Cereal selection

I’ve had many food conundra over the years, including peanut butter, pizza, and bread, among others, but I never expected to have one over my morning cereal. Fortunately, my testing provided the answer.

I have cereal for breakfast several times a week, something I’ve done since childhood. Several years ago, I bought Kellogg’s All-Bran cereal because I wanted to make some bran muffins for Nigel and me. I also had it as cereal because it is a good source of fibre, something that’s important, among other reasons, because it helps control cholesterol.

At some point, I started mixing it with lemon yoghurt and sliced banana, and I really liked it. In more recent years, I started to have the company’s All-Bran Flakes for variety, and sometimes, especially in winter, I had porridge (what in my corner of the USA was called “oatmeal”). The main consistent menu item was the All-Bran, though I had to give up on bananas when my blood pressure medication was changed to one that’s potassium-based (I’m supposed to be careful about potassium, apparently).

A long time ago, I learned that the fibre in my cereal is considered a “prebiotic” which feeds gut bacteria. The live cultures in the yoghurt, are probiotics, of course, which provide good gut bacteria, though somewhat different than the ones that normally live there (the ones in yoghurt generally help with digesting dairy, but they also assist the fibre in helping to keep one's “shipping department” to, um, empty…).

I genuinely liked the cereal, especially when combined with the lemon yoghurt, but it wasn’t perfect. For one thing, if I had it in milk instead of yoghurt it turned mushy pretty quickly. Also, a box seemed pretty expensive, especially as prices started rising, though I bought it anway.

A couple months ago, I was shopping at Woolworths and noticed they had an own-brand cereal that was similar to All-Bran, called “High Fibre Bran”. I was interested because the own-brand was $2.30 a box cheaper, which ain’t nothing. So, I decided to give it a try.

The first thing I noticed was that the box says “Delicious & Crunchy”, and when I tried it, I immediately agreed on the second part of the slogan: It was very crunchy. I tried it with milk, too, to see if it got soggy like All-Bran, and it didn’t. It’s the first part of the description I didn’t agree with: I did not find it “delicious”.

There’s an irony here: Many people I know personally have screwed up their faces at the mere mention of All-Bran, declaring, "it tastes like cardboard", which made me wonder how they knew that. As it turned out, once I tried the Woolworth’s cereal, I understood: It’s not necessary to actually taste cardboard to get the sense that something must taste like cardboard would. To me, the High Fibre Bran was exactly like that. However: Just as I like All-Bran, which many people I know don’t like, it’s logical that other folks may love the High Fibre Bran cereal. To each their own.

I finally ran out of the Woolworths cereal over the weekend and resumed having All-Bran. It turns out, though, they really are quite different.

Both cereals are made in Australia, presumably using some Australian ingredients, but their nutritional profiles are different. To compare products fairly, I never look at the nutritional information per “serving”, but rather per 100g. Since most values are expressed as weight in grams per 100g, that can give us a good idea of what percentage of the product is sugar, fat, etc.

Here’s how the two compare (information comes from their nutrition labels, and was correct at the time I was doing this test). Since they’re both “high fibre” cereals, I’ll start there: My regular brand, All-Bran (“AB”) has 28g of dietary fibre per 100g, and High Fibre Cereal (“HFC”) had a whopping 42.1g per 100g. Another thing I always look at is sugars, and AB has 15.7g of sugars, while HFC has 13.4g. I carefully watch sodium because of my specific health issues, and AB has 330mg of sodium, and HFC has 300mg. While I don’t personally pay that much attention to fat content, AB had total fat content of 3.6g, and HFC had 2.6g of total fat.

The bottom line for me is that High Fibre Cereal was better than All-Bran in all the things I monitor, however, the difference wasn’t necessarily huge, though, for me, the sodium difference is pretty significant. There’s also obviously a very big difference in dietary fibre, but I’m not certain I need that much fibre. Even so, I think it’s safe to say the name of their cereal, “High Fibre Bran”, is fully justified.

Cost was another motivator when I tried it, because All-Bran was $7.79 for a 530g box. The High Fibre Cereal was $5.50 for a 500g box. If High Fibre Cereal was sold in a 530g box, and the unit price didn’t change, it’d be $5.83, still around $2 a box cheaper than All-Bran.

Neither the difference in their nutritional profiles nor the different prices matters if I don’t like the cereal with the better profile and lower price. Facts. So, while the Woolworths own-brand has a better nutritional profile and costs less, I like All-Bran much better and I’ll stick with it. It’s only part of my weekly breakfast menu, anyway.

This was one of the rare times when I tried a new (to me) product not because I didn’t like my normal brand, but because I was curious if I’d like a similar alternative. Now I know. On to the next experiment!

November 10, 2025: This post has been updated. Follow the link to see the update.

March 31, 2026: This post has been updated again. Follow the link to see the update.

Important Note: The names of brands/products/companies listed in this post are all registered trademarks, and are used here for purposes of description and clarity. No company or entity provided any support or payment for this blog post, and all products were purchased by me at normal consumer prices. So, the opinions I expressed are my own genuinely held opinions, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the manufacturers, any retailer, or any known human being, alive or dead, real or corporate. Just so we’re clear.

Food storage teaches me

Life habits are a lot like Rome: They’re not built in a day. They’re also not changed in a day, either. Carrots showed me a way that such things can change.

Changing decades of habits isn’t easy, even when it comes to food. For much of our life together, I did the cooking for Nigel and me, and for our last fifteen years or so I did nearly all of it. That meant I built habits to make that easier, and to ensure we didn’t run out of things.

Running out of things—hooboy! Nigel’s breakfasts nearly ruined us. He might get grumpy with me if we ran out of margarine to put on his morning toast (he could use butter…), but if we ran out of peanut butter, I might need to plan on moving out. I’m exaggerating, obviously, but for many, many years he had the same breakfast nearly every morning on work days (and sometimes on weekends): Toast with margarine, peanut butter, and strawberry jam. Sometimes I made it for him, but he often made it for himself—and he let me know his displeasure if we ran out of one of the ingredients.

So, I started having not merely one margarine container in reserve, I often had two. Similarly, I always had at least one unopened peanut butter jar on hand in addition to the open one, and when I noticed the open one was getting low, I’d buy a new jar so that there’d still be one in reserve. I learned and improved—from Nigel’s perspective, anyway. Jam tended to last longer, but we usually had one unopened jar in reserve.

Everything changed when Nigel died—everything except my buying habits. I kept making sure I had two tubs of margarine in the fridge, and at first it was because I was on autopilot, but as post-Covid prices soared, I started buying a new reserve one when they were on special—but that sometimes means I have two in reserve, which even I know is stupid. Peanut butter is different: I only ever have one in reserve, and I’ve even run out a time a two, but that’s also how I ended up with extra peanut butter when Nigel died: I had two in reserve and the opened one. I think that underscores how quickly my life unravelled, and may it even point to why it took me so long to change my ways to meet my new reality.

And that brings me to carrots.

I had a years-long habbit of buying bags of fresh carrots (1.5kg) because, back then, it was cheaper than buying a few at a time, and because we went through them reasonably quickly. I kept buying those bags, and I kept doing that once I was alone. However, the carrots would frequently start to rot or become mummified before I could use them all. This was not good, and I knew it: The media and my local council often tried get us to reduce food waste, but there I was, a poster child for wasting food. This shame could not remain unaddressed.

My first thing attempt at self-improvement was to switch to buying a few carrots at a time, since the unit price (the price per kilogram or gram) was similar to the larger bags. However, I kept running out of carrots, and if I bought more, the old problems returned. There simply had to be another and better way!

