Confessions Of An ALDI Snob

It's All My Mother's Fault

I grew up an extremely brand-conscious kid. It's all my mother's fault. I shopped with her every week from the earliest time I can remember right up through my adult years.

My mother never learned how to drive, so when I was growing up in the 1950s, my Dad, who knew little and cared less about grocery shopping, dutifully drove her to the big new “supermarket” on Saturdays. Where I came in to the picture was if she needed something in the middle of the week or in the middle of the day when Dad wasn't home. In that case she would call the little neighborhood grocer about five blocks down the street and have him pack up her order. (Yes, grocery stores did that sort of thing in those days.) Then she would dispatch five-year-old me and my little red wagon to go to the store and pick it up. Today that would be called child endangerment or something. Back then it was called “normal.” The grocer always knew what brands to pack in my mom's order. Her well-deserved reputation as the queen of picky shoppers preceded her.

Well, Dad died soon after I turned six and unless we could beg a ride to the grocery store with a friend or relative, it was just Mom and me and the wagon. I later traded the wagon for a bicycle and eventually for a car, but, one way or another, I went grocery shopping with my mother nearly every week for the rest of her life. And along the way I picked up all her shopping quirks and eccentricities, including her most notorious foible; brand consciousness.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that Mom would have sooner starved than let a store-branded or off-branded product pass her lips. Those canned peas had better be Green Giant Le Sueur peas or straight back to the store they went. Boxed macaroni and cheese was okay, but only if it was Kraft. Nothing else ever even made it into the cart. It was Land o' Lakes butter or nothing. Generic cereals? Perish the thought! Only Kellogg's, Post, or General Mills cereals needed apply for residence in my mother's pantry. Birdseye, Swanson and Stouffer's were all acceptable frozen choices, but don't you dare drop some cheap, off-brand TV dinner in there.

Intellectually I knew there was nothing whatsoever “wrong” with store brands. In fact, in most cases store brands are processed and packaged by the same companies that produce the ones with the famous labels. But functionally I was my mother's son and so I avoided “cheap” store/generic brands like the plague. And stores that specialized in “discount” foods were also shunned. I only shopped at high-end stores and I only bought high-end brands.

And then ALDI came to town.

Founded in Germany in 1961 by the Albrecht family, ALDI – short for Albrecht-Diskont – bills itself as the world's first grocery discounter. It opened its first US store in Iowa in 1976, built on the company's core premise that “great quality shouldn’t come at a high price; rather, great quality should come with everyday low prices.” And to achieve and maintain those everyday low prices, you won't find hardly a familiar “name brand” in any ALDI store. Oh, there might be a smattering of “real” Coca-Cola or actual Cheerios rather than some knockoffs, but such are the exception rather than the rule. Consequently, up until quite recently, my rule was that you would never find me in an ALDI store. In fact, years ago I frequently wrote articles in this space denigrating “cheap,” “low-quality” food products in general and ALDI stores in specific. I looked down my nose at friends and relatives who shopped there and actually pitied them for not knowing any better. I was, you might say, an ALDI snob.

I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks and overcome a lifetime of learned prejudice. After at least twenty-five years of sneering at ALDI I now find myself shopping there whenever I'm in the neighborhood. And that neighborhood is expanding: ALDI expects to have around 2,500 stores in the US by 2022.

Now, that's not to say that I no longer shop at Publix or Kroger or Harris-Teeter. No, those are still my go-to stores for most things because I still believe that quality counts and high-end stores still provide the most consistently high-quality products. Unlike my ultra-finicky mother, though, I have at least tried store brands and off brands from time to time and I have frequently found them lacking. Usually it's a funky texture or too much sugar or not enough salt or something that affects the taste and overall quality. Just because they come off the same production lines as the fancy brands doesn't mean they're always the same grade. There is a reason why they're so much cheaper, you know.

It's not always true: for instance, I have found very few Publix-branded products that I don't like. But by and large I still tend to stick with the familiar brands I grew up with. And I definitely didn't grow up with any of the brands that populate ALDI shelves, so I still generally shy away from them. Again, not that I haven't tried them. I recently took a chance on a bag of their “Clancy's” brand knockoff of Baked Lays potato chips. Meh. Not so much. They're....okay, but they'll never replace the original in my pantry. And I was equally underwhelmed by some of their other snack offerings. On the other hand, their “Millville” replica of Kellogg's Rice Krispies is dead on. My wife actually prefers some of their cereals, and they carry a thin mint cookie that would make a Girl Scout weep. So it's kind of a crap shoot.

ALDI has this to say about its “exclusive” brands: “More than 90 percent of what you find in our stores is exclusive brand product. Tested in the ALDI Test Kitchen, these products taste the same or better than national brands and are backed by our Double Guarantee. If you’re not 100 percent satisfied, bring it back. We’ll replace the product AND refund your money.” Okay, if you say so. Maybe I'll be swayed someday. But not quite yet.

