February 09, 2002

Food and Drink

Picked up a steak burrito combo, ranchero style, from La Salsa. Their food is pretty good and reasonably authentic for a chain. Although the La Salsa in UTC does violate the Golden Rule of Ethnic Restaurants, i.e. it can't be any good if nobody of that ethnicity eats at the place. The steak has that char-grilled flavor, and the whole thing was covered with a mole-type sauce and melted cheese. Their pico de gallo is fresh and goes great with the tortilla chips. The black beans is a little bland,but nothing that a little sour cream and salsa can't fix. Anyway, it's a lot of food. The problem with Mexican take-out is that it just doesn't reheat very well. The sauce and cheese soak in and congeal, so the whole thing becomes a goopy mess. Chinese takeout definitely makes for better leftovers, as long as you keep the rice separate.

Had a coupon for the filter, so I dug out my dusty Brita pitcher to give that another try. When you amortize the cost of the filter out over its lifetime (40 gallons, according to the instructions), you don't save much over bottled water. The filter takes out all the supposedly harmful stuff, but it can't make the water taste better, so the water still taste as if it's been sitting in a concrete aqueduct for a thousand miles. Which it has been. Blech. It does work well for coffee, though.

Posted by mikewang on 03:44 PM