So, I did what any self-respecting Digital Immigrant would do: I googled “best way to store carrots”, or similar, and may even have added “NZ”, though I don’t remember for sure. At any rate, I ended up on a New Zealand site, “Love the Food, Hate the Waste”. There, I read that globally, one-third of all food is lost or wasted,” which is pretty abyssmal, and I bet it’s much higher in at least some developed countries. The site adds that food waste “has a profound environmental impact and is the third-largest contributor to global carbon emissions.” Yikes.

Fortunately, their site also had information on how to store carrots (summarised in the graphic below). I took it to heart immediately, and pulled out a small airtight container, and I bought a few fresh carrots to put in it, and they were perfect to the very last one.

Next, I bought a 1.5kg bag of Woolworth’s “The Odd Bunch” carrots, which are called that because they’re considered “imperfect” because they’re too small, too big, too misshapen. I buy a lot of “Odd Bunch” produce primarily because it keeps them out of landfill, but they’re also a bit cheaper: 1.5kg bag of “The Odd Bunch: carrots is currently $3.10 ($2.07/kg) while the “normal” bags of the same size are $4.29 ($2.86 per kg). The middle price would be for loose carrots, which are currently $2.59/kg. So, buying “The Odd Bunch” bag is cheapest, but, more importantly, it may help reduce food waste, too.

I then bought a larger NZ-made plastic container (at left in the photo above), which was able to store a 1.5kg bag of carrots, though I bet sometimes that may be harder than other times (the carrots I buy aren’t uniform in size or shape, after all). However, I could get away with keeping a few carrots stored less ideally for a short time, so Im not worried about this potential problem actually being a problem.

I’ve been using the new system for several weeks now with no complaints—in fact, I no longer have rotting or mummified carrots. That’s good news in itself, but it reminds me, yet again, that there’s always a solution to challenges if I look for them. Sometimes I just need to realise I need to look for a solution. Carrots showed me a way that can change.

More peanut butter trials

There are two ongoing food sagas in my life: The search for decent pizza, and for peanut butter I like (not together…). I still have no real solution to the pizza issue, apart from maybe experimenting making them myself—maybe. It turns out, thought, that peanut butter keeps presenting challenges for me, even if they’re sometimes self-selected. It happens.

This time, my peanut butter search was about trying a different variety of the brand I use, but it was an experiment, nevertheless. Maybe not a wise one?

First, though, a recap. Back in 2018, I talked about my search for a peanut butter, and, at the time sodium content was a major consideration, so I eventually settled on “Pic’s No Salt Added Peanut Butter” (I purchased all brands mentioned in this post myself at normal retail prices; this post is not sponsored). After Nigel died, I decided I liked the brand he liked, “Woolworth’s Select American Style Peanut Butter”, which I also mentioned in that 2018 post. This was not to last.

It turned out that Countdown (now called Woolworths) discontinued the peanut butter Nigel liked, and in 2023 I wrote about searching for a replacement. I briefly tried an American brand I used to eat when I was a kid groing up in the USA, but 30-odd years later, I couldn’t stop thinking about all the weird additives in it. So, I ended up adopting the regular version of Pic’s peanut butter (which has salt added).

A few months later, in April 2024, I tried the large size of the Pic’s peanut butter so it would last longer, but that, too, was problematic. As I said in an Update Post at the very end of last year:

The jar lasted much longer than the ordinary (small) jar I’d been buying, but it lasted a bit too long—months, I think. The problem was that by the end, the peanut butter at the bottom of the jar was too hard to spread, probably because I didn’t properly stir it when I opened it. At any rate, that wasn’t what I wanted, so I’ve gone back to the small jar I’d been using.

And now this saga is up tp date. So: I was in the supermarket recently, and I noticed the squeeze bottle of Pic’s (photo above), and I was intrigued. I thought that maybe I could shake the bottle to re-mix the oil into it, meaning I could keep it at room temperature, which would make it easier to spread. The first time I opened the bottle and removed the seal, I immediately noticed that there was a peanut butter plug at the bottle mouth—because it had separated. So, the first thing I had to do was manually stir the contents, just like always, before squirting some out.

The oil separates at room temperature.

Since then, I’ve tried shaking the bottle and it seems to work as I expected, but it’s a little odd to have squiggles of peanut butter on my bread, Still, I just spread that with a knife and it was like “normal”. So, maybe its a good choice? Yeah, well…

I was hesitant to buy it because the bottle may be recycled (I’m sceptical about that, a subject in itself), but the red top to the bottle absolutely is not. The jar I normally buy is clear glass (and desirable for recycling), and the lid is metal (which may not be recycled—part of that subject in itself again…). However, the jars are also useful for reuse, and I quite like the black star on the red lid), so I’ve re-purposed several into small storage jars, as I have with so many others (hmmm, that, too, is a subject in itself—why am I making more work for myself?!).

This experiment had mixed result. The bottle seems to work as expected, and since I spread the peanut butter, anyway, the squiggle business isn’t bad. Actually, the fact it’s easy to spread is a very good thing. It’s the waste—specifically the fact the top isn’t recyclable—that bothers me.

I guess it’ll come down to whether, all things considered, I think it’s good value for money. At the moment, the ordinary price per 100g is the same for both options, and the squeezy bottle holds a bit more. However, I only buy peanut butter when it’s on special because Pic’s is probably a “premium” brand, and so, more expensive per 100g than mass-produced brands. I don’t know if the squeezy bottle will be on special as the jar version often is.

I have a few more servings to go before I get through the bottle, so my final decision is some while away yet, but if I was to bet, it would be that I’ll go back the glass jar. I guess I’ll have ot make more work for myself: Another Update post.

Not just about bread

I don’t often share food photos any more (and clearly not much of anything else, for that matter…), because it’s all so trivial. Yesterday, though, I decided to share a photo (at right) of my trivial lunch to my personal Facebook. In this case, at least, there were reasons.

I made two poached eggs severed on a wedge of homemade (bread machine) wholemeal bread, and topped it with freshly ground salt and pepper and yum-yum sauce (Japanese mayonnaise), which I use on poached eggs because hollandaise sauce is too much work, tbh (I usually just use S&P). All of that is very ordinary, but the bread is the real reason I shared the meal (I make poached eggs most weekends).

I was never satisfied with the ordinary breadmaker bread I used to make, so much so that I even considered getting rid of my breadmaker. However, among my local supermarkets, my local Woolworths doesn’t stock my preferred brand/variety of commercial bread (just the brand’s gluten-free variety),and while the nearby New World does stock it, it sells out quickly. I don’t like the in-store bakery department breads at either chain.

This is an issue for me because the commercial bread I’ve been buying instead of my preferred brand sometimes gives me indigestion, and the ordinary breadmaker bread sometimes did, too (my preferred brand never did, but maybe that’s just because it’s so hard to get that over the past year or two I haven’t had it often enough to find out?). It’s early days for the wholemeal bread experiment, but so far it’s been fine. On the other hand, I’m out of practice cutting it (it makes a tall loaf), and have cut a wedge-shaped slice twice in a row, which isn’t ideal. If I tolerate this bread, I may try using the breadmaker to knead the dough, etc., and then finish it off in bread pans in the oven (to get better sized and shaped loaves). I do hope this works, though.

Occasional indigestion from bread wasn’t the only reason that I stopped posting food photos, though—there were several reasons. First, the same sort of ennui that’s kept me from cretive pursuits like blogging and podcasting, has also left me unspired to cook anything new or different, and so, there hasn’t been anything ne to share. Another reason, though, was eggs.