No, what I really shop for at ALDI are the “perimeter products.” These are the things you find around the perimeter walls of most grocery stores: the produce, the meats, the dairy products, and the frozen foods. This is where ALDI really shines. When it comes to milk, butter, eggs, cheese, etc. nobody can touch ALDI for either price or quality. Same goes for their meat. They have absolutely unbelievable prices on some of the best quality cuts of meat I've seen anywhere outside a butcher shop. The seafood selection is equally good and I've picked up some killer frozen entrees and ice creams at killer prices. They don't have the biggest produce section in the world but what they carry is good stuff and their breads are surprisingly good for store-bought product, which I usually eschew in favor of my own home-baked fare.

And I love the little hidden jewels I occasionally find. Since ALDI is European-based, there are a boatload of European products lining the shelves. The European chocolates you'll find at ALDI are to die for at a price that won't kill you. A particular favorite of mine is a DOP Sicilian olive oil that easily rivals the best “high-end” product I've ever used, and it's dirt cheap. Less than half of what the brand name stuff costs and every bit as good if not better. In fact, ALDI carries lots of DOP/PDO (Denominazione di Origine Protetta/Protected Designation of Origin) products that are rarely found outside expensive specialty shops, a real bonus for any Italian cook.

And one other plus: ALDI has so much good junk to plunder through. They have an aisle devoted to “home goods” and apparel and such. I bought some socks for my wife at a price Walmart couldn't touch. It's really nuts some of the things you can find there. But stock rotates quickly, so buy it when you see it 'cause it probably won't be there tomorrow.

Alright, I'll admit it; I was wrong about ALDI. And their German cousin, Lidl, too. You may not want to do all of your shopping there, because the stores are deliberately small and the selection purposely limited. It's part of the chain's cost-cutting business model. It's a bare-bones, no-frills shopping experience right down to bagging your own groceries in your own bags. And you've probably heard about the quarter for a shopping cart thing, right? The shopping carts are all chain-locked together and you have to insert a quarter into a slot to unlock a cart. Of course, you get your money back when you return the cart to the chain gang. That's the way the store saves by not having to pay some kid to constantly round up carts in the parking lot. It's all very austere and functional, but if you're the kind of shopper who doesn't mind looking around a bit for good finds at good prices, ALDI is a must stop.

Excuse me, now. I have to go prepare a dish of crow and some humble pie. I wonder if I can get the ingredients at ALDI? 

Restaurant Review: First Watch, Winston-Salem, NC

First Watch or Last Choice?

We were in Winston-Salem, North Carolina for some weekend shopping and business when we got a little hungry for a midday brunch. We did a Google search for such places and got a list of three that looked interesting. Based on the reviews, we chose a place called First Watch. I wish we had chosen one of the other two.

In all my many years of dining on the road, from diners in Georgia to themed restaurants in Tennessee to high-dollar eateries in New Orleans and Las Vegas, I have seldom walked away from a place regretting having gone there. So First Watch was a first for me. I actually came away with buyers' remorse, except there was no viable way to return the product for a refund.

Oh, sure, I've eaten at places I didn't like and to which I've said “never again,” but this is the first place I've ever gone where I actively wished I had never wasted my time and money. Especially the money.

This experience also reinforces my long-held opinion that most of the people who write restaurant “reviews” on Google are friends and relatives of the restaurant owners and employees. That certainly must have been the case here because the reviews were overwhelmingly glowing and positive. Even the one where a member of the dining party apparently got food poisoning from a salad and wound up in the hospital. The enthusiastic “reviewer” cited the fact that nobody else got sick as validation for the positive write-up. Uffa!

When we walked into the place on a Saturday afternoon, it was, in spite of COVID protocols, buzzing. In fact, it was buzzing so loudly that we opted to sit outside, even though the weather looked a little dicey. I mean, you couldn't hear yourself think in there. Typical “modern” design: all open spaces and hard surfaces with nothing to absorb or redirect sound. Every noise, from clattering dishes to loud music to even louder conversation just bounces off walls and floors and ceilings and tables and goes right through your head. Thank you, no. We'll take our chances with the thunder and lightning.

Now, the menu ballyhoos the virtues of fresh, local food, and you know those are often buzzwords for “overpriced,” right? I expected that. And, sure, I could've gotten bacon and eggs at the Waffle House down the street for about a third of what I paid here, but this place is “trendy,” you know, and they've got all that atmosphere and fresh food and clever advertising and everything. Okay. Even so, I was shocked at the shekels I had to shovel out for the quality of the food and service I got.

I'm not gonna do the whole menu here because it's full of kitschy names like “Bacado” and “Veg'd Out” and “Key West Crepeggs.” My wife ordered what she thought was a traditional eggs Benedict and I got two eggs, scrambled, with bacon, hash browns and toast. Pretty straightforward fare.

Once we were seated, our server did a creditable imitation of the Invisible Woman. Maybe she was afraid of the impending and aforementioned lightning and thunder, I don't know. When she finally returned some twenty-five or thirty minutes later, she was bearing our feast. And what a feast it was.

