"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Friday, March 7, 2008

Reading Labels

I've had a craving for grilled cheese sandwiches for days now. Must be the (insane) weather. Yeah, that's it.

Grilled cheese sandwiches are a treat since they're made with ingredients that have almost no redeeming nutritional value--real butter, commercial sliced white bread (CSWB) and fake cheese slices (FCS).

Tonight, I decided it was time to indulge, so I headed to GT. They had the CSWB I favour (Weston), but not the FCW. I usually buy Kraft 'real cheddar' slices. I don't care what anyone says, processed cheese is processed cheese, but these slices have a less 'plastic' feel to them. GT offered two options, both containing 24 slices. The first was by Black Diamond (maker of the some of the best sharp cheddar in the whole world) for 4.99$. The second was a brand I'd never heard of, for 88 cents.

I looked at the ingredient labels for each. Black Diamond's first ingredient was cheese. The other had oil and starch as its first ingredients and didn't even have the words 'cheese' or 'milk' anywhere in them. You can guess what I bought.

The resulting sandwiches were very, very good. :-) I've got lots of FCS and CSWB left, so I can have a few more sandwiches over the next week until I'm all grilled cheesed out, and then I'll be good for several months.
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4 comments:

1001 Petals said...

A healthy and delicious alternative is to use whole grain bread, a good white cheese (orange is just colour added to white cheese, it's a marketing thing). If you have a grill, like a George Foreman grill, that can work, else a pan is fine. Brush the grill or pan with a bit of olive oil and then put your sandwich on that. I think it tastes better than the butter-drenched grill cheese actually as the bread gets more crispy.

March 11, 2008 at 7:23 p.m.
Rae said...

Ah, but when I want a grilled cheese, I want the junky kind with lots of semi- soggy buttery flavour. :-) What can I say, some people like dill pickle potato chips...

Otherwise, I favour homemade bread with provolone cheese, tomatoes, and basil made in my sandwich maker (similar to a Foreman grill). It doesn't need any oil then.

It's a fallacy that yellow and white cheddar are the same except for the colour. Yellow cheddar melts and incorporates itself into sauces much better than white. I prefer white (as long as it's really, really aged) for eating out of hand and yellow for cooking.

I could probably write a book on the melting and browning properties of various cheeses. Don't get me started on mozzarella. :-)

March 11, 2008 at 8:15 p.m.
Marcia Francois said...

Hi Raven

thanks for your great ideas on my organising your travel post :)

Suzanne and I are most impressed and will be using some of your ideas!

Where are you going on holiday?

I know you're going to have a fabulous time wherever you go because you've organised it VERY well :)

Marcia, organising queen

March 15, 2008 at 6:47 a.m.
Rae said...

Hi Marcia,

Thank you for visiting my site.

I'm heading to Savannah, Georgia, USA on March 29th. It'll take about three days to drive there and three days to drive back. I love 'road tripping'!

March 15, 2008 at 7:24 a.m.

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