Grocery Shopping in Boston

Finding good deals on grocery items isn't an easy task in Boston. I have definitely learned a lot about how to be a smart shopper in just a few weeks. Here's how the process went.

-First stop: Stop & Shop -- this is owned by Giant, so I thought the prices would be pretty decent. Attempting to stock up my fridge since I had nothing, I went to one close by. I came home with juice, 3 bananas, and a loaf of bread... not exactly "stocking up". Everything was way more expensive than back home! Even ramen noodles were more expensive! I did find out that you can use a Giant card at the Stop & Shop, and it works just fine.

-Attempt #2: Shaw's -- this must be a northern thing. Their prices were better... if things were on sale, then they were prices that I would be willing to pay when I was living in D.C., but they weren't sales that rivaled the "good" sales in D.C. They do double coupons up to 99 cents, though!

-Third try: Target -- their food prices seem pretty stable to what you'd see in other areas. Their sales on food are nationwide, so that is another advantage. I found a few great buys on clearance items, but not everything at Target is always a great deal.

-Numero Quatro: Market Basket -- finally!! I was talking with my landlord and his wife about the best place to buy groceries. They highly recommended Market Basket as having the most reasonable prices in town, and although I have to drive a bit of a ways to get there (meaning it is a weekend-only kind of place), I was actually able to stock up on food! Some of their prices are even lower than what I have seen in D.C. (although some are still higher). At least I will now be able to eat more than just PB&J all the time!

-#5: Trader Joe's -- I can walk there, and there are always a few staples that I like to get: 100% durum semolina pasta for 99 cents a package, their tasty minestrone soup, frozen naan, and jarred masala simmer sauce.

So, it took a while, but I finally found some places in Boston that will be able to serve my needs as a poor graduate student while still eating semi-healthily. Now the challenge is to see whether I will have the time to actually eat once I am loaded down with law school classes!

Pollo Guisado

One of my absolute favorite foods in the whole world is pollo guisado. It is delicious, fall-off-the-bone tender chicken in an amazingly flavorful broth. You can look up a bunch of authentic recipes online, but this is how I make my own version in the slow cooker, in somewhat of a "healthified" way. All the ingredients you may not have, you should be able to easily buy in the international section of most supermarkets or definitely in a Latino supermarket, for very little. They are also good ingredients to have around to flavor other dishes (especially the adobo).

Ingredients:

• 2-4 heaping spoonfuls of sofrito (either buy the can or make it using a recipe online)
• 1-2 packets of sazon goya
• 1 green bell pepper
• 2 cups water
• A few tablespoons of adobo seasoning (buy or make your own blend with seasonings you already have)
• 2-3 carrots
• 1 onion (yellow or white)
• Chicken (any cut) equivalent to 4 chicken leg quarters, with or without skin/bones

Start out by locating your slow cooker/crock pot. If you have a small one, you can always halve the recipe, but I have a large one so I like to make a lot at a time. Add the water, sofrito, and sazon to the pot and mix them up to combine. Smell the broth. If you want more flavor, add some. At this point, you can crank up your crock pot to get it heating up. Generally, go with the high setting if you are leaving it for half a day, or the low setting if it can cook all day.

Next, prepare the chicken. I used bone-in chicken leg quarters and cut them up to separate thighs and drumsticks.  I took the skin off to make it healthier, but it will be more flavorful if you leave the skin on. You can also do this with more lean cuts of chicken (like boneless skinless chicken breasts), but just remember that fat adds flavor! Once you have the chicken prepared, sprinkle each piece with adobo on all sides, and add the chicken to the slow cooker.

 I prefer to add the pepper, onion, and carrot towards the end of the cooking process (about 2 hours before I'm going to eat it) so that they aren't too soft, but that's personal preference. Cut the veggies up into bite-sized pieces before adding them in. You can always add them sooner if you won't be around until you're ready to eat it, too. If you get around to it, stir the contents of the crock pot every so often to get all the flavors melded together.

 At this point, your home will smell like heaven... Yum. About 20 or so minutes before you're ready to eat, cook up some white rice (just not the sticky kind) in your rice cooker. I went with basmati rice, because I had some around. Now add some rice to your plate or bowl, and top it with the pollo guisado (don't forget to add some of the broth!). Eat up.

