Kroger bacon update

Yeah, I took a week off. You get what you pay for around here. Just like the Kroger Value Bacon. 

You remember the whole Kroger bacon fiasco, don't you? I thought I made a pretty persuasive argument for their having cheated me on the meat portion of my package of bacon. Turns out, I was wrong. Here's the letter I received from Sara, my Kroger Customer Connect ambassador, who apparently followed the link in my complaint and read my post about my Kroger bacon experience.

Dear Valued Customer:
Thank you for contacting Kroger Customer Connect. I received your email regarding our Value Bacon. I am so sorry to hear that there were a few nice slices concealing fattier pieces. I assure you this was not done intentionally, and I appreciate that you have brought this to my attention. It is our goal to provide every customer with products and experiences that make them want to return to our stores. I'm so sorry to hear that our Value Bacon has missed that mark in this instance. I have forwarded your comments to our Quality Assurance team on your behalf, so that they may use your observations to make changes that will better your experience with our products in the future. It is my hope that the next time you purchase this product you notice marked improvement. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to address your concerns, and thank you for your patronage; have a wonderful day.

I hope that you find this information helpful. My name is Sara and if I can be of further assistance, please simply respond to this email or call 1-800-576-4377.
Thank you for shopping with us.
Sincerely,
SaraKroger Customer Connect The Kroger Family of Stores 

Sara is almost as adept at hiding meaning in her words as someone else at Kroger is at hiding the bacon. While she claims to admit -- probably due to my irrefutable photographic evidence -- that the "nice slices [concealed] fattier pieces," she denies that someone purposefully put partial pieces of bacon meat on top so they would show through the little window.

What was I thinking? Of course they wouldn't. I mean ... they didn't try to fool me. I'm obviously paranoid. They simply "missed that mark." I just happened to get the one unfortunate random package of nasty bacon hidden under 3 pieced together slices of bacon meat. My bad!

What's funny is that she thinks her words are so comforting and reassuring that I will go back to Kroger and buy that shitty bacon again .... because she's going to forward my letter to somebody who will make sure they don't hide the fat again, because they didn't do it on purpose in the first place.

If I were to reply to Sara, I would remind her that I don't fucking trust them now. So why would I trust that my one little blog post would create change in what is undoubtedly a systemic plot to rip off bacon-lovers everywhere?

The only way I would bring that bacon home again is if she gave it to me for free. She didn't dare do that though. I suspect that's because it would have been a Groundhog Day experience.

I should be happy she wished me a wonderful day, I guess.

*****

Two days after Sara emailed me, I received another email from The Kroger Family of Stores. At least I think it was meant for me. It came to my email address. It's hard to tell whom it was meant for though. Here it is.

Dear {address.full_name is NULL},
Thank you for contacting Kroger Customer Connect. In order to improve your experience, you are invited to participate in a brief customer satisfaction survey. 
This survey is designed to measure your customer experience with us; if you would like to participate, please click here. 
Thank you, 
Kroger Customer ConnectThe Kroger Family of Stores

I guess that would be me. "NULL." Sounds pretty close to Reticula, right? Null. That really encourages me to give them high marks for cheating me on my bacon, calling me a liar, and then calling me a zero.

Kroger, this experience was so fantastic I want to shake my poms poms for you. I might even jump up and show everybody my panties and then do the splits. Rah! Rah!

All I can say is that Kroger met my expectations, which were lower than the lean meat content of that package of bacon.

I did my shopping at Aldi yesterday. Doesn't mean I'll never go to Kroger, because it's the most convenient store to me. But when I can, I'll spend my dollars elsewhere .... especially my bacon dollars. Especially all of my bacon dollars.

This has been another whiny blog post by NULL. Over and out.

Stop fakin' my bacon

I have a bone to pick. OK, maybe not a bone, because bacon doesn't have a bone. But I'm pissed off, and the thing I'm pissed off about is bacon.

I'm a fan of bacon. I won't go so far as to say my identity is wrapped up in the love of bacon like some people claim theirs is, but I like some tasty, lean bacon. The adjectives are important there.

