Stuffed grape leaves here. Recipes include rice, but I use ground round, breadcrumbs, terriaki (however you spell it) sauce and garlic. Make your basic meatball, wrap the grape leaf around it, and steam in beef broth. There were a lot og grape leaves in that jar, and we are just finishing up tonight. Served with rice usually, and whatever vegetable I can come up with.
What is new and popular at your house?
Shoyu chicken…just recently looked up the recipe:
Soak 3lbs chicken parts (I like legs & thighs) in a 1c : 1c : 1/4c ratio of shoyu (soy sauce), pineapple juice, and brown sugar overnight. The next day, bring to a boil, then simmer until chicken is cooked (adding water to taste, if desired). Serve over rice.
Man, I miss Rainbow Drive-in in Honolulu. 
Moving thread from IMHO to Cafe Society.
I bought some shirataki noodles, which are extremely low calorie and low carbohydrate noodles made from a yam-like tuber. They’re in the fridge, waiting for me to assemble a soup or stirfry dish with them.
The fruit vendor who comes to my workplace on Wednesdays had some purple pears that he said were a hybrid of pear and apple. I bought three, but haven’t tasted one yet.
Olive oil and black pepper Triscuits. I bought a box on a whim last weekend and I nearly finished it in a single sitting… those are some seriously delicious crackers.
These are pretty good! I always have a couple in the fridge since they’re less expensive where I live now. Just a warning beforehand, you might be put off by the really fishy smell! It goes away if you rinse them in water. The noodles are really watery so I drain them, throw them in the microwave to get out some water, drain again, repeat, and pat dry with paper towel if I’m feeling extra energetic. It can be a pain but it makes all the difference in dishes where extra water makes things all soupy. It might not matter so much with stir fries. I love the noodles tossed in with a wedge of garlic Laughing Cow cheese with a little ham and broccoli. Yum! 
sriracha sauce! aka rooster sauce. man, that stuff is good–my usual go to hot sauce is cholula, but this is even better.
Hah! Another Sraracha addict! And the Triscuits. They’should probably be some kind of controlled substance.
You know, if you mixed sour cream and sriracha, and dipped the Triscuits in, I bet it would be good.
Um, fairly recently, Ironwood cider and Southbrook Winery blackberry wine. Both very good. I also fell in love with fairly authentic ragu a little while ago and have churned out quite a bit.
Chocolate tortilla chips.
Not as good as they could be. Might be nice for eating chicken mole dip, but that’s about it.
Heh, believe it or not we had an entire thread devoted to these. It was probably 9 months ago and however long it was our house has not been empty of them since. I also found a cheddar and horseradish dip to go with them and the popularity of both is spreading throughout or neighborhood.
After reading in the New York Times how beets are the new spinach I started making roasted beets, and grated raw beets as a salad (not at the same meal though). My wife and I enjoy both (my son won’t touch either with a bargepole, but that is another matter).
For tipples I recently discovered Harpoon’s hard cider which has inspired me to try to make my own.
Salt and Vinegar almonds. I love the S&V chips, but they are not allowed on my diet. Then I found these and love them.
Woodchuck Hard Cider. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!
Big, fat, honeycrisp apples. They have a light, crisp texture, which has been compared to the flesh of a crisp watermelon, and they’re midway between sweet and tart. Mmmmmmmm!
Whole Foods brand stir-fry and cooking sauces. There are about 10 to choose from, with flavors like basil-curry, or galangal and green onion, or yellow thai curry. They’re a little bit steep, but they’re wonderfully well-flavored and luscious. I come home, put a half-dozen skinless chicken thighs in the pressure cooker, dump a jar of the sauce on top, add a few peeled, whole carrots, and pressure-cook it all for about 15 minutes. Voila! Asian chicken and vegie stew to serve with rice.
Oikos brand Greek yogurt. I had been buying Fage, but it’s a little expensive so I didn’t get it as often as I wanted it. Then Oikos set up to compete with them, and it’s only about half the price yet it tastes just as good. If you want a plain nonfat yogurt that’s completely unctuous and rich-tasting, just try this stuff. It’s thick and dense and if you drizzle it with honey and put chopped walnuts on it, it’s a treat.
Gourmet salts. I picked up a jar of Hawaiian sea salt back in August, and it makes everything better. A couple of weeks ago, I got a jar that has 6 different types of salt, including pink, black, and smoked. Food is a whole new adventure these days.
For example:
Preheat oven to 450. Cut a bunch of fresh broccoli into slightly larger than bite sized pieces. Add a clove of minced garlic. Season with Hawaiian sea salt. Toss with just enough olive oil to coat each piece. Spread in a single layer on a baking sheet, and roast until edges just begin to blacken, about 20 minutes.
It’s like green candy!
Arnold’s makes these bread things they call “Thins.” I’m not even sure why I bought them the first time, it’s everything I don’t like about food presentation – the packaging makes a big deal about how they are just 100 calories and how “healthy” they are.
But they ended up being really tasty. They are especially good for toasted sandwiches. I’ve been making grilled cheddar and bacon sandwiches (you can see we’re not really about the low calorie food, ya know?) with them. Because they are small, there is a lot of crust area to get nice and toasted and crispy, and because they are thin, the heat goes right through and melts everything quickly without making the bread soggy.
When I got gyros from Attila’s the other night, I also picked up some baba ghanoush instead of the usual hummus. Yummy! A.C. didn’t care for it, though.
Honeycrisps are my absolute favouritest apples in the world.
Of course, they also happen to be fairly hard to find when they’re in season, and completely impossible to find by mid-November. Figures I wouldn’t be madly in love with red delicious or macintosh, huh? I could OD on honeycrisps and die a happy woman. happy sigh
Death Chicken is making the rounds–it’s such a perfect autumn type dish.
I’ve also been baking a lot, so homemade goodies are the newest food–brownies, granola cookies, cashew butter chocolate chip cookies, blueberry peach coffee cake, apple crisp have all made an appearance recently. This is a really uncharacteristic level of baking for me.
Oh, and these crazy ass potatoes, especially since I have a whole boatload of this stuff.