A more authentic variation on this recipe would be to add chunks of potato in with the chicken to cook, but I was trying to reduce the number of carbs in this meal. Make this recipe your own by adding different veggies (red pepper, etc). Enjoy!

Allergies

I wasn't one of those kids who didn't eat their vegetables. I actually like most vegetables, and always have. During the holidays, we always had seaweed salad, california rolls, and other foods you wouldn't normally see next to the turkey and mashed potatoes. My parents always encouraged me to try any kind of food. Eating is something of an adventure, and I consider myself to have had a pretty broad range of experiences with food -- raw beef, pork, egg, lobster, and shrimp; sea cucumber, snake, alligator, etc. I think these experiences are the reason why I am so bothered that after all of these years without any food allergies, one suddenly crops up.

Knowing that I have a food allergy kind of scares me as far as trying other new foods in the future. What if the next time I try a food that I happen to be allergic to, the reaction is much more severe? What if I am allergic to all the other fruits in the same genus? I'm still going to try new and different foods, but I probably won't be quite as uninhibited about it. This new-found allergy is to jackfruit. The national fruit of Bangladesh, in case you were wondering. After chomping down on a few morsels, I was thinking "yum, how tasty"... and then these weird sensations started happening. My throat started getting itchy. I started experiencing discomfort when swallowing. Then it felt like there were needles in my throat. Not a good sign, obviously.

I swallowed a few antihistamine tablets, took a nap, and felt better once I woke up. Let's hope this same thing doesn't happen with any future food adventures.

Happy August!

Since it's August, I decided that such a lovely month deserves a little bit of a theme. I've been doing a lot of cooking at home lately, which involves trying to plan ahead with meals and using mostly items that can be stored long-term to buy them when they are the cheapest. The fresh produce and perishable items I buy dictate a lot of what I am making.

By grongar via Wikimedia Commons

So this month's theme is food!

I'm going to try and put some of my best ideas... many of them being modified versions of recipes I've found on different websites. The fewer [quickly] perishable ingredients, the better. Items like shredded cheese and salad dressing I don't really consider perishable, because they tend to last a long while before going bad.

This Creamy Seafood Lasagna recipe from Food.com went over very well with my family. Since I make mine using a 9x9 baking dish rather than a special lasagna dish, I end up halving the recipe. For three people, that amount lasted for two meals when I had a small side salad or bread served with it.

Yum!

The [relatively] expensive ingredients: I buy imitation crab meat and shrimp and freeze them when they go on sale at Harris Teeter, buy one get one free or better. Most of the other ingredients were ones that I would already have anyway, except for half-and-half and ricotta cheese. When I saw both of these items go on sale at the same time a couple of weeks ago, I knew it was time to try out the recipe.

The changes: I didn't' have an onion, so I just left that out. I used wheat flour instead of all-purpose to try and make it a little healthier. I also added a little less half-and-half and a little more canned chicken stock for the same reason. Looking through my freezer, I found some squid and added that in to the seafood mixture. Instead of buying mozzarella and parmesan, I just bought one of those bags with the mixed Italian cheeses. I also used dried parsley rather than fresh. When making the ricotta mixture, I also added some Italian seasoning to flavor things up a bit.

The preparation: For those of us relatively new to cooking -- layer of sauce, layer of lasagna noodles, layer of ricotta mixture, layer of seafood -- Repeat -- add cheese to the top. The end. If you know the general idea of making a lasagna, the only differences about this one are that you have to make the sauce rather than opening up a can and the meat portion isn't already in the sauce. It doesn't actually take very long, either. Just follow the recipe and make any substitutions you want. Because the shrimp and squid I used for this were raw in the bag, I just added them that way to the lasagna and they cooked up just fine in the oven.

So this is why I'm fat?

I'm not exactly sure how I feel about this... but it was strange enough that I wanted to share.
http://thisiswhyyourefat.tumblr.com
To be honest, I don't really find this spaghetti & meatballs cake to be all that appetizing.

