JeanC Reviews...

We've been hearing about the ground beef at the Moscow Food Co-op for a while and finally decided to give it a try. We usually buy regular ground beef in the BIG packages and never the lean or super lean. We both grew up with ground beef being super cheap and when it went to over $2 a pound we went into sticker shock and have been there ever since. Still, we've been wanting to try and buy more local (or as local as we can. I count anything from Idaho, Washington, Oregon and Montana as local) and popped in one evening to buy some. They didn't have any of the family packs out, so the meat counter guy ran tot he back to see about them. While we waited for them to finish a couple up we talked with him about the meat. The Co-op gets their meat in a whole muscle and grind it there, none of this grinding it in a big factory and then regrinding it to make it look fresh when it hits the mega mart. By grinding it there they can avoid some of the problems of contaminated ground ...

A Sonic opened in Lewiston a while back and we decided to stop off and give them a try. We'd been to the Sonic in Post Falls and enjoyed it so we were pretty sure we would like this one. There isn't a lot on the menu I could have unless it was altered in some way and I wasn't int he mood for a bunless burger. They did have hot dogs on the menu and I asked for the blue cheese and bacon dog without the bun: Hubby opted for the All American Dog: They were both good and hit the spot. I like being able to stay in the car and having a car hop bring out the food. I remember when I was a kid when we went to A&W. I do miss the trays that slipped onto the window, there was just something so cool about that (esp with the root beer came in those nice frosty mugs). The person putting together the order didni't think to put in a fork and I forgot to ask. So I had to eat my blue cheese and bacon dog with my fingers (insert little girl giggle here hehehehehe). I will ha...

We had a friend give us some ground elk and we decided on burgers for dinner. We stopped at the Co-op to pick up some buns and a couple other things (beef to mix with the elk) and found they had the Udi's Whole Grain hamburger buns . I thought this was great as for something as special as elk burgers I needed something other then a standard hamburger bun. These buns are more of an artisan bun and have a great texture and flavor. Broiled with a bit of butter and they were perfect with the burger. The flavor of the bun complimented the elk burger and my taste buds were in heaven. The price for them was good, less the $4.00 a package. They thaw nicely and don't get soggy.

We'd stopped in at the Co-op for some chicken breasts they had on sale and I decided to see if by chance they had any gluten free beers. And lo and behold, they did! A small selection compared to all the rest of the yummy beers they have, but as yet there aren't too many breweries making gluten free. So we picked up a couple bottles, one from Anheuser-Busch and the other from New Planet (that will be a subject for another review). Took them home and decided I would try the Redbridge  first since it was from a big brewer. Opened the bottle and took a sniff. Smelled like beer. Took a taste and it tasted a bit like beer. Handed the bottle to hubby so he could have a tiny taste and he thought it tasted like beer. Grabbed a glass and poured in the beer: Good color, a bit of a head, lots of bubbles. So I started sipping. Didn't quite have the full body feel of regular beer and it had a rather interesting aftertaste that wasn't unpleasant. It was also somewhat fizzier th...

So we were down in Lewiston/Clarkson last weekend and trying to figure out where to go for lunch. Sitting in Starbucks I used hubby's smarter then me phone to peruse Urbanspoon to find someplace we hadn't been before and would be different. Came across an entry for the Strike & Spare Bar & Grill that talked about their giant turkey sandwich. At the mention of turkey, hubby's eyes lit up as he loves him his turkey sandwiches. So it was decided. We punched in the address in the GPS and off we went. As you can probably guess from the name, the Strike & Spare is attached to the local bowling alley. We walked in and went AHHHHHHH!!!!!: It was that nice late 60s, early 70s lounge decor and feel with the sounds of balls hitting pins in the background. It wasn't too dark and nice and cool. Found our selves a table and sat. Perused the little snacks/drinks menu and waited for the waitress: Waitress brought our menus and we ordered ice tea while we looked ...

A couple weeks ago I had a seriously stressed day and the only thing I wanted for dinner was lasagna. While my lasagna usually takes two days to make (sauce first day and then the dish the next day) I can and will make a quick and dirty one. So I hit the store for ground beef, spaghetti sauce and the cheeses. Couldn't find a 'sketti sauce that didn't have some amount of HFCS in it, even a little bit makes the sauce too sweet and icky, so got a can of diced tomatoes with Italian herbs and spices and tomato sauce. We then hit Rosauers to get the brand of GF brown rice lasagna noodles I like, only to discover none of the shelves. Off to the Co-op where I was able to finally find some GF lasagna noodles by De Boles. Only thing was, they were the no cook variety.  I have never used the no cook type for the very simple reason I use a round deep dish casserole for my lasagna. I would have to break up the noodles to put them in. Since I didn't feel like going to another st...

