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.

I don't use a lot of pre-mixed marinades and sauces for my Asian dishes. I keep the building blocks on hand - soy, hoisin, plum, sriracha, black bean, fish, and other sauces - but not a lot of "one bottle, one pan" preparations. This is the exception. CJ Korean BBQ Sauce with Pear.