Prices for all food items when up in the Covid-related economic challenges and supply chain distruptions, and the massive spike in inflation when all the restrictions ended. Eggs were among the things with higher prices, of course, but we also had a fire at a major egg farm that killed thousands of hens, and egg prices shot up. However, egg prices in New Zealand eventually stabilised and have been stable for many, many, many months—despite even bird flu at a South Island farm. All of which means I can have eggs whenever I want, and at reasonable proces. However, I’m aware of how expensive eggs in the USA have become (another all-time record retail price was set just recently). It felt kind like bragging to share photos of my egg means (possibly the most common I’ve share over the past few years).

Eggs also get at another reason I’ve backed off posting things like food photos: All that sort of thing seems so utterly banal and trivial given the slide into fascism in the country of my birth. I’ve shared some things I find funny or interesting, but have deliberately avoided most things that touch even lightly on politics in the land of my birth—mostly, because I have shared expressly, and even sharply, political things to Reels (via Instagram).

It’s fair to say that there’s no reason I should avoid posting about things I’m doing, even if it’s only lunch, but with the world in such dire shape, it’s at least understandable. On the other hand, maybe the distraction of a freshly-made meal or a shopping excursion (or whatever) can help make the bad times just a little more tolerable, even if only for a moment or two. Maybe.

At any rate, I never would’ve guessed that finding a tolerable bread would be so difficult, but, as I often say, I’ve learned that growing older is a never-ending series of aches and pains in places I never knew could have them, and suddenly finding I don’t always tolerate some food I’ve had all or most of my life. C’est la vie, apparently. But all of that is still better than the awfulness all around the world, and maybe that makes celebrating everyday life that much more important.

Fed by experimenting

Up until maybe a year or two ago, I experimented with cooking quite a lot. I tried recipes cooking techniques that were new to me, and I even experimented with different ways to source food ingredients. For no particular reason, I just kind of stopped, something I realised only recently.

Back in September 2022, I tried making sushi for the first time, and that recently popped up in my Facebook “Memories”. That was something I’ve never attempted again—and I’ve never even thought about it very often. However, seeing that FB “Memory” reminded me that I haven’t really had any kitchen adventures in quite awhile, certainly nothing like I used to have. That changed this past weekend.

On Saturday, I decided to make myself brunch of poached eggs on smashed avocado, served on toasted bread I made in my breadmaker (photo above). The poached eggs were the experiment: I’ve written before about making them in a shallow pan of water and adding white vinegar to (supposedly) help the whites remain intact. That method allowed me to poach two eggs at once. Then, I tried the “whirlpool method”, in which boiling water in a pot is stirred rapidly with a spoon, the raw egg is dropped into the vortex, and the result is a nearly perfect poached egg—but I could only cook one at a time, which wasn’t ideal.

Then, TV changed everything.

I was watching a magazine-style show that had a story about how rough the hospitality industry in New Zealand has it at the moment. There was some video shot in a cafe kitchen, and I noticed the chef was standing next to a big pot of boiling water, and he was adding an egg to what appeared to be swirling water. The shot was very brief, but I wondered, first, if I saw what I thought I saw, and second, would that allow me to make two poached eggs at once?

This weekend was the time to try, so I got out a large pot I normally use to make homemade soup, got the water boiling, swirled the water, dropped in one egg, then dropped in the other—and they they were both perfect! Well, mostly: I think the eggs were too cool, and some of the white separated away, leaving the poached eggs smaller than they’d otherwise be.

I store my eggs in the fridge so they’re fresher longer, Cold eggs are fine for scrambled or fired eggs, but when I want poached eggs I take them out of the fridge and let them come up to room temperature, often cracking them into a small ramekin so they’ll warm a bit faster, but mostly so I can make sure the eggs an intact (if not, I make scrambles eggs instead). On Saturday, I was a bit too impatient, but they were still very nice.

Obviously this is not a new thing—the chef on TV really was making poached eggs in a large pot, and it must be quite common. The point is, I didn’t know it, and was willing to try it, and now I’ve changed my poached egg making technique again, to the best method yet.

The other point, of course, is that for the first time in ages I saw something I wanted to try, in this case a cooking method, and so I did it. Now, I want to gey back to trying new recipes, too. Maybe I’ll even revisit some, like making pizza base from scratch using my breadmaker to make the dough, something I last tried October 1, 2021. That’ll probably pop up in my Facebook “Memories” tomorrow, only a couple weeks after the “Memory” of making sushi from scratch. I guess I’ll add that to my list to try again, too.

Looks like my kitchen might be about to be a busy place again. Good.

Kitchen experiments abound

Forget politics and religion, there’s a far better topic to talk about: Food. There are so many levels to the topic, including sourcing it, producing it, preparing it, and, of course eating it. I’ve talked about all three on this blog, though not necessarily all that frequently. Over the past couple months, I’ve tried a product I’d never seen before, experimented with an update to a recipe from my young adulthood, and made a perhaps hasty decision on an old favourite. All of which is fair game for this blog.

The main reason I created my tongue-in-cheek tag (aka “Label”) “AmeriNZ Test Kitchen” was so that I’d have one place to talk about food products I tried and as well as recipes I made. It was all a bit of fun, and something I never took all that seriously (and still don’t), but there have been some that I apparently took seriously enough that I never posted anything about it. Today’s first item (photo up top) is exactly that.

Some forty years ago, I was with my first actual long term partner (in this case, “long term” means more than a few months, though it really lasted around three years). Among other basic meals he taught me was one involving the common boxed macaroni and cheese dinner combined with beef mince (though in those days I called it “ground beef” or “hamburger”) and a tin of chopped tomatoes.

Back in March 2022, I tried making the recipe using a box of American mac and cheese dinner (exactly like what we used more than four decades ago) that I found in a shop called “Crackerjack”, which often sells American food products. I don’t know why I didn’t share it at the time, but I didn’t find the dinner when I made later visits to the same store. However, I recently saw the version in the left photo up top, something I’d never seen before, and decided to try again, in the right photo.

The method is that first you brown the beef, then stir in the packet of “cheese” powder form the boxed dinner, then empty a tin of chopped tomatoes into the pan and stir to mix (this time I softened onion first, something I don’t recall doing back in the day). Let the beef mix simmer while the pasta cooks, then drain and stir into the beef mix, and serve. That’s it—and the speed and easiness of making it was why it was a repeat meal back in the day.

I was disappointed in the result. Unlike the version I made back in 2022, this one had little to no cheese flavour in it. The whole thing started out as a bit of food nostalgia (and the 2022 version was pretty close), but now it’s turned into a new idea: How can I make it simpler (ideally one pan) and healthier—especially since the boxed dinner isn’t exactly the healthiest choice possible. I already have several ideas for how I may do that—to be continued.

Next up, a commercial product I tried:

I bought the product solely because they reminded me of Ho-Hos, which were made by Hostess. The Carbury version wasn’t the same as what I loved in my childhood—although, to be fair, I don’t know if the current Hostess version is the same, either. They reminded me of the Little Debbie Swiss Cake Roll of my childhood, which I didn’t like as much (and I have no idea what they’re like now, either). Despite all that, I liked them well enough—even the chocolate, which is something I don’t often say about Cadbury chocolate. I was surprised that one was enough for me—very surprised, actually—so the packet lasted around two weeks. The truth is, I’m just not into sweets as much as I was when I was younger. I haven’t bought them again, and I don’t know whether I will; fortunately for me, I haven’t seen them since, so my resolved hasn’t been tested.

And finally, an experiment of an entirely different sort: Size.

