Hard-to-find Foods

For some reason, it has become difficult to find Walker's Shortbread. Trader Joe's in California used to carry it or something similar, and when they quit, I would get it from Cost Plus World Market. We ran out (my British husband loves shortbread!), so I wanted to get more. I checked TJ's. None. Whole Foods? No luck. Harvest Co-op? Nada. So I headed off to Cardullo's.

If you've never been there, Cardullo's is this little gourmet grocery store/deli/wine shop smack dab in the middle of Harvard Square. Although hideously overpriced, they carry a lot of food that is tough to find, including a large selection of British food that is tough to find anywhere else (since Boston doesn't have a Cost Plus World Market... yet). Also, they sell maple sugar candy. I don't think that this can possibly be as hard to find in the northeast as it is in California, but Cardullo's sells it, so I haven't bothered searching hard for it. The other bummer is that you have to pay cash if your purchase is under $10, which is possible if you are only buying one item. (Do they have anything under $6 there? It's questionable. Well, no, the small box of 4 maple syrup candies is about $3.)

Incidentally, the ONLY place I found maple sugar in California was at the Village Cheese Shop in Palo Alto, across the street from Stanford University. And even they didn't always have it. Come to think of it, Cardullo's is very similar to the Village Cheese Shop, which is also a gourmet grocery store/deli, although I think they might not have sold wine. The Village Cheese Shop ended up being a bit of an East Coast ex-patriate grocery store, since not only did they sell maple sugar candy, they also sold Anchor Bar buffalo wing sauce, and were the only place in Northern California (hell, probably all of CA) who did. They also sold Lapsang Soushong tea, which was also hard to find out there.

Anyway, back to Cardullo's. They are incredibly expensive, but way convenient and dammit if they probably don't have what you are looking for, provided what you are looking for is a British packaged food, tea or coffee, some kind of unusual jarred condiment or some kind of gourmet expensive chocolate mixed with a weird ingredient like lavender, or earl gray tea, or bacon. (seriously- Vosges now makes a chocolate bar with bacon bits mixed in. Not as good as the coconut curry chocolate bar.)

I could just make shortbread at home, but my husband's Scottish granny worked at a bakery in her youth and her advice was always "don't make shortbread, just buy it. It's just as good as what you'll make at home, and easier." Thanks for the tip, Granny!

They also sell clotted cream, but weirdly enough, this is much easier to find than Walker's shortbread. Whole Foods and Harvest Co-op both sell clotted cream too. And pastries from my beloved Danish Pastry House.

One of these days I will try a sandwich from there. I don't like sandwiches much, but their options look appealing.

Second Dinner

Dinner tonight was a flop. We tried a new recipe- chicken and broccoli casserole from The Six O'Clock Scramble Cookbook. I think the word "casserole" should have warned me off, but I wanted to try it. The Six O'Clock Scramble Cookbook is somewhat hit-and-miss with us. The positives are that the recipes are easy, relatively inexpensive, healthy, and tasty-sounding. The negatives are that the recipes tend to not produce enough food to feed my husband (who eats A LOT, although you wouldn't know it from looking at him), and they tend to be somewhat bland. I think the blandness is in part so the recipes appeal to kids, since the hook of the cookbook is quick, family-friendly dinners. The recipes are somewhat adventurous, given these constraints, but I often find that I need to add a teaspoon of salt to any recipe from that cookbook, because the author almost never includes it in the recipe. We don't eat that much salt at our house; we eat far less than most people. There are some real winners in that cookbook, though. The chicken tikka is a favorite of ours, and there's a spinach noodle bake that is also very tasty. I sometimes bulk it up for my husband by serving a fried egg on top.

Knowing what I know about the overall blandness in these recipes, I decided to punch up the flavor. I sauteed onions to add in with the chicken and broccoli, and when I made the sauce to pour over the chicken, broccoli, and onions, I added lemon zest and salt. I also mixed in a tablespoon of butter into the breadcrumb/shredded cheese mixture that we put on the top before baking.

I didn't think it was that bad, but my husband hated it. He forced himself to eat a small portion. Then we went for a walk, with the idea that he might be able to pick up second dinner for himself. We walked to Harvard Square, and walked around a lot before finally settling on The Garage, which is this food court type building. I had ice cream at Ben and Jerry's (still better than Emack and Bolio's), and my husband had a burger at Flat Patties. Although I liked the fries, which were thinly cut and well cooked, the burger didn't go over so well. I am not sure what the problem was, only that he didn't like it, although he ate almost all of it. He said he might be in a picky mood. I said that he was only allowed to reject one dinner per night! He came home and had a bowl of Weetabix. My opinion of Weetabix is a whole other post.