I awoke on the morning of my 50th birthday to my hubby telling me he was taking me to Silverwood as my birthday surprise. It was a wonderful surprise, I thought we were going fishing. I've been wanting to go to Silverwood for years and just hadn't gotten around to it. Either I didn't have the time or didn't have the money. Hubby along with a couple of friends got together and got details worked out and off we went. First thing we did was hop on the train that runs the the grounds of the park: And got "robbed": The whole act was fun and the money goes to charity. Then it was off to the rides. It has been almost 20 years since I was last on a roller coaster and I wasn't disappointed. The first one I tried was the Corkscrew: All in all I rode Tremors and the Panic Plunge. Since it has been so long since I've ridden I have found out a few things. I can't tolerate inversion as much as I used to so I was very woozy coming off...

A few weeks ago the hubby and I were on the look out for some place new to eat down in the Lewiston Valley, so I popped on to Urbanspoon to see what I could find. After skimming thru a few reviews we settled on Scotty's Third Base Grill. They have a fairly simple menu: That first time I had the chili burger and fries sans bun and the hubby got their gyro. YUM! Fast forward to Aug 6th and a trip down to Lewiston and we popped in again. YUM! again. This time hubby went for the cheese burger with fries: and I opted for the gyro salad: The salad was so good I didn't miss the pita and loved the substantial cucumber slices, the tzatziki was thick and creamy and a wonderful counterpoint to the gyro meat. The hubby loved that the vegetation for the burger was tucked underneath (he isn't a big lettuce on burgers fan) and was able to add the amount he wanted along with the onions and pickle and I got the rest of the lettuce (turning a large salad into a HUGE ...

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We finally got around to watching the Johnny Depp movie Rango . We picked up on pay per view thru Dish and we were pleasantly surprised at how good it is. In my opinion tho, a kids movie it is not, at least for little kids. The whole tone of the movie is more along the lines of the realistic modern cowboy movie then the Saturday morning fair I grew up with. Johnny Depp is the voice of a chameleon who finds himself stranded in the desert and in the dying town of Dirt, where water is more priceless then gold. There is a mystery of what happened to the water. Our erstwhile chameleon has no name and while spinning a tale, names himself Rango and after meeting with the sinister Mayor (Bed Beatty), becomes sheriff. We spent the movie playing "spot the cliche" and "spot the homage" The movie makers knew their westerns, both old and new and were true to them. The animation is amazing, there were times where we paused the movie to try and determine if what we were watc...

I am forever burning myself when I am cooking, anywhere from grabbing the rocket hot handle on my Magnalite pans to grabbing the cookie sheet out of the oven with my bare hands. Even when using pot holders my fingers would get toasty, not too mention some burns when I used old, ratty pot holders. When we first saw commercials for the Ove Glove, I was intrigued I am always on the look out for better ways to deal with hot cooking vessels. I don't like the mitt style glove since I have small hands and they are rather awkward to use. A simple hot pad usually isn't big enough for some things. So when I found the Ove Glove at a local store, we picked one up. Love it. It is just a tad bit big for my hands, but the fingered glove is so much easier to work with. The Kevlar and Nomex material really does keep the heat at bay. I like to slip one over the long handles of my Magnalite frying pans while cooking so I don't burn myself when grabbing the handles. I now have two pair...

I have to say it, I love dollar stores. I love being able to go in with $10 and come out with 10 items. I love going in and finding neat stuff. I love being able to stock up on snacks and not break the budget. But I don't love everything in the dollar store. There are times you are actually paying more for an item then you would in a regular store, esp when you consider cost per ounce or such. Plus you sometimes don't get the quality of regular store stuff. Case in point, I will NEVER buy coffee at the dollar store again. It was an off brand and I ended up composting the unused grounds the coffee from it was so foul and I usually buy the cheap stuff from the grocery store. I also won't buy oven cleaner there again. It said low fumes. If that was low fumes, I'd hate to buy the non-low fumes stuff. Dead of winter and I had the windows and doors open and fans running. Danged near gassed us out of the house. But I love buying a lot of my dishes, glassware and kitchenw...

For the last number of years Hollywood has been attempting to bring comic books to the big screen. For the most part, they have failed miserably. Tim Burton's Batman in 1989 was quite good, Iron Man in 2008 was not bad, tho it didn't quite hit the mark as far as I am concerned (but after having my doubts, Robert Downey Jr did pull off Tony Stark quite nicely). All the Spidermans were too damned angsty. I will hold out opinion on Green Lantern and Thor until I can see them on DVD, they did not look good enough to spend money going to the theatre to see, even at matinee prices. Captain America on the other hand..... First off, what magic did they use to make 6' 1/2" Chris Evans into a 5' what ever nothing, 98 lb weakling?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Chris may be familiar to people as Johnny Storm from the Fantastic 4 movies (and I won't even go there in what I thought about those. Suffice to say I am glad I didn't pay money to see them). Here he is able to shine ...

