeps me from writing. Or the most likely situation, I get really fucking lazy and just don’t devote the time to writing something worthwhile. \u00a0Anyhoob, I have a couple of restaurants that I’ve taken photos at and have some short notes on but I have neglected to write anything substantial about them. \u00a0The positive thing is that I’m writing again. \u00a0So without further ado…<\/p>\n

I decided to review a meal I made at home. \u00a0Specifically a samich I made. \u00a0One thing to note, I love junk food. \u00a0I seriously love junk food. Pizza, burgers, tacos, wings, Thai, American influenced Chinese food… shit, you name it and chances are that I like it. \u00a0So, on a lazy Sunday I sometimes get lazy and order something or pick something greasy up from a drive through. Today, I was strong and picked up some fresh goods from the store, made a healthy meal, and arguably ended up having something tastier and likely ended up more satisfied\/satiated. \u00a0The bonus of eating at home as I’m sure everyone knows, you generally get fresher products and you spend far less than you would going out.<\/p>\n

I do most of my shopping at Publix. \u00a0Publix is a chain of grocery stores that started in Florida and is only available in the South. \u00a0According to Wikipedia, Publix can be found in Florida<\/a>,\u00a0Georgia<\/a>,\u00a0South Carolina<\/a>,\u00a0Tennessee<\/a>, and\u00a0Alabama<\/a>. For those of you from the North, it’s similar to a classier Kroger. \u00a0You can see a Kroger akin to Publix located in the Detroit area (Coolidge north of 14 Mile). \u00a0The only other way I can relate Publix would be to call it a less-hip Wholefoods. \u00a0It’s also considerably less expensive. \u00a0Publix does carry a decent amount of organic foods, at a premium of course. \u00a0Why am I describing Publix? \u00a0The reason is that I believe to make a great samich, you need to have great resources or components to include. \u00a0If possible I like to hit up one of the fruit\/veggie stands to get my greens (as well as fruits), but Publix is a good stand-in when you can’t make it there. \u00a0A bonus of making it to the fruit\/veggie stand is that you generally spend less and you generally get a larger amount of fruit or vegetables to pick from. \u00a0Here is what I used to make my samich:<\/p>\n

First, the bread. \u00a0I love a great Rye bread or a Pumpernickel\/Rye swirl. Depending on what you’re having, sourdough can also be great. \u00a0Unfortunately Publix didn’t have a great selection of fresh baked bread so I opted for Pepperidge Farm’s seeded rye. \u00a0Apparently this bread is ‘Jewish Rye’, I’m guessing it was somehow Chosen<\/em>? In a literal sense I did choose<\/span> the bread, and placed it in my basket so maybe that’s their angle:<\/p>\n

\"the<\/a><\/p>\n

The kicker for me after the bread is the primary component of the samich. \u00a0What should you slap between those 2 slices of carbs? \u00a0Why not something you love? \u00a0I happen to love pepper, thus I love Pastrami. \u00a0There is nothing better than a meat that has been brined, smoked, and then encrusted with pepper, garlic, coriander, paprika, cloves, allspice and mustard. \u00a0It lends a bit of crunch as well as some kick. \u00a0Today, I decided to go low-cal and got the Turkey Pastrami. \u00a0Publix offers their brand of lunch meats that are mediocre yet passable, but they also offer Boar’s Head. \u00a0Boar’s Head isn’t cheap but it’s worth the price… it’s like the difference between a hotdog and a good bratwurst. \u00a0The first will do if you’re in a bind for cash or it’s all you have but unless you’re 5 years old, you’ll probably want the meat that isn’t composed of tails and assholes.<\/p>\n

\"turkey<\/a><\/p>\n

Now, to take a samich worthy of putting in your mouth you need to add toppings. \u00a0I happen to love anything green and I wanted some crunch today. \u00a0I went with Alfalfa Sprouts, Cucumber, Tomato, and Baby Spinach. \u00a0The other direction I sometimes take is to add Avocado (in which case I’d skip cheese) or include pickles. \u00a0You can substitute Baby Spinach with some other leafy green like Romaine Hearts or Iceburg Lettuce, but I like the substantive taste and texture of fresh leaf-Spinach. \u00a0To note, I also added Swiss to top off the mix.<\/p>\n

\"the<\/a><\/p>\n

\"the<\/a><\/p>\n

\"partial<\/a><\/p>\n

\"baby<\/a><\/p>\n

\"the<\/a><\/p>\n

I don’t think it’s necessary to include this, but perhaps some folks don’t know… with Pastrami you always go with Mustard. \u00a0In particular, you should be using a Brown Mustard, it has a kick that normal mustard won’t deliver and will round out your samich.<\/p>\n

\"the<\/a><\/p>\n

For sides to my samich I included some fresh carrots, cucumber slices and stuffed Green Olives. \u00a0The olives were stuffed with Blue Cheese and tossed in some olive oil.<\/p>\n

\"the<\/a><\/p>\n

Now that you’ve been introduced to the components of my samich here is the assembled beast:<\/p>\n

\"Open<\/a><\/p>\n

\"closed<\/a><\/p>\n

I love this samich because it has a little bit of kick from the meat and the brown mustard, but it also carries a diverse range of textures. \u00a0The sprouts add a somewhat earthy flavor that gets balanced by the clean flavor of the cucumber and the juiciness of the tomato. \u00a0The baby spinach added a great degree of roughage as well as added it’s own great flavor. \u00a0The olives were salty and acidic but were balanced well by the strong blue cheese. This is a samich I would highly recommend to anyone that loves a little bit of kick and is open to anything that will please the taste buds.<\/p>\n

[rating:5]<\/p>\n

-Matt in Tampa<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been somewhat lazy with writing lately and I am unsure why. \u00a0The reason may […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,23,191,26,55,22,164,81],"tags":[360,88,86,90,91,359,354,83,82,89,85,87,84],"class_list":["post-229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-affordable","category-delicious","category-eatingathome","category-enjoyable","category-inexpensive","category-mattreview","category-restaurants","category-turkey","tag-affordable","tag-alfalfa-sprouts","tag-baby-spinach","tag-brown-mustard","tag-cost-effective","tag-delicious","tag-dining-in","tag-pastrami","tag-publix","tag-rye-bread","tag-spinach","tag-sprouts","tag-turkey-pastrami"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/halfton.withbloodandthunder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/halfton.withbloodandthunder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/halfton.withbloodandthunder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halfton.withbloodandthunder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halfton.withbloodandthunder.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=229"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/halfton.withbloodandthunder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":243,"href":"https:\/\/halfton.withbloodandthunder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229\/revisions\/243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/halfton.withbloodandthunder.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halfton.withbloodandthunder.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halfton.withbloodandthunder.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}