Nom de plume: Rivrdog

User's Review - Home Chef gourmet food service - UPDATED

Tester's Review: Home Chef food service.

I've been on the Home Chef program for about 3 months. My rich daughter gave it to my wife as a gift. My wife doesn't cook anymore, so I get to prepare all these meals. Two meals and a smoothie kit came each week. Each meal serves two and costs $10/plate. The food arrives from Salt Lake City via FedEx Ground, and there's ALWAYS an extra day of handling in a warehouse on this end (Portland, OR). That's bad in the summer. The food is insulated inside the box with a fiber-mat blanket, and contains what Home Chef feels are adequate gel-ice packs to keep it cold. I had one where the raw chicken and fish meals had meat which had risen to 45 degrees (late summer, one of the first boxes we got). Home Chef refunded that box.

The veggies are always top-drawer stuff, at least as good as you'd get from Whole Foods or some other natural grocer. The meats are excellent quality, but these people think that a 5 ounce steak is a meal??? Chicken meals are usually 7 ounces, better. The fish is also too small of a portion at 5-6oz, and they use farmed Atlantic Salmon! Huge No-No to ship that to the West Coast!

Most of the meals require elaborate sauces/presentations. Many of those are the complex sauces you watched Julia Child whip up when you were young. I'm not impressed. A cutlet or chop properly sauteed in olive oil flavored with pre-chopped garlic from a jar and chopped shallots is hard to beat for me, and some of these cream-bases sauces are quite tricky to get right. The customer winds up doing a lot of chopping of veggies. If that's your thing, great. There ARE very good instructions with good pictures, suitable for saving on heavy plastic card-stock, and they provide a binder.

The smoothies are a PITA to make, AND they use grossly-stinky Greek yogurt. When done, they are too big to consume in one sitting at 1.5 qts, but they don't keep until you might want to drain another one. You need two people to drink the smoothies, and I refuse, because of STINKY YOGURT in it! I did experiment with using the provided fruits, etc to make Frappes without the yogurt, substituting ice cream, and those were SCRUMPTIOUS!

Bottom line, from fridge to table to tummy to finishing cleaning up is never less than two hours with Home Chef meals, and can be two and a half hours. Mostly for this reason, I cannot recommend Home Chef. The biggest advantage of Home Chef, IMHO, is no leftovers with their small portions.

UPDATE: 122817 0952 PST

My biggest beef with this company is their logistics. They use FedEx Ground, which is okay in the cold seasons, but not fast enough in the warm season. The truck comes up I-84 from SLC, goes right by FedEx' new distribution hub at Troutdale (I live 6 miles from it) and unloads the package at the Portland warehouse. It gets there in early morning and sits there until next morning, when it goes out on the route truck and I get it in mid-to-late afternoon. Neither the warehouse or route truck are refrigerated, so that's an extra 30+ hours of un-refrigerated time the food has to spend to get to me. This delay actually DOUBLES the transit time of the packages. When I tried to discuss this with Home Chef, they refused to answer my emails or my request for discussion via their website. I'm no Commie, but I think that Government needs to force companies which move NOT-FROZEN raw meats/fish via ground transport to at least use enroute refrigeration and a refrigerated section in any warehouse it has to sit in. I fail to understand why the boxes are not ever handled as perishable, except by their internal packaging.

 

 

Happy Dance!

The Gudwif is home from her seven weeks of durance vile in the nursing home! The cat is all over her like a blanket. We just celebrated her release from Skilled Nursing with a London Broil and Baby Back Ribs Mixed Grill, rice on the side and Southwestern roasted peppers and onions.I chased mine with A Spoetzl Shiner Bock and she had a sweet tea.

Tomorrow, the Home Nurses will tell her future.

Oh, BTW, today was MY 14th Anniversary of retirement from the Deputy career. Seems like only yesterday...

All is good.

Merk the Jerk lies again...

...but what's new?

This article is fashioned around a claim by Oregon's junior Senator that the mere discussion of Congress shutting down the government via failure to approve a higher borrowing limit will cause the US Dept of Agriculture to have to stop reloading the Free Shit Army's S.N.A.P. "food stamp" cards*.

Last I checked, the October 1 expiration of the borrowing limit is a hard and fast date, and spending may continue right up to September 30, at eleven-fifty-nine pm. The "threat" of Congress failing to do anything carries no weight, only the actual carrying-out of such a threat is cause for concern.

Merkely, you are an asshole.

By the way, Mister Senator-Jerk, your use of the term "food insecurity" carries no weight, either. For those who have had to miss a meal, actual hunger is a real bother, but the "feeling" associated with "worrying about hunger" has no effect on a rational, self-disciplined human being. You either eat or you are hungry. If you are eating, you aren't hungry.