I've been in the food service business, okay, and I'm pretty understanding and easy to please and you have to do something fairly egregious to get me to complain about food. When our server set my plate before me and I got one look at the absolutely hammered eggs thereupon, it was one of those egregious occasions. Had I been on the line or on expo duty, I wouldn't have even let such a travesty leave the kitchen. Some poor hen somewhere – somewhere “local,” I'm sure – produced two eggs that were subsequently presented to me in the form of burnt offerings. It's not hard to scramble eggs, it's really not. Whip 'em up with a whisk, maybe with a little milk and some salt if that's your preference, add them to a buttered pan over medium heat and stir them until you get nice, fluffy curds. Or you can do it the way the so-called “cook” at First Watch obviously did it: whisk the eggs up and then dump them into a dry, screaming hot pan and cook them until any semblance of moisture has been driven out and they have been rendered brown and crispy on top and around the edges. Needless to say, I sent them back.

The bacon – which they call “million dollar bacon” – was wafer thin and so laden with grease that I could have let it slide down without chewing it. Maybe I misunderstood and the “million dollar” part was a reference to the price and not the quality.

The hash browns came out as home fries, which is fine. I like home fries. Except when I make them, I remember culinary school 101: if you want something to cook evenly, you have to cut it evenly. When you chop up potatoes so that some of the pieces are big and some are small and some are even smaller, they may look exceedingly “rustic” and “homey,” but they are going to cook exactly the way these did: the big pieces are going to be borderline raw, the smaller pieces are going to be about right, and the teeny pieces are going to be charred mush.

Top it off with a single slice of very dry toast, and you've definitely got a memorable meal. One I wish I could forget.

My wife didn't fare much better with her fare. The poach on her eggs was good. Not “ohmygod” good, but acceptable. But her “traditional” eggs Benedict was anything but. Instead of an English muffin, it was served on some sort of ciabatta roll and it was sliced deli ham rather than Canadian bacon. There were tomatoes on it for some inexplicable reason and it was topped –drowned? – in a Hollandaise that was so loaded with lemon you could have made lemonade with it. And she had the same "three bears-style" potatoes on the side that I had. You know, a mix of undercooked, overcooked, and just right?

And because my mother taught me that if I couldn't say something nice I shouldn't say anything at all, let me say this: Mom, the fresh-squeezed orange juice was delicious.

And then it rained. But we were both finished and done by then; finished with our meal and done with First Watch.

First Watch is a chain, so your experience may vary. But if you happen to find yourself on South Stratford Road in Winston-Salem and are tempted to visit the location there, resist the temptation. Unless you like greasy bacon, overcooked eggs, half-raw potatoes, and lemonade Hollandaise, all served up by an invisible server who will present you with a bill that will make you say, “Why the f**ck did I do that?” Then First Watch should be your first choice. For me, it's the last.

Find First Watch – if you dare – at 1602 S Stratford Rd, Ste 140 in Winston-Salem, NC. Strip mall parking. They're open daily from 7 am until 2:30 pm. Call (336) 773-8440 or go to firstwatch.com. Staff is masked and temp checked and masks for diners are required during COVID protocols. 

Thoughts On McDonald's Perennially Broken Ice Cream Machines

A Strange Irony

When I was young and so was McDonald's (we were both born the same year), my go-to order at the home of the Golden Arches was some of their life-changing French fries and an icy-cold, creamy chocolate milkshake. Later, after Ronald McDonald started selling soft-serve ice cream at his establishments, McDonald's became a great place to stop for a quick cone. Mickey Ds locations were a heck of a lot easier to find than Dairy Queen's and the product they served was almost as good. Almost.

Alas, somewhere around 1990, McDonald's caved in to the activist campaign to eliminate fat and cholesterol in the American diet and stopped frying its exquisite shoestring spuds in beef tallow, opting instead for bland, flavorless vegetable oil. This switch from animal renderings to vegetable squeezings immediately “rendered” McDonald's fries inert, dull, and lifeless. They became nothing more than a run-of-the-mill vehicle to deliver salt and a modicum of texture to your palate.

But, hey! At least we still had ice cream, right? And delicious, fresh, creamy shakes? Eh, not so much. The ice cream formula changed, too. In fact, it literally became a “formula” instead of a fresh dairy product.

And now we don't even have that last vestige of so many youthful memories. Have you tried to order any ice cream products from McDonald's lately? Good luck finding one with an operating ice cream machine. It's actually become an Internet thing: you can go online and find dozens of sites dedicated to tracking and cataloging McDonald's non-operating ice cream machines. There's even an app for it.

However you look at it, it's frustrating as hell. You get your mouth all set for something and whammo! “I'm sorry. Our ice cream machine is out of order.” That's what I heard the other day when, after a warm afternoon of yard work, my wife said, “Hey, why don't you run over to McDonald's and get us some fries and shakes?” Sorry, honey. Settle for a nice cup of water with those fries? At least I didn't go to the extreme that three women went to in Daytona Beach. When they ordered ice cream at the drive-thru and were told the machine was down, they went into the restaurant and proceeded to beat up the kid behind the counter. Or the guy in Delray Beach who pulled a gun on the drive-thru worker when he was told the ice cream machine wasn't working. Obviously, people in Florida take their ice cream very seriously.

Now, I was going to try to do some in-depth research into the phenomenon in order to find some explanation that I could pass on to you desperate, ice cream-starved readers. But, lo and behold, one Andy Greenberg over at Wired has already done way, way more legwork than I'd ever dreamed possible and has detailed everything you've ever wanted to know about McDonald's ice cream machine woes right here. Read it and.....weep.