The search for a peanut butter I like has been ongoing, something I first talked about back in 2018. In November of last year, I talked about trying to find a replacement for my favourite, but discontinued, brand. In the end, I went back to using Regular Pic’s peanut butter (which I talked about in 2018), but I now use the regular, not the no salt version.

My next problem was that I was going through jars fairly quickly because they’re not very big. I was in the supermarket recently and noticed the big (or, by NZ standards, maybe that should be big) jar was on special, so I bought one. I was a little worried about finding space on my fridge door (to keep it from separating), but I did. So far, it’s worked fine—however, I didn’t bother to check the prices per 100 grams, so maybe the larger size isn’t more economical, make it’s just easier for me because I don’t have to buy a new jar as often. On the other hand, that’s a valid reason to choose it, too. [The peanut butter part of this post has been updated. Follow the link to see the update.]

And now we’re more or less up to date. Generally speaking, the kitchen experiments that I don’t talk about here are works in progress, and I suppose the first one today is probably that sort. The other two are merely ones that, like so many other blog topics, I just haven’t been able to get to. Hm, I’ve been doing a lot of “getting to it”, lately. Maybe things are improving?

Related: A related tag is Food, which is for my posts about all sorts of food. It also (hopefully) includes all my AmeriNZ Test Kitchen posts about food, too.

Wish and stomach fulfilment

There are times when it’s useful to be getting fixated on something. In fact, last night it helped me get back into something I’ve been wanting to do for awhile, and I was so very glad that I did. Very glad.

Last night I decided I wanted to make the vegetarian pasta with puttanesca sauce, something I talked about when I first made it back in May of 2019. I’ve made variations of it every since, sometimes using cannellini beans instead of lentils, often with a bit of grated carrot, and maybe other bits and pieces as the mood struck me. Then, I just stopped making it—not on purpose, I just stopped.

The problem I have with recipes is that if I don’t make something in awhile, I forget how to make it, and I need to consult the recipe. So last night I went through my recipe ring binder, and found two different recipes. And in so doing, I realised how I’d combined the two different recipes.

The recipe I made in 2019 was from a circular from one of NZ’s two supermarket companies, but, in July of 2018, I didn’t have a recipe for a vegetarian bolognese. Somewhere along the line, I combined the two in my mind, which underdstandbly confused me when I was looking through my recipes.

Still I saw that I’d downloaded the recipe for the vegetarian bolognese from the BBC’s “Food” part of their site (I fist saw it on a BBC programme). Since I had to follow a recipe, anyway, I decided to try the BBC version. It was outstanding (photo up top), and, in fact, it was so much better than my original effort (either one or later combined versions). I even got to use an onion I grew (which is actually a topic in itself). I’ll definitely make it again.

This is exactly the sort of thing I meant when I shared a photo of a meal I’d improvised, adding that:

I realised that I seldom share meal photos (aka “food porn”) any more, and that’s because I seldom try new things or new recipes. There’s absolutely no reason for that—I just haven’t.

And also:

The last photo I took in February was a meal, yes, but also something I’d like to start doing more of again: Experimenting with new recipes, and/or new ways of cooking things—like I used to do.

Last night’s meal was exactly what I was talking about, which is why I did it despite not being into it that night—well, not at first. The more I worked on it, the more I remembered how fun it is to do that.

Maybe I’d set myself up for it on Friday. I took an avocado I bought at the supermarket recently to make smashed avocado on toast for my breakfast that morning. However, I didn’t use it all, and at first I thought I might make nachos for my dinner on Saturday, but instead I decided to have a poached egg on avocado toast for my breakfast (photo at right). That created the opportunity to make the vegetarian bolognese last night.

I’m pretty good at making poached eggs now, but I have to do them one at a time because I now use the “create a whirlpool in the pot of boiling water” method. I used to cook two in a pan of water with a little white vinegar which, the Internet told me, helps keep the whites together, but, yeah, not so much. The whirlpool method works much better, but unless I have two pots on the cooktop at once, I can only make one poached egg at a time. This is probably just a learning experience; after all, even making fried eggs took some experimentation, and now when I (rarely) make them, they’re perfect (and I do two at a time).

There’s one more thing about yesterday’s breakfast: I’d put a little chilli powder in the smashed avocado, mainly because at the time I thought I was going to make nachos with the leftover mix. There was a time I’d never have done that. I guess all this cooking experimentation is making me more adventurous, too.

I often get fixated on something, and in this case me being determined to experiment with cooking and recipes helped me get back into something I hadn’t done for awhile. I was so very glad that I did.

My important food analysis

Over the years, I’ve evaluated a lot of consumer products, sometimes important but usually not. This is actually both: Today I’m looking at four brands of chocolate chip cookies sold by New Zealand’s two supermarket chains. Clearly, this is the among the most important product evaluations I’ve ever taken on.

Everything I’m going to say is based on my own preferences for flavour, value, etc. Any nutritional information I mention is from the product’s nutrition label while I was researching this post. However, the parts of that nutritional measurements I chose to look at are also based on what is most important to me personally. Other people could easily draw completely different conclusions. What I’m sharing are my genuinely held opinions.

With that out of the way, the next thing to note is that I took on this evaluation because of television. TVNZ broadcasts the New Zealand version of “Eat Well For Less”, and I’ve watched it since the beginning. I was originally interested because I’d enjoyed the original UK series, however, in the first seasons the New Zealand version was essentially an advertorial for the Countdown Supermarket chain. To some extent, this didn’t matter—the point was to help people eat better, more nutritious meals while saving money, and there were some good recipers and techniques included in the show.

However, the advertorial nature mattered when it came to a main feature of the both the UK and NZ versions: Taste tests of consumer products. In the UK—where they have several supermarket chains—they would have people taste-test name-brand products as well as cheaper store own-brands. In the first seasons of the NZ version, they only used own-brands from Countdown, none from its competitor, sometimes name-brands only. This made the taste tests unimportant, and so, something I mainly ignored.

The most recent season of EWFL NZ was NOT sponsored by Countdown, and that meant that they could include products from the stores of New Zealand’s other supermarket company (whose main store chains are New World and Pak N Save). I noticed that immediately in the first episode of the season, and, to be honest, I was really glad. This also meant they might try to find the best-priced substitutes regardless of supermarket chain. It also meant the recipes they used might use store brands from either chain—though that often wasn’t terribly important (there’s not that much difference, beyond price, for various brands of tinned tomatoes, for example).

In an early episode (the first one, I think) of the season just finished, they had consumers taste and rate commercially made chocolate chip cookies. That caught my attention because some months earlier, I happened to see some name-brand cookies were on special at Countdown, so I bought a bag. Since then, I’ve bought them when they were on special, which makes a fairly inexpensive cookie cheaper still—always a win these days. After watching the TV show, I decided to try brands they used to see if I thought they were better, worse, or about the same.

Here, then, are the four brands I ended up sampling, along with my evaluations and opinions about them. These are listed in order from what I personally consider to rate highest to lowest. I rated on five criteria, with a top possible score of five, and a theoretical low score of zero (no product got that rating). Those categories were: Nutrition (energy rating, amount of fat, sodium, and sugars), Flavour, Softness, Dunkability, and Value, all of which I’ll explain more in context.