Chocolate cake covered in spaghetti icing, with Ferrero Roche meatballs smothered with raspberry sauce.

Just Hungry

One of my favorite foodie blogs is Just Hungry. This is the perfect blog to visit if you have thought about trying to cook Japanese food but don't know where to start. The recipes are all very authentic and cover a huge variety of food types (from the Japanese food you're probably familiar with to things that you didn't even know existed). There are even guides to help you cook rice properly, make your own tofu, or understand the plethora of different types of rice.

Sukiyaki - One of my favorites!

A closely-related side project is Just Bento. I for one get board of packing a sandwich every day for lunch - and this is a great alternative to that. There are some great [healthy] ideas on the site, and not just for what you would assume to be specifically Japanese foods.

Spring vegetable bento with jumping fish - so cute!

And just in case you prefer actual cookbooks to online blogs, there is a Just Bento cookbook!

Rockhopper Penguins in Rehab

Have you ever wondered what is actually involved in cleaning up after an oil spill? I found this slide show on the BBC News website to be very interesting. I hadn't even heard about this recent oil spill!

According to Wikipedia:
On March 16, 2011, the Maltese-registered freighter MS Oliva ran aground on Nightingale Island, spilling tons of heavy crude into the ocean. The crew was rescued, but the ship broke up, leaving an oil slick that surrounded the island, threatening its population of rockhopper penguins.  Nightingale Island has no fresh water, so the penguins are being transported to Tristan da Cunha for cleaning.

Stevia in the Raw

I'll admit it... I'm a pretty picky eater. It doesn't matter that I've had rattle snake, raw beef and pork, beef tongue and brain, and sea cucumber. There are still some everyday foods that I avoid. One of those things happens to be sugar substitutes. Diet sodas just aren't worth the difference in taste for me. Splenda, Equal, Sweet N' Low? Not my thing. I'd rather not have a drink that tastes like chemicals and has a weird aftertaste, thanks.

Photo of Sugar Packets: Rama

Now my point is not to get into the debate over high-fructose corn syrup (I'll leave that for another post). But being from the south, I do like my drinks sweet, y'all. I don't really see the point of unsweetened iced tea. As much of a skeptic as I am about no-calorie sweeteners, I can definitely say I was pleasantly surprised by Stevia in the Raw. After trying it on a whim one day when Michael decided to buy a package, I've actually gotten to the point that I put it in my hot tea at work on a daily basis. Although I wasn't really looking for something to help reduce my caloric intake, I guess it doesn't hurt either.

Some of the things I like about Stevia in the Raw:

• It is sweeter than sugar, so I can substitute my 2-3 packets of sugar for ~½ to ¾ of a packet of Stevia in the Raw.
• With a smaller amount needed, I don't have the issue with it not dissolving in cold drinks as much as with sugar.
• 100% natural product -- made from the extract of the Stevia plant.
• It's good for diabetics, kosher, and gluten free.

Let's not get carried away, though. It's not perfect:

• Although it's been available in Japan since the 1950s without any detected issues, there are still some potential risks, but most seem to be related to consuming way too much of it.
• It's not expensive, but not particularly cheap, either.
• Because it's 300-400x sweeter than sugar, a corn derivative (dextrose) is added to dilute the sweetness of the Stevia packet -- and I'm not exactly convinced that I need any more corn-based products in my diet.

There is currently a coupon on Stevia in the Raw's website for anyone interesting it trying it out!

Yelp Review: University Dive Center

University Dive Center (Charlottesville, VA): 4 Stars

If you are looking for a dive center to get SCUBA certified in Charlottesville, University Dive Center is your best bet. They have the best price in the area, and they also offer a discount for UVA students -- their advanced dive courses are also well priced. They do NAUI certifications in just a couple of weeks with night and weekend instruction.

Lynn, the instructor, is also an M.D. -- so she is very knowledgeable both about SCUBA in general and any associated health issues for those who many be concerned about that. All of the instructors are pretty friendly and helpful. The pool instruction was done at the AFC at UVA (Aquatic and Fitness Center). The worst part about the certification process was by far the open water dives. The quarry that the Dive Center uses was freeeeezing. It felt more like ice diving to me. I literally got continuous horrible cramps in my legs from being in the cold water, even though I was in a full wetsuit and hood. I would highly recommend trying to take the course in the fall rather than the spring, so that there is at least some hope that the summer months have warmed up the water a bit.