I grew up in Iowa. Lots of filthy, vicious pigs also grow up in Iowa, and then they become bacon. Some years when I was a kid we made our own bacon and hams. Dad charged us older kids with rubbing the salt into the raw pork until the skin peeled off our hands and the burning became unbearable. It was worth every bit of pain after the meat had cured, and Mom had fried it up in her old cast iron skillet. That level of bacon is not available at the grocery store.

My friend Piano Man makes his own bacon for a big birthday bash he throws every year. It is a religious experience, the taste of this bacon. His bacon is real meat, not fat with a bit of lean meat painted on. It tastes like home, this bacon.

I really do know good bacon, and most of what is available at the grocery store is not what I would consider good bacon. It's OK bacon, if that's all you've got to eat, but a lot of it is more than 50% fat. Some more than 75%. It's disgusting. Like the difference between Wonder Bread and homemade whole-grain artisan bread fresh from the oven. Or the difference between Chips Ahoy cookies eaten with a Capri Sun and a pan of Toll House cookies, hot and fresh, eaten with a glass of cold milk.

But, hey. I'm too lazy to make my own bacon, so I buy what I can tolerate. I sometimes spend 15-20 minutes pulling open the little cardboard windows on the various brands of bacon, looking for a package that's lean enough to be called meat, and I almost always buy the high-end bacon simply because it's leaner than the cheap shit.

So I was surprised when I opened the little window on a package of cheap Kroger-brand bacon and saw how lean it was. I was even a little suspicious, so I pulled the window out and peeked down the length of the slices. It was lean all the way down. Good deal! I bought it.

And I was still pleasantly surprised when I opened it to fry up for brunch when my son Drake and his roommate K were here. I pulled off the first piece and found out it wasn't really a piece. It was half a piece .... but that's OK. The other half was apparently there. Same with the second slice: 2 halves. And the third.

I didn't give a shit if the entire package came in half slices. It was lovely and lean.

Then I got to the fourth slice, which happened to be whole. And looked like this.

Not so much lean meat there. In fact, the entire rest of the package was mostly slices of fat. Somebody had taken the time to put the lean parts of cheater slices under the window to hide what made up the bulk of the pound of bacon.

Thanks a lot, Kroger. You just lost a bacon customer. Not an entire customer, because where else am I going to shop? But I will never buy your bacon again. Fool me once, I'll post about you on my fucking blog. You don't get a second chance.

I am so fucking sick of people trying to rip me off with stupid ploys like this. Did they think I wouldn't notice all that fat? Did they think I wouldn't notice those first 3 slices of bacon weren't whole slices? Is it worth all this to sell me just one pound of bacon, when I could conceivably buy 2 or 3 pounds a month if the product lived up to the promise under the little window? Why is the second pound I might purchase not as important as the first?

It's short sighted and deceptive and mean. I wish I could take my business to another market, but the fact is, I can't afford the up-scale grocery stores out in the suburbs. And besides, there's no guarantee they're any less deceptive.

I am going to join a CSA this summer, and buy whatever fresh vegetables I don't grow myself from a Marianist coop just a few blocks away. That's $400 for 4 months of weekly deliveries of whatever is in season. And that's more than $400 I won't be spending at Kroger. But I will be supporting a group of friendly young people who work their asses off in their gardens, and who have to care about the quality of their products or they won't survive. I wrote about buying produce from them last year here.

I also buy raw milk and farm eggs every 2 weeks in a coop. Coraline loves to drive with me the hour or so it takes to get to the farm and meet the cows. Every time I pour her a glass of milk she says, "Thank you for this milk, cows. I love you."

When it comes to eating out, I rarely go to a chain restaurant. Only if somebody else makes the plans and insists. Otherwise, I eat at places where I know the owner or know the owner lives in town and runs the business. I might pay a little more, but I eat a whole lot better.

