Northeast Chinese II

Fried shrimp and crunchy peppers. So good. Salt an pepper shrimp, with a little kick.

 So good, it's worth ordering the chicken version, too. The red peppers aren't too spicy, but the crunch factor is awesome.

They're redoing their menus so when I went the printed sheets were stapled together and less dishes than in previous trips. But before this their menus were comically long. Even pared down it's still a lot of food. 

900 Central Ave, Albany, NY 12206

Sushi Tei

Some things never change, like Sushi Tei's $1 nigiri special for the entire month of July. Or ordering $50 of food for myself.

There was a special! Okonomiyaki! $7.95 for a pancake sized for two people (but easily shared between 4). This was very kewpie mayo heavy, and oh man the shrimpy bits were great. 

But let's get to the star of the show, the sushi:

Hello, gorgeous! Octopus, mackerel, white tuna/escolar, salmon, tuna, and a few rolls.

Oh, I also forgot to take a photo of the mini udon noodle soup I got ($6.95), which was fantastic as always. I think they're my favorite place for both sushi and udon noodle soups. 

Any way, go check them out - this is a great deal, and they're so nice there!

Cheesecake

First baked good in new apartment - cheesecake. Went from a consistent electric oven to a gas stove and range. Was worried I'd need to work on gauging my oven temperature, but was pleasantly surprised that my cheesecake came out spot on. Super creamy texture. 

I've discovered I like graham cracker crusts as long as they stay crunchy. So I basically double the butter and sugar any recipe calls for and bake the hell out of it in the oven until it looks nearly burnt. Then it stays crispy.

4 bricks of cream cheese
2 cups of sugar (1/2 per brick)
4 eggs (1 egg per brick)
splash of vanilla extract
hearty blop or two of sour cream

Bake at 325F until it looks giggly in the center but not too giggly. 

The hardest part is waiting until it's cold to eat. 

House to Apartment

Sold the house. Moved to an apartment. 

I pared down a lot of stuff in the months leading up to selling. House was on the market for a week before there was a buyer and I cannot imagine having to do that any longer. It was exhausting. The prep was intense, and single mom life is tidy, but not "house is show ready" spotless level of clean. 

In the run up to selling just about every annoying thing that could break needed a repair. I'm looking at you saddle valve on the ice maker. Grrr. Well, the house made the decision to flee leave quite easy in the end. Maintaining a house is easy as a single lady, but man, the timing is tough as a single parent to a baby/toddler.

Still, selling is stressful and the buyers kept me on my toes and didn't I didn't get the "all clear" from my attorney until one week before our deadline to either close or cancel the sale. What a week. And what great friends and family I have for helping me do it all in a week. 

By some other stroke of luck I wound up in a pretty cute apartment that was flexible with my "I'm probably selling my house but I don't know exactly when" timeline vagueness. Aside from the carpeting (ugh, carpeting) it's great. I've never lived on my own. It's really cool that I get to decide everything and where everything goes. Yeah, I've got the kiddo, but she's stuck with me and my decisions. I guess she does impact some decision making, because if it were just me I'd probably just live in some tiny studio, but hey, gotta give the kid some structure and sense of her own space, so a 2 bedroom in a nice neighborhood it is. Man, I sound like such an adult. Who am I?

Speaking of the kiddo, I was wondering how she'd take to the transition. She's still tiny, and she took to it really well - no real issue whatsoever. She loves running around the apartment, and the open kitchen makes a game of tag/peek-a-boo easy and fun.

And OMFG central air rocks. Haven't had that since I lived in the south. Woe betide my electric bill. 

The Cheap Pizza Taste Test

A long time ago, in a lifetime far, far away I used to eat a ton of pizza. Like for the All Over Albany Tournament of Pizza. Yes, it's time to try a whole bunch of pizza. But not just any pizza - the cheapest, closest pizza I could find. I know what you're thinking - this is a fantastic idea made by a very intelligent and beautiful person. Or you're wondering what on earth would possess someone to try this and you think all of the pizzas will be terrible. Well, read on to find out how our taste buds fared. 

A team of 9 folks (plus two kiddos) assembled to try as many of the cheap pizzas in Latham, NY as possible including fellow pizza partner in crime and pizza-aficionado, Jon in Albany. Bless his soul for humoring this endeavor. This post and the details will be pretty brief because we cobbled it all together in about 24 hours. AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!

We sampled the following pizzas:

Price Chopper/Market 32

Sam's Club

Cumberland Farms by Salvation Army

Cumberland Farms by the Albany International Airport
Stewart's on Wade Road
Little Bites and More (control pizza, delivered)

Each pizza was picked up by a different person to ensure that the pizzas arrived on-location at the tasting destination at the same time. 

All pizzas were cheese flavored. 

Pizzas were ranked on the following aspects:
Crust

Sauce

Cheese
Overall

Alright, let's get this show on the road. Here are our pizza contestants:

Sam's Club Pizza

Cumberland Farms by Albany International Airport

 Stewart's Pizza

Salvation Army Cumberland Farms

Price Chopper/Market 32 with the rectangular pizza

Little Bites & More - Control Pizza

Here are the scores from first place going down, with a brief summation:

1. Little Bites & More - the control pizza was a fine base pizza. This unsurprisingly had the most overall flavor, and was the most expensive of the pizzas at about $15 for a plain cheese pizzas

2. Stewart's - $7.99 for a whole pizza. This was the crowd surprise as best of the cheap pizzas in Latham! The general consensus of everyone who ate this and had previously had Stewart's pizza was "This is not how this normally tastes. It is usually not this good. It is usually very bad." We can chalk this up to several factors: The Wade Road Stewart's churns out a decent cheap pizza; Albany Jane ordered the pizza in-store with her baby in tow and they churned out a solid pie out of parental pity; luck.

3. Price Chopper/Market 32 - Granny pie! Tons of cheese on this pie. A polarizing pizza for those who believe pizza should be in circular form only. Overall, a solid representative "pick up a pizza on the way home from work".

4. Cumberland Farms by Albany International Airport - $5.99. Dear god, these pizzas are so cheap and they're ready so quickly. They have been an entirely all too frequent addition to my diet of late. Sauce is pretty bland (did someone smear tomato paste on and call it a day? Probably, but who cares, it's so cheap), but good cheese ratio. The other pies I've had in the past haven't been so underbaked, but hey, ya gotta judge the slice in front of you.

5. Cumberland Farms by Salvation Army - This scored a hair lower than the airport Cumby's but overall these were both pretty indistinguishable. Good job on chain consistency, Cumby's.

6. Sam's Club - $8.99 oh my gosh this was just flat out awful. The pizza had this weird sour taste that lingered in the worst way possible. When trying all of these pies, I was callously blaming Stewart's or Cumberland Farms, because obviously gas station pizza would be the bottom of the barrel. From what I've heard, Sam's Club pizza is usually better and this may have been a one-off pie. I sure hope so because no one could even finish a small slice. That bad.