1. Value Choc Chip Family Favourite Cookies – New World ($2.19 for 325g): These came out with the top score in my ratings—22 out of a possible 25. These cookies had the lowest energy rating of any of the four (1890kJ/452 calories per 100g), and lowest sugars (28.9g/100g). The fat content let them down somewhat, with the third-lowest total fat (20.3g/100g) and saturated fat (11.6g/100g), but I have it at the top score overall, anyway (no one expects a cookie to be health food…). They also got a 4 for flavour (making them second-equal on that score), 3 on softness, a 5 for what I call “Dunkability” (how they fared when dunked in milk), and 5 for value for money (they were the least expensive in my limited test). I thought these tasted buttery, though not very chocolatey. Still, they were pleasant. These cookies are made in New Zealand.

2. Mrs. Higgins Classics Choc Chip Cookies – Countdown and New World ($3.99 for 350g): These got a total score of 19, primarily because to me they tasted the best by far (the only one in which I tasted any chocolate), and they were also the softest of the four, though still chewy (unlike some brands of packaged chocolate chip cookies I’ve bought, these didn’t get softer if put in the microwave for a few seconds). They were also fine for Dunkability and nutrition (4 each), second-best overall for nutrition, but they were also the most expensive in my test, nearly twice as expensive per 100g as the Number One ranked “Value Choc Chip Family Favourite Cookies” ($1.14 per 100g as compared to $0.67/100g). Is that important, though? These cookies are made in New Zealand.

3. Arnott's Farmbake Chocolate Chip Biscuits – Countdown and New World ($3.49 for 310g): These Australian-made cookies were the second-most expensive, and scored the highest on Dunkability with a 5 because they were really nice and soft when dunked in milk. Their nutrition was mixed: While they had a similar energy profile to the cookies rated 2 through 4, they had the highest sugar levels (37.8g/100g), while also having the lowest total fat and saturated fat levels per 100g (19.3g and 10.3g respectively). I like the flavour of these cookies a lot (they had a slight coconut-like taste), but they’re quite hard unless dunked in milk.

4. Countdown Chocolate Chip Cookies – Countdown ($2.50 for 325g): These cookies were the second-cheapest, and almost as soft as number one. Their nutrition profile was similar to the others, overall, but it was the lowest in sodium (150mg/100g). Its biggest downfall was flavour: I thought they had a weird chemical taste. I gave them a very generous Flavour score of 2, only because I found that the jarring chemical hit faded a bite or so later. Their flavour was even odder when dunked in milk, and it didn’t soften them much at all, so I rated it a 2 for Dunkability. I was surprised that some on the taste-test panel in the TV show rated these as highly as they did, because I honestly couldn’t see why. These cookies are made in New Zealand.

Final thoughts

I would buy any one of the first three again, but not the fourth. Of the top three, I’ll likely by Mrs. Higgins the most, so, no, the fact it has the highest price doesn’t deter me—especially because I’ll probably only buy them when they’re on special, anyway. I’ll also buy the Value brand from New World sometimes, too. While I think the Arnott’s ones have a nice flavour, their hardness brings them down, as does the fact they’re Australian-made (I prefer to my NZ-made whenever possible). And finally, for me the whole point of these cookies—and why I bothered taste-testing—is that These cookies are the perfect little snack for me when I want something sweet: I can eat only one and be happy with that, though if I’m dunking them I’ll usually have three.

This whole exercise was really just a bit of fun, but I still thought it was interesting to see how various cookies compared to each other. It’s nothing new for me to change brands of products sold in supermarkets, but this is among the most deliberate I’ve ever been in comparing different products. I think I may do it again.

Important Note: The names of brands/products/companies listed in this post are all registered trademarks, and are used here for purposes of description and clarity. No company or entity provided any support or payment for this blog post, and all products were purchased by me at normal consumer prices. So, the opinions I expressed are my own genuinely held opinions, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the manufacturers, any retailer, or any known human being, alive or dead, real or corporate. Just so we’re clear.

Three meal adventures

The thing about me and cooking is that sometimes I get all creative and adventurous, but other times all I can manage is peanut butter on toast. I don’t share photos of any of the latter kind, but I also don’t share the former kind often enough, particularly because there are often stories behind them. This post shares three recent meals-with-stories, in order from the most recent.

The photo up top is my dinner on Monday, July 3, what I call “THE Beef Stew”, something my mother taught me to make when I was a young boy. When I shared the photo on my personal Facebook, I said:

Today I made “THE Beef Stew”, the dish my mother used to teach me how to cook, and so long ago I have no idea how old I was—maybe 7 or 8? I’ve made it dozens of times over the years since, but tonight was only the second time I made it in the slow cooker. I last did it some 25 years ago, but I was disappointed with the results and never tried again until today (I always made it the way my mother taught me, though sometimes I put the pot in the oven to slow cook it). Tonight’s batch was perfect, including the dumplings (I had to figure out how to make them because my mother didn’t write down the instructions, and was lucky that I found a good recipe several years ago). This is one of the few recipes I brought with me when I moved to New Zealand, and Nigel loved it. That made me feel happy because my mother would’ve loved Nigel.

There are several stories in that tale. The first is about my mother, and over the years I often talked about how my mother used this recipe to teach us kids to cook—but this time was the first time it suddenly occurred to me that that may not be true—and, in fact, at the very least, it’s not entirely true. I suppose I could’ve misunderstood what she said, or maybe the story just got embellished over time, but what’s interesting to me is that learning that it wasn’t literally true didn’t bother me. It turns out that what really mattered to me is that it was a bond I had with my mother, one I’ve been able to maintain for all the decades since. That. And the fact that Nigel loved the stew. It was one small thing connecting all the love in my life.

Next up, my Sunday Brunch on July 2:

This was a poached egg on smashed avocado (which used avocados from my recent online order), on top of one the ends of the loaf of (breadmaker) bread I made last week. The smashed avocado has a bit of freshly ground salt and a bit of garlic, and the whole thing had nothing else except a little bit more freshly ground salt and more freshly ground pepper than I’d normally use (both eggs and avocados are a bit bland, after all—and, no, chilli oil was not an option for me…). Turns out, I’m getting reasonably good at making poached eggs to my liking.

There are actually a lot of stories connected to this one. First, the poached egg: I really am getting pretty good at making them, something I never even tried until I moved to Hamilton. Nigel always made them, and made them so well that it never even occurred to me to try.

This meal also got me thinking (well, actually, anything /everything gets me thinking…) about the “young people having smashed avocado on toast is why they can’t buy their first house” trope. I was remembering that I only ever saw some grumpy commentator in New Zealand actually say that—either a column in the NZ Herald (also known was “Granny Herald”), or maybe it was from the other home of grumpy conservatives, the Newstalk ZB radio station. Anyway, they were roundly and appropriately mocked and criticised for saying something so idiotic. But the trope persists—why?

That commentator’s point was (I guess?) that NZ’s Millennials were making “stupid” spending choices, and so, that was the entire source of their problem. The severe shortage of affordable homes, crushing student loan debt, lower wages in NZ relative to other countries—none of that, the argument suggested, had anything to do with it, it was avocado on toast (literally and figuratively).

Nowadays, I still see Millennials bring it up to criticise Boomers who own a lot of houses as rental properties. But I’ve never heard any Boomer I know personally do anything as daft as blaming Millennials having avocado toast as the reason they can’t afford to buy a house. Of course, I’ve heard “certain people”, usually overseas, complain that young people are “lazy”, “unrealistic”, and “playing victim”, and when I hear them say any of that, all I can hear is “avocado toast”.

This particular meal goes to show that not every story is about me or my memories—even if most of them are.

And finally, the meal that started all this, from Thursday, June 29:

This meal was Smoked Chicken Gnocchi, a meal that Nigel made may times over the years, but I’m not certain that I ever did. I do know, however, that Nigel taught me how to cook gnocchi, and I also know that he liked things with cream sauces. I thought of him constantly while I was making the meal.

