A lot of food types like to talk about the perfection of the simple roast chicken. But that's played out. I'm here to talk about the imperfection of the even simpler roast chicken: the portachicken.

Ah, to heck with it. I found the image of the specific spice pouch I bought, and I've got ten minutes. I'll write it up now.

I haven't cooked all fucking week.

Cathy returned from California yesterday. Amongst the various and sundry items acquired during her travels was a box of cookies she knew I'd love, even though I'd never seen or heard of them before:

So, after an experiment over the summer, sugar Pepsi has returned to stores with an even more retro logo than the weird cursive blue-on-blue Pepsi Throwback had before.

I'm a big fan of a lot of the prepared foods at Trader Joe's. It tends to strike a nice balance along the price, taste, and health axes. So when, a couple of weeks back, I found a twelve ounce bag of pork al pastor in their freezer case, I was pretty excited.

I love me some pork al pastor. A little smoky, a little spicy, a little crispy, a little fatty. It's one of my favorite toppings at Taqueria Los Ocampos. I've tried to make it myself, with some success, but it's a bit fussy. So if Trader Joe's managed to come up with a decent frozen version, it'd be very useful.

So there I was on Friday, in Whole Foods, getting sun-dried tomatoes for the flatbread pizza one post down, when I decided to also get lunch. I decided to get lunch because, while I had plenty of Weird Curry leftovers, I was sick of rice. I'd had rice in all my lunches all week, and I couldn't take one more day of it.

I first discovered this stuff earlier this year in the deli section at Cub Foods. I'm frequently... disappointed by grocery store pita bread as a platform for foods, aso I thought perhaps this might work better. It's not really a proper substitute for good pita, but it does have its uses.

The Whole Foods deli and prepared foods section is, as a general rule, one of the most expensive places to get a meal in the Twin Cities. And probably other cities, too. Since I live very close to one, I know this first-hand, and from many occasions. Luckily, frequent practice has shown that you can find decent value there.

Sweet merciful goddamn, I love me some Izze.

I had my first Izze, a pomegranate, almost exactly one year ago, on a hot campsite in Wisconsin. It was heavenly. A cold, glass bottle of sparkling fruit juice, crisp and tart.