Note that the article says that the Jerk is the Democrat's honcho on food issues. I have a litmus test for Mister Jerk: if you ARE the honcho, how about writing some rules so that S.N.A.P. cards can only be used to buy actual nutritious food? No Twinkies, no McDonald's fat-bombs, no sodas, no candy bars, just real food, like economical cuts of meat, poultry, fish and blocks of cheese, to name a few basics. There are probably no more than 50 items in a grocery store that ought to be on S.NA.P., the rest of it can be classed as un-necessary to a survival assistance program.

@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#

* The S.N.A.P. card replaced Food Stamps a decade or so ago, but severe "mission creep" has set in with this supposedly-basic welfare program. The program was designed to simply fill grocery bags for impoverished persons, and fill them with nutritious food, much of which was USDA surplus food back in the '60's when the program started. Today, you can eat at restaurants on S.N.A.P. This is wrong. The program needs to be returned to it's original mission.

Apple-crapple

No, not something from Steve Jobs' former castle-keep. This machine. My dear wife has a partial manual handicap which makes her about 3/4 manually capable, and she likes to bake, so I got this equipment so as to give her back some speed in preparing apples for baking or applesauce.

First use.

Open the box, note the complexity of the machine, look for the set of instructions as the machine has several VERY critical settings. Do not find. Instead, find a quick-and-dirty, badly-translated, horrible communication.

The machine is basically a lathe. As with any lathe, the workpiece must rotate smoothly, the toolfeed must be EXACTLY adjusted, and the secondary tool must also be adjusted properly. There are no instructions remotely describing how to set these exact adjustments.

To start with, the tool, a curved knife that must peel the apple, sits on a swinging arm, and the toolforce is preset by the use of a spring. The apple is peeled by having a part of the tool rest on the apple to hold the knife at just the right depth to make a peeling, but not waste any apple flesh doing it. This adjustment is critical enough that there needs to be a feeler gauge to set it, but none is provided. The operator must "eyeball" the setting in. The corer blade, which is also the slicer blade, also must be set accurately as to clearance from the spindle holding the apple. No instructions for this, either, and it takes a VERY deft hand to center the apple on the spindle properly without any off-center or "wow" that would cause improper coring or poor peeling. One badly-translated instruction for that.

The machine is well-enough built, but it took this experienced garageineer two whole hours to get it set up for production work, which then went fast enough.

 

Family Call

...of course, it involves the firepit, since patio temps are in the low 50's...El Commandante, La Segunda y la Cirujano Regimental were present, relaxing over fine wine (Columbia Valley Pinot Gris) & Brandy (Metaxa 5-star). The Surgeon asked my advice on the purchase of a Mt. Hood property, and I know of one...La Segunda was just happy. Happy to see her daughter and happy the Steelhead dinner turned out so well.

 

Sriracha hot sauce

This is the real deal. Closest thing to what you get when you eat in South East Asia. The company built a big new factory in Irwindale, CA, and now the CA over-regulators are considering shuttering the plant because it (wait for it) exudes a strong odor! Get a clue, people, most Asian foods exude strong odors.

Here's a clue for Sriracha: get the race card out and get ready to play it. It's probably the only thing you have which will trump the picky, "nosy" regulators.

You readers might pick up a couple of bottles. If the company is forced to close, they will be valuable. AFAIK, this nuclear fuel will last forever on the shelf.

Wednesday WTF

Inquiring minds want to know: If searing raw meat over an open fire was the first method of cooking that Man discovered, why is that so new all over again, with a French name to it ("Charcuterie"), and the restaurants serving that meat the most expensive in town?

WTF, over.

Last week, I dined at a posh place known for it's "Charcuterie", and selected an entree off that section of the menu. It was supposed to be marinated Beef Brisket. It took 35 minutes to prepare, was fork-tender but over-charred on one side, and I rated the $30 entree as a ho-hum. For $11.99/#, I can get much better brisket at Buster's BBQ right here in Gresham.

That's right, Texas has better "Charcuterie" than the swank places, and outside of Texas, Buster's is one of the best. BTW, Portland is quite the BBQ town, but most of the better BBQ joints here serve the Kansas City style of BBQ, which is okay, but the sauce tends to be too sweet for my taste.

Live and learn, eh?

Grass-fed Beef

I just took delivery of a mixed-quarter of grass-fed beef. It came to $2.56/#, of which $1.95/# went to the farmer, the rest was processing charges. Last night, we had ribeye steaks. OMFG, this is the beef flavor that I have waited my whole life for, BUT, if you are going to eat this beef, bring your best teeth and jaw muscles! There are ways to cook thicker cuts slower to make them more tender, but if you want to eat it rare, without a tenderizing marinade, it's gonna work out your jaws. This must be the beef served in Heaven!

The GMO "war" is genocide

The Left's most ardent "grass roots" movement, now that they have their grass, seems to be the fight against GMOs, Genetically Modified Organisms. In that group must go ALL the food grains and ALL the farm-raised animal protein, both livestock and fish.