Topping Off the Tank

Some very important and interesting facts from the EPA:

-When the gas pump nozzle clicks off automatically, do you add a little more gas to round off your dollar sale?
Topping off your gas tank is bad for the environment and your wallet.

• Topping off the gas tank can result in your paying for gasoline that is fed back into the station's tanks because your gas tank is full. The gas nozzle automatically clicks off when your gas tank is full. In areas of ozone nonattainment, gas station pumps are equipped with vapor recovery systems that feed back gas vapors into their tanks to prevent vapors from escaping into the air and contributing to air pollution. Any additional gas you try to pump into your tank may be drawn into the vapor line and fed back into the station’s storage tanks. 
• You need extra room in your gas tank to allow the gasoline to expand. If you top off your tank, the extra gas may evaporate into your vehicle’s vapor collection system. That system may become fouled and will not work properly causing your vehicle to run poorly and have high gas emissions.
• Gasoline vapors are harmful to breathe. Gasoline vapors contribute to bad ozone days and are a source of toxic air pollutants such as benzene. Evaporation from the spillage of gas from overfilling can occur, contributing to the air pollution problem. Remember you pay for the gas that evaporates or is spilled on the ground.
• Topping off your gas tank may foul the station's vapor recovery system. Adding more gas after the nozzle has automatically shut off can cause the station's vapor recovery system to operate improperly. This contributes to the air pollution problem and may cause the gas pump to fail to work for the next person. 

Sustainable Seafood Consumption

Figuring out how to be an environmentally-conscious consumer is important, but let's not kid ourselves --- it's also complicated. Especially when it comes to seafood. Some fish species are best to buy farm-raised, others are recommended wild-caught only, and some just shouldn't be consumed at all because of the state of the fisheries.

Salmon farming is a great example of this problem. So we don't want to over fish the wild populations of salmon, so why not just farm them? Well, farming can actually harm the wild populations in some cases. Crowding together fish in such a small area causes diseases to become epidemics, where as in the wild the diseases would be kept at low levels by predation on the sick ones. Huge groups of farmed salmon infected with sea lice cause wild salmon to have a higher likelihood of catching the parasite, with greater amounts of sea lice being transported to waters around the farmed salmons' cages. So not only does the farming hurt the local environment because it produces so much waste contamination in the water from the huge masses of fish that would not normally be there, but it also hurts the wild salmon by infecting them with parasites. You can learn more here.

Poor baby salmon. :(

Since we all want our descendants to be able to enjoy these species once we are long gone, but realistically, there is no way for us to research all of this intricate information on all species of fish we purchase at the grocery store or at a restaurant, I'd like to encourage the world to take advantage of the following tool. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has created a sustainable seafood guide to help consumers purchase wisely. Through either an online guide, printable pocket guide for your wallet, or mobile guide for your smart phone, the vast majority of the work is done for us. I can just whip out my phone if I am thinking about purchasing some fish at the grocery store, and the guide will give me a good idea as to what my best options are. Even some grocers that tout themselves as more environmentally conscious, like Whole Foods, still offer seafood options labeled as "Avoid" by the Seafood Watch Guide -- so as consumers, we have to be conscious of this all the time. Fish are yummy, so we might as well keep them around as long as possible and try to avoid population collapse.

Adopting a Greyhound

I recently posted a (5 Star!) yelp review on Greyhound Welfare, the greyhound rescue and placement group I went through to adopt my dog. They have a very stringent process for adopting a dog from them, which includes both a phone interview and an at-home visit with one of the volunteers. All of their dogs are kept with a foster "parent" before they are adopted, which helps them adjust to home life after they come off of the track. Looking back and realizing that Michael and I adopted Sonja about a year and a half ago, I can't image what my life would be like without her!

