Food Fair/Bazaar/Flea Market @ Hell's Kitchen (9th Avenue), NYC

16th May 2010....another glorious day in NYC. Stumbled upon another food fair, this time in Hell's Kitchen.

Hell's Kitchen was getting very busy that afternoon.

There were many such bbq racks in the shape of a tepee where they hung slabs of meat to cook/smoke on the fire underneath.

A stall selling a potpourri of spices. Very attractive.

A stall selling soul food....

....which consisted of grilled octopus....

....and lobsters, shrimps, clams.

Mexican food stall...

....plantains, pork ribs, slabs of meat...

A very big slab of bbq-ed meat.

Deep fried pork ribs with rind.

Pancakes filled with mozarella.

Blood sausages.

Another stall selling an assortment of spices in plastic bottles. 2 bottles for USD5.00.

Berry pie.

Cup cakes and creme brulee.

Aged USDA prime beef. Apparently, beef is like fine wine, it needs to be aged.

The pack of giant strawberries I bought. USD2.99 for 454g.

Luscious!

Big like an apple.

My lunch....a mouth-watering Philly Cheesestake with extra liquid cheese (USD10.00), it comes loaded with beef. Yes, as long as the TV remote.

Biggest sandwhich I've eaten to-date.

New York...there's no other place like it!

Jess & The City....Food Fair/Bazaar/Flea Market on 6th Avenue (Avenue of the Americas) NYC

New York, New York!

15th May 2010....it was a glorious Saturday afternoon when I found myself in a cab from JFK  headed towards Manhattan island after a 24-hour journey in an airplane.

The hotel I crashed in...perfect location, just a few paces from Times Square.

What do I do after checking into the hotel? Why, go catch a Broadway show, of course! Just made it in time for the 2.00pm matinee. Jersey Boys it was this time around....I'm a great fan of oldies and Franki Valli & The Four Seasons was right up my alley (literally). I spent a good 2.5 hours in the August Wilson Theatre mouthing along to classics such as Sherry, Big Girls Don't Cry, Let's Hang On, Oh What a Night....etc. Had a blast!

Show over, I headed to the 6th Avenue where I knew had a flea-market/bazaar/food fair going on when my cab passed by earlier on. Lots of people milling around in the warm afternoon.

Gyros, kebabs, pita are really popular in NYC. Many stalls were selling these.

That's Radio City in the background and my favourite flag! The police barricaded the entire midtown section of 6th Avenue for this fair.

Scarves and pashminas on sale....cheap by NYC standards.

More food....mostly meat-based. Everyone's a carnivore.

Corn dogs.

Deep-fried mozarella cheese sticks and fries.

Some kind of cheese-filled pancakes.

Meat.

Lots of meat. Crispy pork rinds....yummm.

Chocolate/candy-covered fruits.

Pretty.

Candy apples.

A guy peddling Obama rubber.....lol!

A pushcart selling all types of sandwiches/burgers, where I bought my snack.

Italian sausage wrap (USD7.00). Loved the smoky sausage, wished the wrap had more stuff in it, though.

God Bless America!

Tesco Wins The 5-Bam Award

Most women I know like shopping at malls for clothes, shoes, handbags and other branded goods. Me? Yawn. Give me groceries and Tesco any day. Fresh fruits, vegetables, drinks, poultry, meat, seafood, cat food, toiletries top my list the way an LV handbag never would. A Tang's loyalty card is wasted on me, but I cherish my Tesco Clubcard the way I would my credit card. Hubby thinks I'm strange that way....but hey, James Dean royal rebel, remember?

I have a rabid obsession with Tesco. I know there's Carrefour and Giant as well, but after all my years of analysing all 3 hypermarkets' price pattern, Tesco has remained a firm favourite. In general,  Carrefour has the cheapest eggs and dairy products, but they stop being competitive in the fresh produce section (especially the greens). Tesco offers the best price and quality when it comes to fruits and especially vegetables. What I like most is that Tesco regularly clears its stock (I think on a daily basis) by putting their old stock in the "Reduced for Clearance" section....where one can often find gems that are still in perfectly good condition. The other hypermarkets do not regularly practice this, which makes me kinda wonder what they do with their old stock (throw?). Of the 3, Giant is the most expensive...in general. Of course, once in a while, each chain will have promotions for certain items that are the lowest of the low in terms of pricing, but I'm talking overall price, freshness, ambiance and quality comparison here. Tesco wins.