What makes this meal completely different from Nigel’s, though, is that I made the gnocchi myself (it wasn’t bought pre-made at the supermarket) using a recipe from a YouTube video that some great friends of mine shared on Facebook. I wanted to try it because it uses dried potato flakes instead of boiled potatoes, and I thought it’d be easier and quicker than the “Kūmara Gnocchi with Garlic Cream Sauce” I made back in July of last year, a recipe that had me make the gnocchi myself using fresh Kūmara that I boiled and mashed. It was so very time consuming that I vowed I’d never do it again.

Last year’s effort took me an hour and half to make, and the new version still took me around an hour. Sure, that’s a bit less time, but it wasn’t much less work. It’s settled, then: It’ll be gnocchi from the supermarket for me from now on—although, knowing me, I may well forget all the fiddly hassles and try again some day. Maybe it’ll be for what’s apparently my annual gnocchi meal (In late 2021, I made “Knockout Gnocchi” as the first meal in that meal kit experiment I tried).

I don’t know why, but I never talked about this meal on Facebook. Maybe it was because the photo was a bit flat? I don’t know, but I do know I often share my flops as well as my successes—though this one was more of an “incomplete success” than an actual flop.

Those are the stories from three recent meal adventures, meals that were, in fact, the only adventurous meals I made over that period. Sometimes I get all creative and adventurous, but other times all I can manage is peanut butter on toast. Stories, though, flow through everything.

A disappointment reworked

Sometimes, recipes we’ve made many different times don’t turn out right. There can be a lot of reasons why it happens, and when it does, it’s disappointing, though no big deal. Recently I had that happen, but the disappointment was broader.

A couple weeks ago, I got into my head that I wanted to have a Reuben sandwich, and that necessarily meant I’d have to make it at home: There’s no place I know of where it’s made on demand. However, the first place I ever had one was actually here in New Zealand, at a long-gone American deli/cafe/food shop that used to be on Auckland’s North Shore. Nigel and I went there his mum many years ago (probably more than 20…), and we all had Reubens for lunch (after which I bought some imported American food items for the first time ever).

The shop closed not all that long later as the village-like shopping area was torn down for re-development. The owner of the shop sold American products online for awhile, but he embarrassed me because, mad at the former North Shore City Council over the redevelopment, he referred to it as “North Short shitty council”; the crass, boorish American behaviour made me cringe, because it was precisely the sort of stereotypical “American abroad” (my mother would’ve called it “ugly American”) behaviour I was trying live down (I should add that later a new, much larger—and better—importer of US/Canadian/Mexican food products opened, and I’ve written several blog posts about going there; the original place was gone long before I began this blog).

With no place to go get Reubens, Nigel and I decided to make them at home, and at first it worked really well—they tasted nearly as good as the ones we’d ordered. The “near” part is because we were using products we could buy in our local supermarket, not products from the USA, and it wasn’t always a good match.

The first issue is that in New Zealand (and other Commonwealth countries) the corned been we have is called silverside (also called corned silverside). Wikipedia explains well:

Silverside is a cut of beef from the hindquarter of cattle, just above the leg cut. Called "silverside" in the UK, Ireland, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, it gets the name because of the "silverwall" on the side of the cut, a long fibrous "skin" of connective tissue (epimysium) which has to be removed as it is too tough to eat. The primary muscle is the biceps femoris.

What Americans think of as corned beef is a completely different cut, usually brisket, which is cut from the chest or lower breast of cattle. The two versions are very similar, but since I grew up with American corned beef, I can tell there’s a difference.

Nevertheless, it’s close enough to use, and to be sure it was good enough, I bought some sliced silverside from the deli counter at the supermarket, rather than the manufactured and prepackaged sort sold for sandwiches. This wasn’t why the Reuben I made was a disappointment.

Similarly, the Swiss cheese wasn’t a disappointment: While very expensive, it was nice and tasted “right” to me. In the past, Nigel and I had to buy Gruyère cheese, which was less, um, altered than the typical American version. In the many years since, what I think of as “Swiss cheese” has become far easier to get.

The problem also wasn’t the sauerkraut: I bought the tinned version made by an Australian company, and it tasted pretty much like what my parents used when I was a kid. The thing is, though, that when Nigel and I used to make Reubens, the sauerkraut was always acceptable, even if some were nicer than others.

The first thing to be amiss was the bread: The day I was at the supermarket, the only rye bread they stocked was what the manufacturer called “Roggenbrot Dark Rye”, and because Rye is grown in New Zealand, and the bread was made here, the bread was at least possibly in the same country as rye, though I suspect none happened to be in the factory at the time: It just tasted like a slightly denser mass-manufactured wheat bread, though darker in colour. It had no rye taste whatsoever, as far as I could tell, but as a mixed grain bread, it wasn’t bad for mass market bread (I don’t usually buy that brand because, for my taste, they’re all too insubstantial).

The next problem could well have been the “Russian dressing”: The recipe I found may have been too inauthentic, or I maybe I just made it wrong (I’d never made it before). Whatever the case, it added very little to the sandwich (though I liked it).

A final possibility is that I assembled it all wrong: I’m pretty sure NIgel used to make them, or, if I did, I can’t remember the last time I did—meaning, I have no idea what I used to do. Whatever, I don’t think we’d made theme for maybe a decade or so.

This was a huge disappointment because I’d been craving that Reuben. The fact it was a disappointment, though, made me glad I’d only made one. But, what to do with the rest of the stuff I didn’t use?

The cheese and silverside were easy: Sandwiches. I wasn’t sure to do with the unused sauerkraut I put in the fridge.

When I was a kid, my mother sometimes made what she called “sauerkraut and pork”, the two being boiled together and served—I think?—with mashed potato. It’s so long ago that I can’t remember precisely, but I do remember I wasn’t a fan of the pork because there were small bones mixed in (I have no idea what cut it was), and I hate bones in food.

I decided to make something that was kind of an homage to what my mother used to make, but more appropriate to the times (fresh pork is expensive these days) and to what I had on hand. So, I took out three pork sausages I had in the freezer, boiled them and then browned them in a pan. I also boiled actual potatoes and mashed them, and heated the sauerkraut (the meal is in the photo below). It was actually very nice, even if the sausages were heavily flavoured with spices/herbs. In fact, it was better than my Reuben was.

And that’s how I took what had been a disappointment and turned it into something much nicer, without wasting anything. In the end, I was happy with the final result, if not the first one. It’s still no big deal, though: Just a better one.

A kitchen triumph

Yesterday, I made cream of celery soup (photo up top) for the first time, and it was a triumph. It was so good, in fact, that I kept saying that out loud all evening. That’s not a reaction I typically have when I try a new recipe, so it’s definitely one I’ll plan to repeat.

It came about out of a sort of necessity: I had some celery that was fading, and while I knew I could revive it from it’s limpness, I decided I’d be better off using it all up at once. The first thing that popped into my head was cream of celery soup.

When I was a kid, my mother would often make me Campbell’s tinned cream of celery soup for lunch, and I loved it. She preferred their cream of mushroom soup, but in those days I didn’t like mushrooms (ironic, since I do now but have to avoid them because they can trigger a gout attack).

I also wanted to make the soup because it would something different. Over the course the week I had the celery, I’d had a couple stalks as snack, used some in chicken noodle soup, and on Thursday night, I also made a garden salad with some. By Friday, the celery was definitely much more limp. Cooking it was the solution, and the soup was to be the vehicle.