We knew right away when we met her at a greyhound meet-up event that she was the dog for us. Even though there are plenty of dogs to adopt, we actually had to compete with two other families to adopt her!  She is so pretty (we preferred the fawn color) and has a very loving personality. She was only two years old when we adopted her, so we should have her for quite a long time with their typical lifespan of 12-15 years.

Fun Facts about Sonja:

• Her track name was "She's Got Rhythm". She was known as "She She" by the foster family before we adopted her.
• She doesn't play with dog toys. She doesn't really see the point of those weird stuffed animals. I guess that's also why she has never tried to destroy anything around the house either!
• She is very calm and loves laying around the house, especially if she has a fluffy bed to lay on. She is definitely not a hyperactive dog.
• When we take her to the dog park, she is never interested in running unless it's snowing! She prefers to just sniff around... and act like she doesn't know you when you call her name.
• She knows the following commands: sit, lay down, stay, up, no, kennel up, eat.
• We don't allow her on the couch or to eat human food -- especially when we first got her, she had a very sensitive stomach (I'll spare you the details...)!
• She has her track information tattooed on the inside of her ears from her racing days. Knowing that she was meant to be a pet, she only raced a few times and came in last or second to last in all of them.
• I am very proud of how patient she is with children and other dogs when they annoy her. Having three toddlers petting you all at once is a lot of commotion!

Here are some interesting facts and quirks about greyhounds:

• They are already crate trained when you adopt them, so there is no frustration with the housebreaking part of adopting a new pet!
• They can never be let off leash unless they are in an enclosed area; as sighthounds, they can't be redirected once they get their eyes on something they want to chase.
• Many of them (including Sonja) love to lean against you while they are being petted.
• It's not common for greyhounds to bark. Literally, I've heard Sonja bark 4 times since we've had her.
• They have pretty thin skin and bleed easily, so it's very important to be careful with their tails. It's not uncommon for a vet to have to amputate a greyhound's tail if it is caught in a screen door and starts bleeding.
• You can't house your greyhound outside in a doghouse - their skin and fur are too thin, plus they don't have much body fat.
• Because they have slender necks and heads, greyhounds have to wear a specific type of collar when on a leash (martingale collar).
• They don't have the issues with inbreeding and genetic physical problems that some breeds have.
• In comparison to most breeds, greyhounds have a very different blood chemistry, so it is important to find a vet who is at least somewhat familiar with the breed.
• Greyhounds can run up to 45 miles per hour (if they want to!)

Can you guess which one is Sonja?!

Yelp Review: Hot Yoga Bikram Tysons

Hot Yoga Bikram Tysons (McLean, VA): 5 Stars

I had my first Bikram experience at this studio, and I love this place. If it weren't so inconvenient to get to from where I live and work, I would make this my home studio.

I had been thinking about trying Bikram yoga for a while: 90 minutes of yoga with 26 postures in a room heated to 105 degrees and 35% humidity. When I saw a deal on livingsocial to try out this studio at a great price, I knew it must have been fate! This place is the reason I am hooked on Bikram.

All of the instructors I have had at the studio were great (Stephanie, Ron, Cassandra, and Rana). They were very patient and encouraging when the workout got intense - but they understand that many people may need a break from the workout to just sit down. I will admit that my first class was very intense - at one point I lost my vision as if I were going to pass out - but I sat down and rested for a minute, and I was fine after that. It does take some time to adjust, though.

The Power Yoga classes that Cassandra teaches seemed the most similar to traditional yoga (just heated). The main yoga room was pretty sanitary (no weird smells), and the locker room is spacious. All of the people who work there seem pretty laid back and nice. The one thing I really appreciated most of all that my current studio doesn't have is a refreshing, cold lavender-scented hand towel for each student at the end of class.

I did hear a few people complain that it didn't feel quite as hot to them as other Bikram studios they had gone to, but I think that may be one thing that makes it even better for beginners. I noticed that sometimes the room would be hotter than others, but you'll definitely feel it! Bikram has helped with my flexibility, strength, and posture. I leave refreshed rather than exhausted. Both Bikram in general and this studio in particular are two things I would recommend without hesitation. I would recommend that all new students bring at least the following: bottle of water, yoga mat, towel, workout clothes (but not long pants).