After having this dish at our neighbors’ house for Thanksgiving, I wanted to cook it at home and have it again, because it was really, really fucking good. I asked the neighbor what it was called and where she got it. She said it was some kind of “nut roast” and she got it in the frozen section at Whole Foods.
So yesterday I went to Whole Foods on my way home (pretty far out of my way, which is on reason why we don’t go there often) and looked in their frozen section near the “fake meat” stuff.* I found something called a"Hazelnut Cranberry Roast En Croute" which looked right. I texted the name to my neighbor and she verified that it was the right one. Yay! Right? Then I saw the price. This thing was $23 and change! YOW! That’s like… twice the price of the big full-size Stouffer’s lasagnas that feed 12 people. Well, not quite twice, but quite a lot more.
I bought it anyway because I had driven all that way, and I figure as a one time treat it’s ok; also given how big it is it will probably provide us three dinners for three people (because of all the sides I’ll make with it) which brings the cost per person per meal down to more like $2.50, which isn’t so horrible.
I was disappointed, though, because the cost will mean we can’t have this very often. Only on special occasions in the future… But what I don’t understand is WHY it is so expensive? Is it just a supply/demand thing, or are the ingredients really costly? Does anyone have any idea?
*which they had a much better selection of than my local grocery store, and I was able to pick up some favorites that I can never find–hooray!
It was “really, really fucking good.” It can be hard to find a truly tasty pre-made vegetarian nut log type thing, and they feel they can justify the higher price
It was at Whole Foods. Things just cost more there (though in exchange you are sometimes getting something “really, really fucking good” in return. )
In the link it shows that the loaf is 8 servings, which breaks down to about $2.80 a serving, which is at the low end of the range of per-serving costs for special occasion proteins. Turkey is around $1.25 a serving ($8 for the fancy all natural hippy birds), standing rib roast is around $7-12 per person for non-prime, up to $20 per person for prime.
Part of the cost could be tied up in overhead since it says they only make it for the holidays. If they only make a few thousand of them they might only do one giant run and that might just not be enough to bring down the cost of re-tooling all the machines or bringing in any specialized machines if they don’t already do something similar.
I noticed the web site said it’s “Made exclusively for the holidays!” Get your fill now while you can! Should we add a 4th reason - artificial scarcity?
That product has a very nice sounding list of ingredients. It’s very low in weird chemical concoctions and high in “real” foods. I suspect it takes a lot of money to make.
Hazelnuts are expensive; perhaps that’s part of why it was so pricey. But there are a bunch of recipes for nut loaf and nut roast. I’m sure you can replicate it - or even improve on it!
OOOooOoOoohhh, will have to look at those when I get home. I hadn’t noticed the “only available during the holidays” thing on their website (honestly I just looked at it long enough to make sure it was the right product before linking to it) which makes me sad. If I can make something similar that would be all kinds of awesome. Thanks!
I’m having a hard time reconciling the 1st and last paragraphs with the part I bolded in the middle paragraph. Less than three bucks per person ain’t bad for something that’s both healthy AND fancy! Am I missing something?
Well, like I said, that’s part of why I DID buy it. But I’ve bought other things that feed even larger numbers of people for significantly less, and I don’t usually buy “fancy” so I’m not accustomed to what kind of markup to expect, so it seemed like a lot to me.
Oh, now that’s funny - a completely vegetarian item that looks too much like meat for Caught to find edible. Psst… blood =/= cranberries. Or else, my Thanksgiving dinners have been waaaay off the mark all these years!
A hippie friend of ours had a recipe for some sorta “nut loaf”. It tastes just like real meatloaf but no meat! Its fabulous!
We made it. It did cost a small fortune for the pecans or walnuts or whatever was in it. And it was rather small compared to your normal meatloaf.
So, yeah the ingredients are costly. At least yours tasted good. We threw out most of ours. It was IMO borderline indedible (and I aint no picky eater).
That’s too bad. This thing was YUMMY. The neighbors gave us the leftovers to take home and a day or two later we got to eat them; it was soooo good. I can’t wait to eat the one I bought that is in the freezer right now!
It’s not that it looks like meat, it’s that it looks like raw meat. I’m a meat man. It’s meat season where I live and BBQ’s each weekend in the beautiful warm weather. I, however, cook my meat until the blood is all gone. No red for me. Not burnt, just so there is no oozing redness from the middle.
We don’t use cranberries here (well, we is me and here is, er, um, here), so while I know logically that isn’t blood, it looks like blood and the solid berries look like blood clots.
Eeeeeeeew! I just could not eat something that looks like someone carved a hunk off a creature, stuffed blood clots inside it, injected it with blood and plopped it down on a plate.
Maybe I am just indeed, a wuss, to quote Dr. Nick Riviera, “Eww, blood.”
I think the hazelnuts are why it’s so expensive.
But, yeah, Field Roast makes incredible fake meats. I haven’t tried this particular one, but all the others I’ve tried from them have been really good.
Part of the reason I texted my neighbbor from the store was because of the cranberries. I didn’t recall any red spots or cranberry-like things in what we ate. She says that is what it was, though, so I bought it. Assuming my experience was normal, there are no red spots nor discernable cranberries in the “roast”.
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