ads vs. reality

I came across an interesting article on SFGate today about whether the real food items match what is advertised by the food company.  For instance:

Here's a link to the full blog post with more comparisons.  I'm not that surprised that reality doesn't match the ads, but makes me wonder if there is anything out there that is true to its hype.

stone korean kitchen

Way back when (in January of this year), I purchased a couple of Groupons for Stone Korean Kitchen because I love Korean BBQ but a dinner for two usually became quite pricy.  Due to busy work/life schedule, I wasn't able to use the Groupon coupon until a couple of weeks ago, and Stone Korean did not disappoint.

A quartet of appetizers:



My dinner date and I wanted to try everything on the menu because the menu descriptions were just that appetizing. After some hemming and hawing, we finally decided on the "ssam for two" in which we could select two proteins and a kind of soup.



Our protein choices included Kalbi



and pork belly, which was so delicious and also deliciously fattening/artery blockade on a plate.



We chose the kim chi soup.



In addition to these selections we made, there were also two bowls of rice, a mushroom side dish, a plate of lettuce leaves for wrapping and a selection of sauces to top off on our lettuce wraps.  The kalbi was really nice and bbq'ed to just the right tenderness.  I usually like to go to Korean BBQ joints where you can grill the food yourself, but after a long day at work, having the meet already grilled was a good way to end the day.

I still have one more groupon for Stone Korean that I need to use by the end of the year.  But even without the groupon, I might be stopping by again for some happy hour eats.

got apples?

I was visiting L & G and they had a bag of apples picked from L's brother's backyard.  So what do we do with all these apples?  Make apple pie of course!

It was a last minute decision to make the pie and we didn't really have time to make the pie dough from scratch, so we cheated a little...

In addition, we didn't have a lot of time as I had to catch the Amtrak train back to SF later that evening, so I searched online for a simple apple pie recipe. I quickly decided on this Betty Crocker recipe because it looked simple and quick, and also it didn't require too many ingredients for the filling.

The most time consuming task was peeling and slicing the apples. Let me say I wish I had one of these things for peeling and also one of these things for quicker slicing (okay, it's just more cool gadgets I want in the kitchen).  Alas, I used good ole elbow grease to get 8 cups of apple slices.

Next, throw all the filling ingredients on top of the apples and mix until blended.

Then load all the apples into the pie-dough-lined pie dish.

Add butter.

Cover with pie-dough-top and then put it in the oven and await the cinnamon apple aroma to fill your kitchen.

It takes about an hour to bake, then you have to let it cool because I'm pretty sure you'd burn your tongue off if you ate a slice of apple pie right out of the oven. And trust you me, the pie was still quite warm after cooling for an hour. Ice-cream optional.

This pie was so deliciously "scrumptious," it lasted a day in the L & G household - we each had a slice for dinner that same night, then G had the rest as lunch and dinner the next day!