I recognize that I'm privileged. This is not poverty-level food. I can afford to pay $5/gallon for my milk and $2.50/dozen for my eggs, and I can pay ahead for my CSA, because I only have to buy food for myself. And I consider myself lucky to live in the city, because I save money by living here, and I've actually found more opportunities to buy local.

OK, I went off on a rant. Not the first time; not the last. That bacon just pissed me off. It represents every corporation that wants to take my money without giving me the product I was promised. It represents how little they care whether I'll buy their product again, because they'll just fool the next 200 people who buy their brand of bacon this week.

And it pisses me off because those first 3 cobbled together slices of bacon really made me want some good lean bacon .... an entire pound of lean bacon. It's not right, to cheat like that. Especially with something as delicious as bacon. Only an asshole would conceive of that.

So I'm considering buying a slab of pork belly from a local butcher and making my own damn bacon from now on. Kroger can go fuck themselves on one more product I used to buy from them. First milk, then eggs, then fresh vegetables, and now bacon.

The moral is this: I don't care what you do to the pig, but do not fuck with my bacon, fatheads. Do not fuck with my bacon.

About that chard

I haven't posted a recipe in a while, so I thought I'd share a couple of recipes for summer bounty.

Friday I bought a big bag of vegetables at a little farm stand run by young adults from a religious commune. They tend 3 big, beautiful community gardens in one of the older neighborhoods in the city. For $5, I got this many vegetables, picked earlier that day in their gardens.

Chard, beets, zucchini, yellow squash, eggplant, heirloom tomatoes

Don't you get a hard-on just looking at all that yumminess? I couldn't wait to get cooking .... but then I went out to eat with a friend instead so I stuck them in the fridge....

But today I was ready to do something fun with my veggies. (Not that!)

The beets will keep, so I'll probably just steam them within the next week and eat them with lots of butter. Coraline likes beets too. I should remember to warn Elvira so she can tell Rock Dad. Last time he kind of freaked out about the bright red pigment in her diaper. When it comes to unusual colors of pee, red is probably most people's least favorite.

The eggplant I roasted and used to make baby poop roasted eggplant dip for a party. The recipe is kind of like baba ghanoush. OK, it's exactly like baba ghanoush only in English. I chose this super easy Smokey Eggplant Dip recipe from Thug Kitchen, only I used smoked paprika and added toasted walnuts on top.

I would have taken a photo, but you know what baby poop looks like.

The chard was starting to wilt, so I wanted to do something with it before I disrespected the sacrifice it made to sustain me.

I'd never eaten chard in my life, but I thought I could come up with something. I've become kind of a Food Network competition junkie this summer, so I wanted to test my ability to create a recipe using something I've never eaten. I could just see Alton Brown standing beside the sink, arms crossed, prissy look on his face, timer in his hand ..... No worries. I had this one.

Here's what I came up with. It's fucking amazing. Alton would tell you, but his mouth is stuffed.

Reticula's Chard (with notes)

1 bunch of chard (It doesn't matter how much as long as it fits into your skillet or dutch oven.)
olive oil (I used a garlic/sun-dried tomato/Parmesan blend I bought at a farmer's market, but you can use plain)
garlic (Use as much as you like. Garlic is relative, but I would suggest 1-3 cloves or the equivalent.)
butter (A couple of tablespoons. You don't have to use butter, but why not?)
tomato, diced (I used one, but two or three would have been good too. Sundried tomatoes would be awesome too.)
salt and pepper
grated hard cheese (I used a 3-cheese Kroger blend. Freshly grated would be better.)
toasted walnuts (If you think ahead, you can toast the walnuts in the skillet before you pour in the olive oil.)

Heat some olive oil in a skillet or, if you've got a shit ton of chard, a dutch oven over medium heat. Add the butter if you're using it. When it's hot, start sauteing the garlic. Don't let it get really brown.

The chard has a hard stem running through the leaf, so that has to be cut out and cooked for a while before the leaves. Just fold each leaf over and cut most of the stem away. Then cut the stems into about 2-inch pieces. Throw those into the hot skillet and stir them around frequently for about 5 minutes.

