Flour Girls and Dough Boys

A new artisan bakery has opened in Utah Valley, Flour Girls and Dough Boys, at 35 N. Barrett Avenue, a location that was previously the Naborhood Bakery, which looks like has moved to Gardner Village, and before that Bryson Bakery, which has moved to Orem.

Before the run of bakeries, this was the site of Barrett's Hardware.

I haven't been there yet, but AnneMarie and her friend Cheryl went there for lunch. This looks like a great place, and it's getting rave reviews on various blogs. Cheryl had tried some of their bread at the Farmer's market at Thanksgiving Point.

AnneMarie had the turkey, swiss, and cheddar panini on the asiago bread. Cheryl had the cranberry walnut, turkey, brie (which is probably what I would have had. She took home to her husband Dale the ham & swiss panini on rustic country. AnneMarie also reports that they have monster brownies, mint or regular, for just $1.50. (Brownies are my weakness--along with chocoloate milk.)

Two Great Tastes . . .

I don't know who first thought of combining chocolate and peanut, but it was genius. Maybe it really was accidental (as in those old Reese's PB cup commercials). Yesterday, I work I bought a Twix PB out of the machine. Apparently, the Twix PB replaces the peanut butter Twix, which has been around off and on for several years. Like the Peanut Butter Twix, the Twix PB replaces the caramel with peanut butter, but PB has a chocolate cookie base, instead of the sugar cookie. A quick Internet search shows mixed reviews, but I liked it.

Little Caesar's Hot N (Hardly Ever) Ready Pizza

I may come across as a bit of a pizza snob, and I do confess that I do have strong preferences, but I understand that part of the appeal of pizza is its convenience. There are some nights when you just want to get everyone fed in a timely manner. This need is answered by Little Caesar's Hot-N-Ready pizza, guaranteed to be ready for pick up.

But when it's not ready, it starts to lose its appeal. Little Caesar's has an adequate taste, but it's only really worth eating because it's cheap and fast. When it's not fast, then what's the point?

AnneMarie says that there has always been pizza ready whenever she has gone--except for the time she went with me. Perhaps I'm the problem. Tonight I only had to wait about ten minutes (someone had just come in and bought 17 pizzas for a Church youth night activity. It does say "no limit.").

Once I made the mistake of going in on a Friday night, when it was raining hard, and there was football on TV. That all adds up to no pizza. They told me I would wait for 20 minutes, but it ended up being 1 1/2 hours. (I stuck around because I had already paid. I was trapped.)

Part of the problem (apparently) is that some people confuse the Little Caesar stores in American Fork and Lehi. They'll call in one place but try to pick up in the other. I imagined on this night stacks and stacks of pizzas at the Lehi store with a bewildered crew wondering where all the customers were. It's Friday. Raining. Football. Why not make a whole bunch more pizzas? Although the service at LC's is usually adequate, this night it wasn't exactly the "A Team."
Let me try to explain this. They would run out of cheese pizzas, so they would start cooking a bunch of cheese pizzas. Then they would run out of pepperoni, so they would start cooking more pepperoni. They never seemed to have both cheese and pepperoni at the same time. I like cheese, and my kids say they like pepperoni (but then sometimes they eat my cheese pizza). On top of this, if someone came in just wanting cheese or just wanting pepperoni, the LC's crew would move them ahead in the line, ensuring that those of us who wanted both would never get our pizza. (While you're making all them there pepperoni pizzas, would it hurt anything to throw in a cheese pizza or two? Just in case? I only need one.)

So although the pizza is never ready on time, at least it's always hot.

Food Memories--Jeno's Pizza Mix

I got off the phone with my mom last night, and she was talking about how she had an upset stomach from eating pizza at lunch--the pepperoni is just too spicy for her. I gave my standard speech on the virtues of cheeze pizza (now my favorite kind--particulary in New York). And then I had a food memory of eating Jeno's pizza as a kid. This was the pizza that came in a box. You mixed the flour with the dry yeast, spread out the dough, put on the sauce and seasonings, and then added the cheese. It came in two varieties: cheese and sausage. But because my mom was feeding a family of hungry boys (and one girl), she added hamburger and cheddar cheese (including additional parmesan from the green container). My mom used to spread out the dough on a rectangular cookie sheet, so you ended up with rectangular pieces. And the pieces in the middle had no crusts. (Later, pizza companies would call hamburger/cheddar pizza "cheeseburger pizza.")

My taste in pizza has certainly matured, and we never buy the paramesan in the green container. Good parmesan cheese is something worth spending extra money on. It doesn't have to be the fancy reggiano, but it shouldn't be somthing that looks like sawdust either. (I have to admit, however, that I used to eat handfuls of Kraft cheese out of the can when I was a kid. I think I liked the saltiness.) But I still have a fondness for hamburger and cheddar cheese on rectangular pieces--just not out of a box.

And did you know that Luigino "Jeno" Paulucci, the food entreprenuer between Jeno's and Totonio's pizza, begin his career with the Chun King brand of "Chinese" food? He said, "When I started Chun King, my mother said to me, 'What are you doing in the Chinese food business? We're Italian.' I told her some day I'd pack her sauces." His tribute to his mother is the Michelina's line of frozen Italian food.

Dippidee

Ever since Dippidee opened, I've wanted to stop by and check out the "sweet surprises," but I was afraid they might go out of business before I have a chance. (If a new food place opens in Utah county, you better get there quick, because some don't last very long.) But Dippidee is still around, and it's easy to see why.

Dippidee specializes in made to order desserts, particularly wedding cakes, and these are the real deal. But if you stop by their shop, you can also get really good cupcakes (very trendy at the moment, associated in particular with New York's Magnolia Bakery) as well as other pastries and chocolates (including a Ghanaian single-origin chocolate that I'll talk about later). Dippidee is by the Costco in American Fork.

AnneMarie and I split a chocolate cupcake with vanilla filling and chocolate frosting. (They also have a really nice website.)

Getting Caught Up

I got pretty busy in November and December and fell behind on the blog. Here are a list of topics that I need to cover:

• Good Earth store opening in American Fork
• Almond butter machine at Good Earth (as well as ideas for making your own nut butters)
• Toaster Oven restaurant opening in American Fork
• Checking out the Chicago Dog at Hot Dog King in Orem
• Dagoba Xocolatl bar
• Single Origin Chocolates
• Pirate O's
• Lon's Cookin' Shack (with the deep-fried pickles)
• Cinnamon-roasted almonds at the BYU basketball games
• Mo's Seafood Restaurant in Newport, Oregon
• Shoot's Chinese cuisine in Provo
• The Orange Chicken wars (Panda Express claims to have the original orange chicken. Now there is orange chicken at Rumbi's and Applebee's. But isn't OC just a variation on General Tso's chicken?)
• Trip to NYC (including the Brazil Grill, the Morning Star Cafe, the Moon Rock Diner)

Soy Salsa

Tonight we picked up some food at Panda Express in Pleasant Grove. I've noticed that most of the people behind the counter at this and other Chinese restaurants in the area are hispanic. I heard the nice young man who helped us ask one party if they wanted "soy salsa."

This reminded me of the comic strip Baldo. Baldo says, "I like this Chinese restaurant because it is very authentic." The next panel shows that they probably serve soy salsa. Baldo says, "Authentic . . . with a Latin flavor."