Sign me up as a Tesco life member. Truly. I monitor weekly prices of goods/food/whatever and hubby takes me to Tesco for me to destress after a long week's battle. I literally decompress at Tesco....walking into Tesco's beckoning doors is a weekly ritual and an experience that to me, is akin to a kid walking into Disneyland. The weight lifts off my shoulders, the mood lightens, the excitement builds. It never gets old. I am Tesco's biggest fan. If I didn't work where I'm working now, I'd probably be working for Tesco as their Chief of Procurement (ahhh what a dream)....LOL!

I trawl Tesco's website at the end of every week, to get the latest promos to feed my "aunty" instincts. ( I do not understand why Giant and Carrefour do not religiously update their websites on a weekly basis - such a waste of a perfectly good advertising resource!). I wish that Tesco would send their weekly fliers to my residence, unfortunately they don't. So website it is, and the weekly newspaper adverts of course. Last Friday, the website advertised  frozen pizza at RM6.90/box...usual price is probably around RM10.00 I'm guessing (well Jaya Jusco sells their pizza at RM10.00/box, same size). Had to buy! Had to buy!

So I drove to the nearest Tesco after work and had a good old time examining all the latest products. They were introducing a new line of in-house brands (apart from the existing Tesco Choice and Tesco Value), and many of the goods and food items were being sold at introductory prices.  

Finally got to the frozen foods aisles, and found that they had many varieties of Tesco Choice pizza going for RM6.90. There was Hawaiian Chicken, and some other chicken-related flavours. I took a box of Four Cheese Pizza (350g) and put it in my cart.

I took 4 boxes of Beef Pepperoni Pizza (RM6.90 for 400g), and into my cart they went.

This was how the Four Cheese Pizza turned out, after we added even more cheese (mozarella, parmesan, cheddar) and ham toppings at home!

In my opinion, the Beef Pepperoni Pizza tasted better than the Four Cheese Pizza because it had more tomato gravy on it. No regrets here! Great value for money.

So yeah, Tesco is my fix. And I was overjoyed when I recently found out that they were in the midst of building a Tesco in Old Klang Road (diagonally opposite the main wet market).....oh so near to our crib. Construction is underway and it is scheduled to be completed in 2011, by which then it will take us all of 5 minutes to drive to Tesco. Yay! Tesco rules! 

Pizza Weekend And "Lipodermophobia"

Hubby fancies himself a baker. Myself, not so much. Not unlike Mr Adrian Monk and his phobia for dirt, my personal nemesis is oil (lipodermophobia?). Dirt and dust do not annoy me that much......but oh! the feel of oil on my skin just plain drives me nuts...the idea of sticking my hands into buttery dough makes me want to run for the disinfectant and dettol my entire arm. Yes, oil is my weakness. I am OCD about keeping utensils, appliances, tables and countertops (and myself, of course!) free of all traces of oil. I have a cupboard full of detergents, all manner of cleaning agents and toiletries, so as to be able to liberally use them in my perpetual war against lipids.

Hubby does not always understand this, and I've often found him guilty of "transference"....in my CSI zoom-into-the-micro-details-camera mode, I've often spotted him either dripping oil down the sides of containers/bowls which then pools on the table/drips on the floor........or he opens the fridge door with oily hands in which case the oil transfers to my hands the next time I open the fridge door and I'd have to disinfect the fridge handle and my hands. Yes, to me, oil is like an "infection" to be tracked down and contained.

And so I don't bake. And when I cook, it involves a whole lot of hand-washing for every spatter of oil that gets on my hands/arms. No COR (cooking oil residue) please!

So I left hubby in the kitchen to do the baking, kneading and spreading of shortening all over the kitchen counter in relative peace. At the back of my mind, I knew that this day would end with a thorough disinfecting of the entire kitchen counter. But, before that, a scrumptious meal!

From the pizza flour, hubby made the yeasty dough peppered with oregano flakes.

We added grilled capsicum and fresh tomatoes.

For meat, we liked the smoked beef sausages from Jaya Jusco, and also some chicken meatloaf and pork bacon.

Some fresh brown mushrooms and a sprinkling of onions for a more piquant pizza.

We went crazy on the cheese, 3 types : Smoked BBQ Cheddar, Mozarella and Parmesan. This brand of Parmesan cheese (Millel) did not smell pungent like the Parmesan we've smelled/tasted in the past. I was at first hesitant to purchase it, but since it was a bargain at Tesco (RM16.00 instead of its usual RM31.00 - just because the Parmesan block was a bit cracked), we decided to give it a try. No smell of vomitus, thank god! It was surprisingly pretty good!

We enjoyed the fruits of hubby's labour (I helped with the assembly of the pizza!)......two very cheesy, smoky and meaty pizzas. Absolutely delicious! Excellent!

If hubby can bake, so can you (but not I)!

Epilogue: And then there was the kitchen clean-up.

4-bams for hubby!