I Googled for a recipe, and one of the first I found is the one I actually used. It was simple to follow and turned out so well that I descibed is on social media as “awesome”, and I also declared:

I think this was probably the nicest soup I’ve ever made, which is a big call, because I’ve made a lot over the years, the past few in particular. I’ll definitely make this again, and without just waiting to use up celery. Yum!

I varied the recipe a bit: I didn’t have any leeks, so I used two onions. I also added a tiny bit of dried dill and a pinch of dried basil. The chicken stock was actually the dried sort, something I usually use to boost flavour, not to make stock, though in the past I’ve done that. This was low-salt and from a well-known brand sold in NZ, so it’s good quality, and, since I didn’t have any ogther stock and wasn’t keen on going to buy some liquid stock, I made do. It turned out just fine.

One part of the recipe I ignored: I didn’t sauté the small batch of celery separately, as the recipe called for, because I didn’t have enough. It was awesome without doing it, though, so maybe it’s not really necessary? I suppose I’ll have to try it to know for sure.

The recipe suggested parsley as a garnish, so I went outside and snipped some from one of the plants I have in the Vegepod. It was nice—maybe not totally necessary, but nice.

The photo at the bottom of this post is my lunch today: The soup (with freshly ground black pepper instead of parsley, mainly because it was raining and I didn’t want to go out and snip off some more). I served it with a toasted piece of the breadmaker bread I made a few days ago. The crust is lovely and crunchy when I toast it, so it made a really nice add-on for my lunch (which was necessary because I didn’t leave myself very much soup to have today…).

Maybe I’ll buy celery when it’s on special specifically to make the soup, rather than making it to use up celery I have on hand. A friend suggested roasting the celery first, but I rreally liked the simplicity of the recipe, and how few few steps it has (especially if I don’t bother with sautéing a separate pan of celery). Maybe, maybe not.

I’ve had plenty of kitchen successes—and failures—over the years, but last night’s soup is probably the highlight of them all. It’s nice when that happens.

Lunch today: Leftover soup and a toasted piece of homemade bread.

Boring bacon

Tonight I tried what was possibly my last plant-based imitation meat product. It wasn’t a disaster, exactly, but it wasn’t exactly a success, either. It was, in fact, boring.

Tonight, I tried “Boar Free Bacon” (photo above) from Sunfed, a New Zealand company that makes a several vegan meat substitutes. In my post last week, ”Still more kitchen adventures”, I said that “I still have their bacon substitute to try”. Tonight was the night.

I got the sub the fake bacon when I ordered their beef mince product online, but the store fulfilling my order was out and substituted the bacon. I’d never seen it before, and when I looked at through the window in the package, it looked like “bacon pieces”, basically chopped up bacon, which most supermarkets sell. So, my original plan was to make a bacon and egg pie—until I remembered that it must be cooked first, and doesn’t work like normal cooked meat products would.

When I was researching my post for last week, I saw a promotional video for the bacon on their website, and only then realised the products was formed to imitate, more or less, rashers of bacon. Change of plans: Bacon and eggs? Poached eggs on toast with bacon? I didn’t know, but the cooking ultimately helped me decide.

When I opened the pack (with some difficulty), it smelled exactly like a smoky bacon—hickory, perhaps, or maybe manuka. Either way, it smelled real, the first of these products I’ve tired that did. The instructions said to fry it in oil on a medium-high heat for around three minutes, frequently turning them until crispy. When they first started cooking, it smelled just like cooking bacon—until it didn’t. As it cooked to crispiness, the smell entirely disappeared—and the entire pan filled with an unappetising foam (photo below, and the foam got worse a minute or so later, entirely covering all the bacon).

I took a piece out and placed it on some paper kitchen towel to drain, and tried it. The texture was spot-on—exactly like real bacon cooked to crispness. However, it also had absolutely no flavour.

I decided to scale everything back and just make a bacon sandwich of the sort I used to make when I was a kid, though it was using white bread in those days. Instead, I used my homemade bread that I toasted. I wanted to put some hickory BBQ sauce on it for flavour, but what I had in the fridge, it turned out, was well beyond elderly. I knew it would need help.

So, I put some edam cheese on the toast, the bacon, and some tomato sauce (aka ketchup). It was—okay. The texture was perfect, but the bacon’s flavour was basically nothing. I could taste the cheese, tomato sauce, and the bread, but not the bacon. It was yet another kitchen failure.

Unlike other Sunfed products—the chicken and beef mince—I don’t think there’s anything I can do to improve the experience. I won’t be buying it again.

After I turned off the hob (stovetop), and the pan cooled, the foam calmed down, and left behind what appeared to be a lot of oil—liquid, anyway, but pretty sure it was oil because the pan was greasy after I dumped it into the rubbish.

So, I’m zero for three on Sunfed products, and the others I’ve tried have been kind of “meh”. Long ago, while Nigel was still alive, even, I began to think it was better to make meals that don’t have meat rather than use meat substitutes to make dishes that normally have meat. If the substitutes aren’t nearly identical, and they never are, then the results are likely to disappoint. But meals that never had meat in them in the first place don’t have that same problem, and so, to me, they’re the better choice. So far, at least, that’s certainly been the case for me.

I have health-related reasons to cut back on meat and to increase the percentage of plant-based foods that I eat. The lesson I’ve learned from all this experimenting is that—for me—plant-based needs to be actual plants, not plants pretending to be something else. Other people’s preferences, requirements and such are their business, of course. And mine are mine, too.

Important Note: The names of brands/products/companies listed in this post are all registered trademarks, and are used here for purposes of description and clarity. No company or entity provided any support or payment for this blog post, and all products were purchased by me at normal consumer prices. So, the opinions I expressed are my own genuinely held opinions, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the manufacturers, any retailer, or any known human being, alive or dead, real or corporate. Just so we’re clear.

All photos are my own.

Still more kitchen adventures

Kitchen adventures have become a kind of hobby for me. Sometimes that means trying new recipes or methods, and other times it’s about trying products that are new to me, This weekend there were two of the latter type of adventure.

A couple months ago, I wrote about my various attempts at finding substitutes for meat, something I started doing to cut down the amount of meat I consume, as doctors’ (repeatedly) suggested. That post talked about the entirety of my efforts, including how at first Nigel and I tried meat-like substitutes so that we could just adapt the meals we ordinarily made. I haven’t done much of that for the past few years, but yesterday I made an exception.

Back in November last year, US company Impossible Foods launched their burger patties in New Zealand. It had been delayed, like so much else, by Covid, and also because they needed to get regulatory approval for their fake blood additive, leghemoglobin, which is derived from genetically modified soy, something involves the fermentation of a yeast called Picha pastoris. Genetically modified food ingredients usually need special approval to be used in products sold in New Zealand, which is extremely restrictive in how and when genetically modified things can be used.

In March of this year, Countdown supermarkets started selling the Impossible Burger patties, and this past Wednesday I picked some up to try (photo below).

There are several aspects to burger substitutes: The first is, of course, the taste, but price and ingredients are also important. Ingredients are particularly important to me—even more so than taste—for a variety of reasons.

When I opened the pack and removed the patties, with some difficulty, I noticed how much they looked and felt like meat patties. The instructions said to cook two minutes per side to one’s choice of doneness. I made cheeseburgers with the burger patties (real cheese, not vegan) using my ribbed grill pan, and turned each pattie three times, as I would with real meat patties, because it puts a nice sort of lattice pattern on them (visual appeal matters). I thought they were nice—not the nicest I’ve ever had, but better than the Beyond Meat patties Nigel and I tried (to me, they have a funny taste to them).