Here's a clue for the Left, and their hippoids (combination of a hippie and a hemorrhoid) who are advocating to remove GMOs from the world's food supply:

There won't BE any food supply without GMOs.

That means famine. Planned famine is genocide. You anti-GMO whackos are advocating for genocide, same as if you advocate for tribal warfare in Central Africa, or Jewish Pogroms in the Middle East.

You people need to lower your anti-GMO banner NOW.

I'm not so sure that GMO isn't a Socialist stalking horse. The anti-GMO fanatics seem to want to make an apples-and-oranges argument by slipping into their GMO screed something about evil profit-making in agribusiness. Is this their REAL motive? Removing GMO seed grain or veterinary medicines to help livestock and farmed fish thrive doesn't seem acceptable on ANY level, so will they then just fall back to their pre-planned position and demand socialization of all agriculture?

Here's the Rivrdog position: Do you want all GMO food labeled as such? Easy. Just put a sign on the front doors of all grocery stores, "All food sold here is GMO, unless otherwise labeled" That accomplishes this boneheaded movement's goal, doesn't it? Even if you go into the most expensive vegan hippie food boutique, you will find they sell, at outrageous prices, almost all-GMO food, because there has been NO non-GMO seed produced for at least a century, save for a few small test plots that are hand-cultivated. Even if food is "organically-grown", it is still GMO because of the genetically-modified seed it was grown from. "Organic" does not mean "non-GMO".

The only food grains that are non-GMO are such grains that grow without cultivation in the wildland, such as millet or wild rice. Good luck on gathering enough of that to make into food for more than a handful of people. The Native Americans couldn't do it very successfully, and their population was ALWAYS limited by famine and starvation (until the white people limited it forever by disease and bullets).

Nope, the anti-GMO Movement (google that) is a Socialist farce, like the war on fossil fuel, which is in plentiful supply, but cheap energy promotes capitalism, and the Socialists can't have that, can they?

What's up with the price of bacon?

Bacon, of course, being a Man's Staff of Life (screw you, PETA).

At my local Kroger outlet yestiddy, even the cheapo brands of bacon (Tyson, Farmland) were up to $5.99 per pound. Decent bacon and Maple Cured was $7.99, a buck more than Rib Eye steak! In thick-sliced bacon, you get about 13 strips per pound, so that's damn near six bits a strip for the ugly stuff, over 60 cents for the good stuff!

Does the crafty Rivrdog give up or does he have an alternate plan? Is the Pope Catholic (debatable*), Does a bear crap in the woods?

The alternate plan: There were some decent Falls brand Picnic Hams on sale for $2.39/#, so I bought one, brought it home and sliced the ham off the bone, 1/8" to 3/16" slices (do this BEFORE coffee so the slices are even, or chunk the meat off as big as you can get it, and use a rotary deli slicer for even better results). Fired up the Food Saver, sealed that meat up in 1/2# packages, and froze them.

A slice of this ham is a very suitable substitute for bacon in the ayem meal. Fry it, then fry a busted-yolk egg in the drippings. Toast up a couple slices of Rye bread, layer on some Swiss cheese, close the whole affair up and eat hearty. Garnish with Tony Cachere's Creole Seasoning if you use anything.

Don't put MY name on that sandwich, I first encoutered one at my father's side 60 years ago**, and encountered them again in the military in 1969 at the Westover AFB flightline snack bar, and the snack bar's associated "Roach Coach" or food truck which cruised the flightline for the ground crews who couldn't stop work to take a meal break. That sandwich was known as a "Walk-away", and it slid down easy, had plenty of carb, protein and fat energy for heavy work on the flightline, and didn't go down too bad if your utility uniform was soaked in hydraulic fluid or jet fuel. BTW, since Mickey D's claims to have invented the Egg McMuffin in 1972, this old troop believes that they stole the idea from a flightline snack bar somewhere, and it did NOT originate with them.

Yep, until the bacon market recovers, I'll be eating ham. I'll probably lay down a couple more Picnic hams in the freezer, just in case the Bacon-gouge starts to affect the entire cured-pork market.

Oh, I almost forgot: after slicing the meat from the big ham bone, you get the big soup bone, with it's two large knuckles. Saw the bone in half so the marrow releases and cooks into the stock, cook until you have a thick stock, and add split peas, navy beans or Lentils for a hearty soup. Don't forget the garlic!

Bone appetite!

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* After Pope Francis' news conference on his plane back to the Vatican from Brazil, one must wonder, since, given the opportunity, he refused to condemn or even object to homosexuality. Does His Holiness even READ his Bible?

** This means that my Dad probably found this sandwich in a Navy Mess somewhere. Most of his cooking ideas originated with the Navy. He certainly wouldn't have gotten it from HIS parents, they kept a Kosher kitchen.