Speaking of weeping, I'll bet Ray Kroc is weeping in his grave as he spins like one of the five spindles on his iconic “Multimixer 9B.” Isn't it a bit of strange irony that a burger chain founded by a guy who sold milkshake machines for a living should be in such straits today? Totally at the mercy of wonky digital technology?

C'mon, McDonald's! It's the twenty-first century. We have personal computers in our pockets and helicopters on Mars. Don't ya think you could come up with an ice cream machine that works at least fifty percent of the time? Surely somebody's got a cache of the old manual clunkers in the basement somewhere. Drag 'em out! At least they were dependable.

As I said before, McDonald's and I have a long history. I actually went to Store #1 when I was a kid. Located in west suburban Chicago, just off US Hwy 12 in Des Plaines, Ray Kroc always said it was his favorite store before they tore it down and rebuilt it as a museum. Even as a museum, you could see a mannequin in a paper hat standing by what I'm sure was a working shake machine. Ah, for the good old days.

Bah dah bah bah bah, McDonald's, when it comes to your perennially malfunctioning ice cream machines, I'm not lovin' it.

Just Ignore The Latest Lunatic “Hack” For Cooking Pasta

“Every Time This Technique Is Replicated, An Italian Dies”

I thought I'd seen it all. I thought I'd experienced every crackpot “time-saving” and/or “labor-saving” technique and device out there for the simple task of cooking pasta. I've gaped in amazement at all the so-called “hacks” (I really hate that term) that espouse cooking pasta in cold water or that proclaim pasta can be successfully prepared using cups of water rather than quarts. I've shaken my head in bemusement at the rubbery, silicone gizmos that claim to produce “perfect” pasta in the microwave. I've heaved sighs of frustration at American “old wives” who dump oil in pasta cooking water or who don't liberally salt said water. As I said, I thought I'd seen it all: then I saw this.

Some benighted woman in the pasta cooking capital that is northeastern England has gone on record – via TikTok, of course – with the ignominious idea of cooking pasta in its sauce. Sort of.

Now wait! Before you remind me that that is, indeed, the proper Italian way to finish cooking pasta, let me explain this culinary genius's complete method. The woman, named Jasmine, claims that she got the idea from an Italian-American restaurant chain called Frankie & Benny's. Founded in London in 1995 by one Kevin Bacon, (probably not that one), the fact that it is a British Italian-American outfit means it's already at least two degrees separated from anything remotely authentic.

Anyway, according to Jasmine, the best way to prepare your pasta in one pot with a minimum of muss and fuss is as follows: you boil some water in a teakettle. Then you pour a jar of spaghetti sauce directly into a pot and add some of the boiling water from the kettle. Toss your dried spaghetti into the sauce and water mixture and boil it up. Once you reach the desired degree of doneness (and I shudder to think what that might be) you throw in a few meatballs and declare the insipid result to be a delicious Italian dish.

According to the website wantedinmilan.com, one person commenting on this travesty summed up the reaction of Italians everywhere with the statement, “Every time this technique is replicated, an Italian dies.” Let me expand on that. Not only does an Italian die, they die screaming and are joined in their death throes by the spinning of generations of nonne in their graves.

With admittedly facetious apologies to Jasmine and other “experts,” there is one and only one proper way to prepare pasta. Uno. Un. Um. En. Een. Ett. Ein. Éνας. Moja. You get the idea? ONE! And it most assuredly does not involve tossing uncooked pasta into a pot of diluted tomato sauce. Uffa!!! And that's the mildest word I can conjure at the moment.

You gotta have water. Lotsa, lotsa water. The water's gotta be boiling. Lotsa, lotsa bubbles. And it's gotta be salted. Lotsa, lotsa salt. Did you notice that Jasmine didn't include any salt anywhere in her “recipe?” Those are the only ways you can coax desiccated bits of durum wheat flour to give up their starches, achieve perfect al dente tenderness, and absorb flavor. Otherwise, what's the point? Any other method or technique or “hack” (the word reminds me of what a cat does to a hairball) is going to produce an unsatisfying mush.

Now, as I said, finishing the cooked pasta in a pot of sauce is not only a good idea, it's an essential and quintessential Italian technique. Only in Italian-American restaurants, greasy spoon diners, or church “spaghetti dinners” do they actually serve piles of naked spaghetti on a plate doused in cups if not quarts of red sauce. You will not find an Italian anywhere in Italy or elsewhere on the planet who cooks pasta that way. Unless they own one of the aforesaid Italian-American joints, in which case they do so under protest because that's what their palate-less customers expect and demand.

I took over running the kitchen in one of those diners once. The place offered “spaghetti specials” on the weekends and the very first thing I did was to change the method of preparing the spaghetti.

My cook had already prepared a big pot of pasta when I got in one day. I tasted it. Horrible. Bland. Devoid of any semblance of flavor. I asked him how he had cooked it. He looked at me as though I had grown a third eye and and told me that he had boiled the water, added some salt, and cooked the spaghetti. I asked, “how much salt and for how long?” “I don't know. A couple of teaspoons, I guess, and for about fifteen minutes.” Dio mio! He had produced the equivalent of canned spaghetti alla Chef Boyardee.