This is where ingredients come into the story: Both the Impossible Burger and Beyond Burgers are made in the USA—imported from a distance. The Impossible patties have lots of ingredients and are fortified with vitamins. It’s protein comes from soybeans, which may be a concern for some people: I read somewhere that most (or perhaps all) soybeans grown in the USA are generically modified, but the product definitely contains the genetically modified product, the fake blood.

Beyond Burgers, also made in the USA, have a somewhat simpler ingredients list, two points of which caught my eye: They contain “Pea Protein Isolate” (which isn’t further specified), along with rice protein. What concerned me a bit is that it contains potassium chloride, which is used as a low-sodium salt substitute. I’m supposed to avoid that because the blood pressure medication I take is potassium based (not that burgers consumed one night would have enough to affect me, but still). The patties also have “Beet Juice Extract” for colour, rather than genetically engineered fake blood.

The biggest issue with these burger substitutes is cost: They sure ain’t cheap. The Impossible Burger Patties are $12 (today, US$6.96) per 113g 2 pattie pack (a quarter US pound is approximately 113 grams), which works out to $10.62/100g. Obviously, that works out to $6 per pattie/burger, and it would be far cheaper to use real meat—or to buy a burger from a fast food joint.

The Beyond Meat Burger Patties are $12.50 (today, US$7.25) per 226g pack, which works out to $5.53/100g. In other words, the patties are twice as heavy—each one roughly 1/4 US pound—for nearly the same price, and so, arguably better value.

Based on flavour alone, I personally preferred the Impossible Burger—I thought it was really nice and very much like meat. However, I’d only rank it second, with Beyond Burger at third. The one I’d rank best of all is only available in New Zealand from fast food places, and that could mean the cooking methods affect the flavour, and maybe it wouldn’t be as good at home.

At any rate, back in February of 2020, a month after I moved to Hamilton, I tried Burger King NZ’s “Rebel Whooper”, something I forgot to mention here on the blog at the time. The plant-based pattie is made in Australia by a company called V2 Food. It was very, very nice, and—to me—indistinguishable from the regular meat-based Whopper. It is my top choice—so far.

There’s one more alternative, a beef mince product from Sunfed, a New Zealand company that makes vegan meat substitutes. Nigel and I tried their chicken substitute in February of 2019, and that effort was a failure. My brother-in-law, who was staying with me for a bit after Nigel died, took a pack out of the freezer to make a dish with it, and it was much better than mine had been, suggesting that my failure was definitely user error.

The same evening I bought the Impossible Burger patties, I also bought a pack of Sunfed's beef mince substitute, “Bull Free Beef Raw Prime Mince” (photo up top). To back a fair comparison, I should have made it into burger patties, but since I’d had burgers the night before, I wasn’t keen. Instead, I was in the mood for savoury mince on toast (using an online recipe, because it’s been longer than I can remember since I last made it; I used to make it for Nigel and me, but maybe not since). It was an incomplete success.

It started out well enough, but just as with the chicken, it ended up less meat-like than I’d hoped. That was because I actually made the same mistake: I cooked it in the sauce, instead of adding it to the sauce at the end. Even so, the flavour was nice enough, and I thought even as it was it would’ve made a nice sloppy joe, or a BBQ beef sort of sandwich thing, because that’s often shredded beef. Still, I’d experiment with it again (and I still have their bacon substitute to try).

I don’t have specifics on costs because of the post-errand tragedy I mentioned yesterday (the Countdown receipt was ruined by the spilled yoghurt). However, They also make a “Bull Free Beef Diced Beef” (which is chunks, rather than minced). That product is $13 (today, US$7.54) per 300g pack, which works out to $4.33/100g. The “Bull Free Beef Raw Prime Mince” comes in a 350g pack, though, and if the price is roughly the same, it would be around $3.74 per 100g. Either way, it’s the best value—if I can get the cooking method right.

Sunfed products are made in New Zealand from pea protein, and the beef products are coloured with beetroot juice (which means if I did make burgers from their mince, I’d need to wear gloves to avoid staining my hands). All their products are also GMO free, unlike at least one of the American products.

And that’s my latest round of kitchen adventures.

Important Note: The names of brands/products/companies listed in this post are all registered trademarks, and are used here for purposes of description and clarity. No company or entity provided any support or payment for this blog post, and all products were purchased by me at normal consumer prices. So, the opinions I expressed are my own genuinely held opinions, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the manufacturers, any retailer, or any known human being, alive or dead, real or corporate. Just so we’re clear.

All photos are my own.

Cooking from the cupboard

One of the cooking challenges I enjoy the most is making something new using, and using only what I have on hand makes it even more of an interesting challenge for me. Saturday night, I did exactly that. It was very inexpensive, meatless—and far too much work.

The dish (photo above) was Kūmara gnocchi with Garlic Cream Sauce. I made the gnocchi myself, from scratch—I’d never done that before. I mention that first because, frankly, doing that was the most important part of it to me, and the motivator for trying the recipe.

The meal is adapted from a recipe from New World’s YouTube Channel (WATCH), however, theirs had a garlic cream sauce, with pesto sauce as a sort of garnishy thing (and that was supposed to be homemade, too, but, yeah, nah, that wasn’t going to happen). Instead of that, I combined store bought pesto with the cream sauce. The result was okay, I thought, and the original would’ve been okay, too (though I think the original should’ve included some onion, based on similar sauces I’ve made or had).

However: This recipe was waaaaaay too time-consuming: It took an hour and a half all up, so I won’t be making it again. I’m also highly unlikely to make gnocchi from scratch again, or, at least, I’d only make ordinary gnocchi, not the kūmara one (it was okay, but nothing special). Supermarkets sell really nice pre-made gnocchi, after all. still, I don’t regret making it—it was just too much trouble for not enough payoff. IMHO.

When I sat down to cost out the recipe, I realised I’d accidentally left out the 1/2 cup of parmesan cheese. Oops. The costs are probably more or less the same, though, because I used store-bought pesto. Your mileage may vary. The costs were:

Kūmara – orange: $4.00/kg, 500g used: $1.06. Plain flour: $1.33/kg, 1 cup (120g) used: $0.16 $2.50/250g jar, approx 10g used: $0.10. Cream: $3.6/250ml box, 1 used: $3.60. Grated parmesan cheese: $34.10/kg, approx 45g in the recipe: $1.53. Olive oil (panty staple): $10.70 per 1 litre bottle, approx 15 millilitres used: $0.16.

This means it came to a total of $6.55 for the entire meal (today, around US$4.04). This means it’d be $3.28 per person (today, around US$2.02) if two people were fed, $2.18 per person (today, around US$1.34) if three people were fed, and $1.64 per person (today, around US$1.01) per person if four people were fed.

It’d be fine for two people, definitely, and most likely okay for three, but I don’t think it makes enough for four people. Adding chicken would definitely make enough to feed four people, or the recipe could be increased—at additional cost, of course.

Thinking about it the next day, I thought the meal would’ve been better with the garlic cream sauce that the original recipe used, or, maybe if I’d included the parmesan cheese I would’ve liked it better. Regardless, neither of those changes the fact that making the gnocchi from scratch was too much work—and far too messy—to justify the effort when it’s just for me. I might do that if I was making it for the family, or if I’d made it for me and Nigel, but, yeah, it’s a lot of work. And that’s why if I make it again, it’ll definitely be with store-bought gnocchi. And maybe chicken.

Still, as it was, this recipe was cheap to make, meatless, and, for a change, used only stuff I had on hand, and that means it’s something I could, theoretically, make at any time. Yes, well, nice in theory.