Cut the leaves into strips however you want to. Not too small though. Throw those into the skillet with the tomato and the salt and pepper. It looks like this.

Stir it around and cook it for another 5 minutes or so. Or until it looks wilted and done and hot all the way through. Like this.

Yes, my cast iron skillet wears a wool condom.

Hit it with a big handful of cheese and then the toasted walnuts. That's it. Eat your veggies all up.

Variations: If you're a pasta-eater, you could put this on pasta and get a lot more mileage out of it. I rarely eat pasta, but I'm sure it would be good.

You could throw some chopped bacon in there too. In that case, fry the bacon in the pan and then use the bacon fat instead of the butter. I plan to try that next time I make this. Grilled chicken would be good with it too.

If you decide to pick up some chard and try this recipe, let me know how it turns out. Unless you hate it. If you hate it, just don't say anything.



Disclaimer: I'm not a food blogger. Judge my recipes all you want, but don't judge my photos. It's not worth your time or mine.

An early Christmas list for the men in my life

Day 2 of not writing about sex finds me shopping early for Christmas presents for the men in my life. Last year I bought them ties. They were a hit, although I haven't actually seen anybody wearing one.

This year I'm making my list early so I can narrow it down to the one perfect gift for all the men in my life.

First on the list is a goatee shaving template. And yes, I would get this for all of them, because this is so cool once they have one, they will want a goatee.

Wouldn't it be neat if this had a revolving
set of affirmations, written backwards
so they could be read in the mirror?

And because I am a fan of the goatee. Not kidding. I am. They make men's faces look thinner. I wish I could grow a goatee on my stomach.

Anyway, doesn't this gadget looks like one of those gifts a guy wouldn't know he wanted, but once he got it, he'd want to get on his knees in front of the woman who bought it for him and thank her in any way that is not sexual because I'm not writing about sex? Yes, it does!

But I'm not done with my list. As I was perusing the reviews for the goatee shaving template, I noticed a collection of the items people who looked at the goatee template also looked at. Thank you, Amazon, for doing the work for me.

Next on the list is a ninja grappling hook, which I think any man with or without a goatee would appreciate. As would a ninja, and you never know when I might meet one. Who would, of course, be married.

I can imagine so many uses for this baby, I don't even want to start listing them.

Keep one in your car and your office.

And what man doesn't need an inkless black pen? Unfortunately, probably one who wants to keep his brain cells. This pencil doesn't use ink to make marks on paper because it uses .... wait for it ..... lead. Not graphite, but lead. Which might only be dangerous if you lick the paper after you write, but I'm not sure I'd want to take a chance. I crossed this one off my list of potential Christmas gifts. For $33.90, I'll just buy a pencil.

What the hell is wrong with ink anyway?

And the last possible gift on my list is one I want someone to buy for me  any man would love -- as long as he's not a vegetarian. It's skillet bacon spread. Oh, don't you wish you'd thought of this yourself?

Move over Nutella.

I admit I'm a little leery of the disclaimer the company put on the Amazon page. It says, "Actual product packaging and materials may contain more and different information than what is shown on our website. We recommend that you do not rely solely on the information presented and that you always read labels, warnings, and directions before using or consuming a product."

Oh.

I don't know what that means. So I should not believe what I read on their website, but I should instead go ahead and buy the bacon spread and then believe what's on the label? Who does that?

OK, I see one of the ingredients is fairy dust. It all makes perfect sense now. So unpredictable, the fairy dust.

Nevertheless, raise your hand if you'd like to try this stuff, disclaimer or no disclaimer. I see a bunch of hands going up.

Just remember, if you're a man and I know you and I might buy you a Christmas present, you'd better be naughty and nice if you want some of this yummy skillet bacon lube spread. Or a goatee template. Or a ninja grappling hook.

What's on your Christmas list? It's June. Better get on it!

Wordless Wednesday: BLT

Wordless Wednesday: Bacon Sunrise

(via 9gag.com)