Kirkland Brand Mayonnaise

By now I'm sure you're convinced that we never shop anywhere but Costco. And you would be almost correct.

I've posted before about the  vast quantities of mayonnaise consumed at our house. Traditionally we have purchased the gallon-size Kraft brand at Costco because it was cheap. We have looked at the Best Foods brand right next to it with longing in our eyes, dreaming of the day when we would be rich and have fewer children to feed. Do we really think we'll be buying mayonnaise by the gallon when there are just two of us at home? If we do we'll have to also be buying some much bigger pants to wear.

Recently Bob spotted this dream come true in the mayonnaise aisle at Costco. It is a) of about the same quality and texture as the Best Foods brand and b) cheaper than Kraft. We are in Mayonnaise heaven.

Everyone Should Have a Pizza Stone

This photo won't win any beauty contests. But it shows off one of my favorite household products, the pizza stone. We first received a pizza stone as a wedding gift from my brother and his wife. We put it away in the closet for several years until some friends came over to teach us how to make homemade pizza. We've been using it ever since. Truth be told, we broke the original model years ago.

Used correctly, the stone gets uglier with age. It works much better after you've cooked on it quite a lot. Cooking items with a relatively high fat content darkens (or seasons it) even faster. On one of our new pizza stones we baked several batches of chocolate chip cookies. While it was admittedly better for the stone than for the cookies, it speeded up the seasoning process considerably. We weren't all that sorry about enduring the crispy cookies.

The purpose of the stone is to crisp up the crust. To call this a pizza stone is a little bit limiting. We actually bake all kinds of items on it. It's especially good for artisan breads. Place hand made loaves on the stone, pour a cup of water in a heated pan on the bottom shelf of the oven, and you're bound to pull out crispy, beautiful loaves.

We haven't found pizza stones all that easy to locate. Our local grocery store carried them for awhile; Bed Bath and Beyond is usually a sure bet.

Minced Garlic

From time to time, we have been garlic snobs. One year, with the help of a friend, we even planted and grew our own garlic. It was delicious. But it took work. We still use fresh garlic sometimes, such as when I make and bottle pizza sauce every summer. But we have embraced so many garlic-intensive dishes that we've seen the light: we now stock minced garlic from (where else?) Costco.

We aren't at all attached to this brand, and I know that you can buy smaller containers at your average grocery store. Truth be told, we discarded a number of containers of this garlic before they were completely consumed because we felt that they had passed their prime. But in recent months we have been polishing it off without a problem.

This works really well for garlic-intensive recipes as you might find in Vietnamese food (see here and here). We also use it for recipes requiring a much smaller amount. We love being able to use garlic to our hearts' delight without all that peeling and crushing.

Garam Masala

It's been awhile since I've discussed a favorite product. And since I'm going to be featuring Indian food over the next few posts, I thought talking a little bit about garam masala was essential. Wikipedia discusses this combination of spices as follows:

Garam masala from Hindi garam ("hot") and masala ("mixture") is a basic blend of ground spices common in Indian and other South Asian cuisines. It is used alone or with other seasonings. The word garam refers to spice intensity, not heat; garam masala is pungent, but not "hot" in the same way as a chili pepper.

In short, garam masala  makes cooking Indian food a snap (this is me talking now, not Wikipedia). You can, of course, make your own blend, but I do not. Different brands have different combinations of spices. Typical spices include cardamom, cinnamon, cumin, nutmeg and coriander (along with various colors of ground pepper). I have found that prices for the same brand vary widely; the bottle of McCormick featured in the photo is about $11 at the grocery store closest to my house, and about half that at the local WalMart. My friend Laura recently scouted the newly opened Indian store in our community (Bollywood on University Avenue for those of you who are local) and got a remarkable quantity of the stuff for about $4. It appeared to be a somewhat different mix of spices, but smelled great. And that's one of the things you'll like best about this blend--the way it makes your house smell when you cook with it.

Tortilla Land Uncooked Flour Tortillas

Here's another product favorite - Tortilla Land uncooked flour tortillas, available at Costco and other fine stores. We use these so much that we almost always have them on hand. They are, of course, uncooked tortillas that you can brown yourself on a frying pan. This gives you perfect fresh made tortillas without any special equipment, and without the time and effort it would take to make them yourself.

We use these at least weekly for burritos, Mexican salads, breakfast burritos, and other delicacies. They're easy to prepare. So easy, in fact, that the kids compete over who gets to cook them. Here's what they look like in progress:

The tortilla pan is actually another of my favorite products, but I think we found it in a bin in one of the local Mexican markets, so I can't really tell you where to buy it.

Favorite Things: Kirkland Stir Fry Vegetables

This year I'd like to try something new by posting occasionally on food-related or cooking-related products that make my life easier or better. My first candidate: Kirkland Stir Fry Vegetables.

You can probably guess that feeding a large family is made much easier with a Costco membership. I had a membership there when I was single, but it was exclusively for my own entertainment. I got serious about warehouse shopping when seven children came into my life. There are many items that are never on sale at the grocery store below the every day price at Costco. There are some items that you can only get at Costco. And the product quality is generally very good.

A few months ago we discovered their frozen stir fry vegetables. This takes most of the hassle out of making a healthy dinner of meat and veggies. In addition, the mix of vegetables is much more diverse than I would ever come up with by cleaning and chopping from scratch. Who buys water chestnuts and snow peas for an every day dinner? But with the bag-o-stir fry, we simply prepare the meat, prepare the sauce, and TA DUM! Dinner is served.

The mix includes (in addition to water chestnuts and snow peas): green peppers, mushrooms, broccoli, carrots, red peppers, and a little bit of onion. I like considerably more onions in my mix than the bag provides, but it's easy enough to chop one up and toss it in.