“Throw it out,” I said, “We're starting over.” We boiled some more water and his eyes bugged out as he watched me pour in the salt. We're talking a restaurant stock pot here, okay? Forty quarts. Ten gallons. Probably eight gallons of water. Allowing two or three tablespoons of salt per gallon, that's about a cup and a half of salt. I thought he was gonna choke. “Taste the water,” I told him. “What does it taste like?” “Kinda salty,” he replied. “Like seawater,” I asked? “Yeah,” he said. I exclaimed, “Perfect!”

I added the pasta and cooked it at a rolling boil for a generous eight or nine minutes. I pulled out a strand and told my cook to try it. “Oh, wow! That's good! I'm gonna make that way at home from now on.” Flavor! What a concept!

Okay, so now the par-cooked pasta goes in the fridge. We kept a big pot of sauce simmering on a back burner of the stove. When an order came in for the special, instead of throwing a portion of the pasta back in some hot water to heat it up (called “double-cooking”) and then plopping it on a plate and pouring a big glug of sauce over it, I insisted that the cooks ladle some sauce into a smaller pot and add the pasta to that pot of sauce to finish cooking for maybe two minutes. Then you plate it up on a warm serving plate and present it to your happy customer. Not only were the patrons amazed at the difference – especially the regulars – but the cooks were, too, and so I achieved what I set out to achieve.

You can do the same thing at home. Cook your pasta in plenty of generously salted water until it's just shy of done, then finish it in your sauce before serving. It's that simple, it's that easy. It's the way generations of Italians have done it. No “hacks” required. And no dead Italians or spinning grandmothers, either. Win-win, right?

Good work is seldom fast and fast work is seldom good. Remember that rule next time you see a “hack” that promises to make things quick and easy. (Remember, too, that one of the definitions of “hack” is “someone who produces banal and mediocre work in the hope of gaining commercial success.”) 'Nuff said.

Buon appetito!

Air Fryer Bacon? Yes! (But With Conditions)

Bacon is the Duct Tape of the Kitchen

A couple of weeks ago, a fellow bacon-loving friend and I were discussing our favorite porcine ambrosia and she asked if it were possible to cook bacon in an air fryer. My immediate response was an emphatic “no.” I said this based on what I had previously read about numerous air fryer drawbacks, one of which is that foods with high fat content do not do well in an air fryer.

According to various manufacturer's troubleshooting guides, cooking high fat foods can result in white smoke emanating from your appliance. This is because fat splatters around in the enclosed environment and gets on the heating element. I had even heard rumors about air fryers catching fire due to high fat content cooking. And since bacon is definitely a high fat food, I just said no, don't do it.

But then I got to thinking. I've never actually tried it myself, so maybe I was being a bit hasty. I Googled the subject and was rather surprised to find scads of recipes for perfect air fryer bacon. Hmmmm. Could I be missing something?

Now, to be sure, not everybody had a wonderful experience with bacon in the air fryer. One correspondent even entitled her piece, “Why You Should NEVER Cook Bacon in Your Air Fryer.” She went on to detail the nightmare scenario of thick white smoke billowing from her fryer and of pools of piping-hot bacon grease and ultimately ruined bacon.

And hers was not the only negative I found. The folks in Food Network's test kitchen, for instance, weren't sold on the process either for basically the same reasons: lots of grease and lots of smoke.

But still, there were more positive than negative responses, so I thought I'd give it a try.

Following the most common directions, I laid a couple of slices of bacon in the basket of my air fryer, set the temperature to 400 degrees and the timer to ten minutes. And I started it up. I took a peek in the basket at about the halfway mark and everything was going well. Lo and behold, in ten minutes, I had two slices of crispy, moist, tender, perfectly cooked bacon. My mind was officially blown!

I'm a traditionalist, okay? You cook bacon the way I learned to do it at my mother's knee some fifty-eight years ago. We had a griddle plate in the center of our gas stove and that's how you cooked bacon. You slapped it on there and turned on the heat. You stood over it with a turner and flipped it a couple of times, and when it was done, you drained it on paper towels and served it up. If you didn't have a griddle, a skillet would do. Yeah, it was gonna splatter and be a little messy to clean up, but that was the nature of the beast. It's just what you did.

Later, when I started doing volume restaurant-type cooking, I learned about the advantages of cooking big batches of bacon on a tray in the oven. I still prefer pan or griddle frying, but I'm not averse to baking my bacon when necessary.

One method I only use when there is simply no choice – or when I don't especially care about taste or texture – is the microwave. I'm sorry, the only thing rigor mortis bacon is good for is crumbling into bits for salads or baked potatoes or something. It is otherwise generally unfit for consumption.

But when you think about it, an “air fryer” is not really a “fryer” at all; it's a mini convection oven. It works by circulating hot air around the food being cooked. Not a lot different than my big wall-mounted convection oven, except it sits on my counter.