I am always on the look out for pasta that I can eat. I have one brand of brown rice pasta that I love, but it is a bit on the pricey side for our budget, so I usually only buy the spaghetti for special occasions. So I was happy to see that the Grocery Outlet we shop at in Lewiston ID has started carrying more gluten free products and in specific brown rice spaghetti. So I grabbed a couple of packages. I decided that I had to do spaghetti for dinner that weekend, so I started my sauce and when it was close to dinner time, broke out my favorite pasta pot. Filled it with water, tossed in some salt and set it to boil. Once boiling I added the spaghetti and set my timer for 7 minutes (instructions were for 7-10 minutes). At 7 minutes it was getting there and was pretty much at the right texture by 10 minutes. I drained the pasta and then set to plating and topping with it with sauce and cheese and it was dinner time. The flavor of the pasta was good, hubby actually prefers bro...

Last month I was in Vancouver WA and wandered into the Grocery Outlet there on the advice of a friend who said they carried gluten free pastas and picked up a few packages of various types the above tube pasta, shell pasta, fusilli, spaghetti and fettuccine. I haven't tried the long pastas yet, opting for the shell pasta to start as I wanted to do a pasta salad on a recent hot weekend. I read the instructions and grabbed my favorite pasta pot and set to work. At 9 minutes I found the pasta to be still very crunchy, so kept it cooking. I also found the water thickened quite a bit and that my favorite pasta pot was much too small to cook a whole package (it works with regular wheat pastas) and even cooking it longer couldn't get it to the texture that would be acceptable for both hubby and I (I prefer al dente, he prefers softer and I can usually come up with a compromise). I drained the pasta and rinsed it and let it cool down and then proceeded to make a pasta salad with ...

I do love going to the dollar store, you can find all sorts of things that are good (and a few that aren't, but that will be another review. On one of my most recent trips I found a corned beef hash I'd never heard of: The one problem with dollar stores tho is you can't always get the same brand of something you like. I've been haunting their food aisle for a while since they used to carry another brand of corned beef hash I loved, but haven't stocked it in a while. So I picked up the can to check the ingredients list and saw the lovely words "contains no allergens". YAY! Gluten-free! Food manufacturers manage to sneak gluten products into some of the oddest items, so it was nice to see I could eat it safely. My favorite way to have corned beef hash is fried, topped with an egg or two, sunny side up. Alas, since I decided these were for lunches at work I had to settle for heated up in the microwave. Corned beef hash is naturally greasy, esp th...

Way back in 1985 Coca Cola came out with "New Coke" and ran into a tempest. People didn't like it, more importantly I didn't like it. A couple months later they gave in and brought out "Coca-Cola Classic". Only problem was they changed the formula to use high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar. Most people didn't mind, but I never found Coke Classic to be as good as original Coke. Fast forward a number of years and I discover in Newfoundland a bottle of Coca Cola, made with cane sugar. This is when I learned that Coke in other countries is usually made with sugar and not HFCS. Unfortunately, Newfoundland is on the other side of the country from where I live and I can't get up to Canada enough to find a supply there. Imagine my happiness a couple years ago to find that Costco was carrying Mexican Coke made with sugar. I was in heaven and would buy a flat or two when I shopped there. Imagine my dismay when Costco stopped selling Coca Cola produc...

I have just one thing to say...OH...MY...GODDESS!!!! This restaurant opened in Coeur d'Alene recently and we simply had to try it. We got our opportunity on Saturday when we had to drive up to do some shopping. We got there a bit before 3 for a late lunch and there were still a few patrons there, most out on the patio. We opted for sitting inside. Our waiter arrived and asked if we had eaten there before, so he explained how the full Churrasco (pronounced shoo-RAS-koo) experience worked and of course we said yes (why go to a Brazillian steakhouse and not experience it properly). He then took our drink orders (iced tea) and left the red/green discs we would be needing: Green means we wanted more meat and red meant we were not ready for more or we were done. I tended to keep mine very close at hand to flip back to green if I saw a skewer coming with something I wanted LOL! First up tho was a visit to the buffet for salad and side dishes: There were so many choices, b...

A while back a small restaraunt was opened up in Troy at a remodeled gas station and is called The Filling Station . We've been driving by for a while and kept telling ourselves we had to stop in some time and check them out. After we determined I was gluten intolerant I figured there wouldn't be much I could have besides coffee, tea and maybe a salad. So imagine my delight a couple weeks back when my mom and I drove by and I caught a glimpse of a sign that said gluten free (at least I thought it did, we didn't go back to check). I looked them up and sure enough, there was an post on their Facebook page saying they had gluten free options. YAY!!!!!!! So today we went for a late lunch. They have a few items on the menu :D and a fair selection of desserts: Deciding what to order was hard, everything sounded delicious. Finally decided and ordered. I went up and said "gluten free?!?!?" and the gentleman at the counter smiled and said they had optio...

In which I will review what ever I want.