A couple of caveats, though, some things to be aware of. Many of the bad experiences I read about involved people trying to make a lot of bacon at one time. They were basically covering the basket of their fryer with bacon. Bad idea. That will definitely produce a lot of smoky grease. If you're going to use your air fryer for bacon, you aren't going to feed a large family. Two or three slices at a time will work. Anything more will likely lead to the smoky, greasy nightmares I cited earlier.

Time and temperature are also factors. My experiment/experience worked well with ten minutes at four hundred. Your results may vary.

One of the variants involves the bacon itself. I don't buy cheap supermarket bacon. There's lots of fat in that stuff and even more water. Supermarket bacon is brine cured: they inject it with water. So when you start to cook it, all that water has got to go somewhere and that somewhere is into your pan where it mixes with the hot fat rendering from the meat and turns it all into a spattering, smoky mess.

Dry cured bacon, like that produced by bacon-whisperer Allan Benton at his Madisonville, Tennessee smokehouse, is much less likely to spatter and smoke because there's no added water in it to negatively interact with the hot fat during cooking. That's true whether you're cooking it on a griddle, in a pan, in the oven, or in an air fryer.

Unfortunately (sigh) I don't always have Benton's bacon on hand. Sometimes I have to go with the product I get from my local butcher or from my restaurant supply house. It's not Benton's but it is several cuts above the thin, watery, fatty stuff you buy in the grocery store. And I almost always opt for thicker slices. On average, a good thick-sliced bacon (1/8 inch) will yield ten to twelve slices per pound. The higher-end grocery store bacon runs sixteen to eighteen slices per pound and the really cheap, paper thin, “bargain” stuff can contain as many as thirty slices in a pound.

So, obviously, if you cook six slices of cheap bacon in your air fryer at four hundred degrees for ten minutes.........you're not going to like the results. The solution, of course, is to buy higher quality bacon, use less of it, and experiment a bit with the cooking time and temperature. Depending on your machine and your product, you might have to go with three-fifty or three-seventy-five. And maybe it will take twelve minutes. Or if your bacon is thinner, maybe as little as eight. You just have to play with it until you get the results you want. The beauty part is that once you do that, you're set forever. Use the same settings and more or less the same product every time and you'll always get the same perfect results.

Are you gonna get some smoke? Yeah, probably. I did at first. In fact, after a couple of minutes my kitchen smoke detector started squalling at me. “Ooops! Dummy! You forgot to turn on the fan.” Once I flipped the switch on the hood, no more smoke and no more squealing detector.

Cleanup was easy. Because I don't use cheap, fatty bacon, there was very little grease collected in the pan of my air fryer. Maybe a couple of tablespoons. I let it cool and solidify and wiped it out with a paper towel. Same for the bottom of the basket. Then it was a touch of Dawn dish liquid and some hot water in the sink and the whole shebang was clean in about two minutes.

So bottom line: yes, you can cook bacon in your air fryer. Experiment a little to see what settings work best with your machine, don't overcrowd the basket with too much bacon, and always use good bacon to begin with. That much is true no matter how you cook it.

And remember two things, both of which I have inscribed in my kitchen: “bacon is the duct tape of the kitchen” and “either you like bacon or you're wrong.”

Remembering Charlie Daniels

A Truly Nice Man

I was shocked to my soul a few minutes ago by the news of the sudden passing of an old friend, the incomparable Charlie Daniels.

I use the term “friend” somewhat advisedly because I don't want to give the impression that we were lifelong buddies or anything. As an entertainer and a broadcaster, my relationship with Charlie was mostly professional. Mostly. But Charlie was the kind of person who could make even a professional association feel like a true friendship. He was open, honest, generous, friendly, and, above all, real. In the opening line to one of his many hits he says, “I ain't nothin' but a simple man.” Yes and no.

Charles Edward Daniels was born in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1936. Already skilled on guitar, banjo, mandolin, and fiddle by the time he graduated from high school in 1955, Charlie formed a rock 'n' roll band and took to the road, where he spent the rest of his life. He moved to Nashville in the '60s, married “Miss Hazel” in 1964, and worked as a session musician for just about everybody. His first major hit was the quirky “Uneasy Rider,” released in 1973, but it was 1979's “The Devil Went Down To Georgia” that really hung his star in the country music firmament. The tune reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100 that year and achieved even greater success the following year after being featured in John Travolta's hit movie, “Urban Cowboy.” From there Charlie never looked back as he charted one Top Ten hit after another, eventually joining the membership of the Grand Ole Opry in 2008 and being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2016.

I first saw Charlie perform with his eponymous “Charlie Daniels Band” sometime in the early 1980s when he was the opening act for the then-mega star group, Alabama. While I was quite impressed by the show Randy Owen, Teddy Gentry, Jeff Cook, and Mark Herndon put on for an enthusiastic audience, I was completely floored by Charlie Daniels. I was immediately struck by one thing: energy. After watching Charlie perform and then seeing Alabama take the stage, I came away marveling at Charlie's ability to command the whole stage from within about a two-foot circle. Randy and company spent nearly two hours running from one end of the stage to the other. They jumped and clapped and raced around and used every inch of space available to them. Charlie, on the other hand, barely moved from his center stage spot. He danced in place a little and he twirled around a bit. His fingers flew and his bow arm moved like a churning piston until the rosin-coated horsehair of that bow began to fray and fly. But I don't think he moved more than a few inches off the mark during his entire set. And yet he absolutely electrified the audience. For all Randy's athletic antics, Charlie outperformed him practically standing still. His understated energy and innate showmanship flat blew Alabama off the stage. Sure, I had seen the big movie and I had heard Charlie's songs on the radio, but after one look live and in person, I was a Charlie Daniels fan for life.

It wasn't long after that I got to meet Charlie in person. I interviewed him for my radio show and after about five minutes, I felt like I had known him for years. The interview quickly turned into a conversation and the conversation became one of many more that Charlie and I would have over the course of the next twenty years. Most often, we would meet at various venues where he was performing. He was easily one of the most accessible “stars” with whom I ever worked. One call to his longtime publicist and right-hand, Paula Szeigis, and I was backstage with Charlie wherever he was.

Knowing that I was in Nashville on business one time, he invited me to visit him at his home and office in Mount Juliet. As if you couldn't tell by the huge hat he always wore, Charlie was a big-time Western and cowboy fan. In fact, he was close friends with one of the all-time great Western writers, Louis L'Amour, who dedicated his 1985 book, “Jubal Sackett;” “To Hazel and Charlie Daniels – His fiddle-playing would bring the Sacketts right down from the hills.” Charlie, in turn, titled one of his albums “High Lonesome” after a L'Amour book of the same name. So it was no surprise that Charlie's log-cabin office was a Western shrine/museum filled with amazing art and artifacts. Unfortunately, schedules and circumstances prevented me from going over to his house, but after a brief tour of the office facility, Paula showed me in to Charlie's personal office. The big man stood to shake hands and all I could say was, “Darn, Charlie. Never mind the house. Just let me live in your office.”

Charlie was performing at a state fair somewhere. I had watched the show from the sidelines and had headed back afterward to meet him at his dressing room trailer. When I got there, there were a couple of people standing at the door; a young boy and his mother. Apparently, the boy had a chronic ailment of some kind that severely limited many of his activities. But he was a huge Charlie Daniels fan and had somehow been afforded the opportunity to meet his idol on this occasion. Charlie came out to meet the boy and his mom and I could tell he was pretty much all in. He had performed outdoors in unrelenting heat with his usual high wattage and he was still red-faced and perspiring when he opened the trailer door to his young fan. But you never would have known he was the least bit fatigued as he chatted with the boy and then stepped back inside for a moment, returning with the tattered and frayed bow with which he had hammered through the show. As Charlie handed him this treasure, the boy started to cry and I wasn't far behind. Such a generous man.

One of my favorite memories of Charlie is one I share with my wife. Early in our relationship, I discovered that she was a big fan of his. I was skimming the newspapers at my desk doing some show prep one day when I saw a notice that Charlie was appearing in town the following night. I made a quick call to Paula and got set up to meet him backstage. I didn't tell my wife who we were going to see; I just said we were going out to a local club. She badgered me all the way there, but I kept up the premise as best I could until we arrived and there was a big banner shouting “Welcome Charlie Daniels” over the door. I think I made a few brownie points as we breezed past the long, long line that stretched deep into the parking lot and picked up our all-access passes at the box office. Then we headed backstage, her feet barely touching the floor, and waited for Charlie to appear. The bus had just pulled in and, of course, my other favorite member of Charlie's entourage, Joel “Taz” DiGregorio, was the first person off. He saw me and approached with his customary warm greeting and then shook hands with my still slightly shocked wife. Charlie got mobbed as soon as he stepped off the bus, so I waited until the crowd dissipated a bit before taking her over to meet him. He was seated behind a table, but he took her hand and pulled her down onto his lap by way of greeting. I will never forget the look on her face. It's actually pretty easy to remember because I have a great picture of it. I kidded her for weeks about not washing either her hand or her butt after that experience. When the band assembled onstage to begin the show, I escorted my fangirl wife to the stage left wing, pulled up an empty equipment crate, and said, “There you go, honey. A box seat.”

We hung out with Charlie and the band at fairs and festivals and concert halls many times over the ensuing years and every occasion was just as special as the first and the last thanks to the warm, welcoming presence of the head man, who, for all his bewhiskered long-haired country boy looks and attitude, was a big teddy bear.

I was distressed when I heard that Taz was killed in a car accident a few years ago while on his way to a gig. But the news today is far worse. Charlie had his share of health issues. He almost lost an arm when an auger caught his shirtsleeve back in 1980. A brush with prostate cancer, a case of pneumonia, and the implanting of a pacemaker didn't slow him down much. He even survived a mild stroke about ten years ago. But this one got him. A hemorrhagic stroke at age 83 has forever silenced that phenomenal musical talent and has taken from among us something that we can scarce afford to lose in these trying days: a truly nice man.

Goodbye, Charlie. I hope you and Taz have a great time regaling the angels with the story of how “The Devil Went Down To Georgia.”

Restaurant Review: Tartini Pizzeria & Spaghetteria, Orlando (Pine Castle), Florida

I Ran Out Of Italian Adjectives

This will be a brief review by my usual standards because my COVID-19-influenced visit to Tartini Pizzeria & Spaghetteria was unfortunately brief. I hope to go back some day and rectify that.

In Orlando for business and tired of cooking for days in our well-appointed hotel suite, COVID be damned, we just HAD to find a good Italian place on our last night in town. Previous stops in “The City Beautiful” have taken us to Mama Della's Ristorante in the Loews Portofino Bay Hotel. Alas, “Mama” had been forced by the virus into temporary closure, so we went on the hunt for someplace else where we could get some good Italian food. And, my oh my, did Tartini Pizzeria & Spaghetteria ever fill the bill!

Touted on Google as a “polished yet casual stop for pasta & wood-fired pizzas, with a modern decor including leather seats,” Tartini is all that and much more.

We dropped by early in order to avoid any potential crowds. In that we were successful, being the only couple in the place at five o'clock on a Friday afternoon. A few others filtered in while we were there but social distancing wasn't a problem. Well, there was a slight problem: our cameriere was a terrific guy, very friendly and enthusiastic. I knew he was smiling under his required face mask because his eyes were smiling. But he had to stand so far away. Between my slight hearing difficulty and the recorded music that, though perfect for the atmosphere, may have been a trifle too loud, and the fact that he was talking through a mask, communication was not all it could have been. I, too, was wearing a mask, of course, and the combination of English and Italian we were exchanging was challenging at the least. Not his fault. Mask and distance impaired communication aside, the service was impeccable.

And the food was divino! Mio dio, after buonissimo, delizioso, meraviglioso, il migliore, and several other words of praise, I simply ran out of Italian adjectives.

Let's start with the antipasto. They had the usual mozzarella sticks, caprese, calamari and such. They even offered Italian nachos. But I'm a sucker for good garlic knots and the five decadent twists of garlicky, cheesy, olive oily warm, wood-fired bread that we were served moved my long-time favorite knots at Best Italian in Gatlinburg, Tennessee into second place. These were – as I employed my first adjective of the evening – spettacolare! Ah, but the wicked little morsels were but a harbinger of things to come.

I was torn between pasta and pizza. This was also a “spaghetteria,” after all. But ultimately, my wife's suggestion that I would never forgive myself for not sampling the wood-fired pizza won out and I ordered a simple cheese pizza. They had lots of fancier ones on the menu, including the San Danielle made of pomodoro sauce, mozzarella, prosciutto, arugula, and shaved Parmesan. That looked good. So did the house specialty Tartini pizza that added salami, sopressata, and Italian sausage to the pomodoro sauce and mozzarella. But I've always found that a restaurant can best be judged by how they prepare simple classics, so I had a simple, classic cheese pizza. The. Crust. Was. To. DIE. For! I'm writing this days after and I'm still dying for more of it. Easily one of the best pizze I have ever had.

And she who convinced me to try the pizza had absolutely no complaints about her choice of pasta. She chose the Pasta Mare E' Terra, a rich combination of penne pasta in a lobster cream sauce with sauteed beef, shrimp, zucchini, and spinach. It was a toss up between that and the restaurant's signature dish, Pasta alla Ruota; their “show-stopping” spaghetti, flamed with Hennessy brandy and tossed in a wheel of cheese. Next time. Definitely next time.

We both went into the place with the intention of having no leftovers since we had a long road trip facing us the next day. Yeah. Right. So much for intentions. This is an Italian-American restaurant, you know? So when our friendly cameriere came by to check on us, I first told him, “Mi hai rovinato! (You have ruined me!)” Then I instructed him to carefully and lovingly package every last droplet and crumb of the cibo straordinario as if it had to travel five-hundred miles, because it did. There was no way I was leaving a bit of anything behind. We had coolers. We were good. The leftovers would be perfect for dinner when we got home the next night, and they certainly were.

Dessert? Uffa! Che pazzo! But the choices were tempting. Cannoli, tiramisu, gelato, zeppole, Nutella cheesecake........but my resolve was strong. And my stomach was full.

Tartini has a nice wine list and they feature Peroni on tap as well as the usual choices of soft drinks, tea, coffee (American and Italian) and Aqua Panna and San Pellegrino waters.

In addition to being delicious, everything was very reasonably priced. Even the signature Pasta alla Ruota clocked in at less than twenty-five bucks.

One slight critique is offered only to satisfy the pedantic pedagogue in me: spelling on both the printed menu and the website is absolutely horrendous. I would let it slide if it was written by an Italian struggling with English, but even some of the Italian words are misspelled. Oh well. Chalk it up to part of the charm of a small, local place.

You can find Tartini Pizzeria & Spaghetteria at 6321 S. Orange Ave, #101 in Pine Castle (suburban Orlando) Florida. There's adequate parking and limited outdoor seating. Reservations are accepted but not required. Dress is casual. A kids' menu is available. As of this writing, open for dine-in, takeout, and delivery from 11 am until 10 pm Monday through Saturday and from noon until 9 pm on Sunday. Phone (407) 704-8011 or log on to http://www.tartinirestaurant.com. And bear in mind that COVID may force changes to hours and/or services.

Move over, Mama Della. I've got a new favorite Italian restaurant in Orlando.