Category: Food

Great Greek Mediterranean Grill, where are you?

Sign promising the arrival of a Great Greek Mediterranean Grill at 2566 Patterson Rd.

Ever since the sign went up last spring at 2566 Patterson Road next to the new Coffee Trader announcing “The Great Greek Mediterranean Grill” would be “Coming Soon,” foodies have been watching with great anticipation, thrilled at the prospect of having delicious new Greek/Mediterranean cuisine in town.

Employees at the Coffee Trader said the place expected to open in September, but we’re going to have to wait for our lamb, chicken, beef or shrimp souvlaki, spanakopita, avgolemono soup, gyros, falafel plates, tzatziki, lemon potatoes and more.

After the sign went up, nothing else happened.

7th Street Deli threatened with eviction

You’ve seen it…you drive by it all the time. After 15 years in this location, the much-loved 7th Street Deli, a woman-owned and operated family business that makes home-made food, has been threatened with eviction.

The 7th Street Deli just south of St. Mary’s Hospital may soon be forced to close its doors.

The restaurant has been there for 15 years, and has been owned and operated by Debbie Allen and her daughter for the last 8 years. It is woman-owned business and the only restaurant close to the hospital. Their food is damn good and now they might have to close.

On January 5th, the landlord who owns the Medical Arts complex where the deli is located threatened Debbie and her family with eviction by the end of the month for non-payment of rent. The eviction notice comes after the restaurant was faced with a long series of unfortunate events starting in 2018. It has been struggling to come back, and just as business is finally starting to improve again, now this.

How did they get into this position after having so much success for so long?

GarCo Public Health: Boebert’s food poisoned 80 people in 2017

Lauren Boebert, Republican candidate for 3rd Congressional District and proprietor of Shooter’s Grill in Rifle, Co (Photo: Facebook)

Calls started pouring into the Garfield County Public Health Department (GCPH) at 10:00 a.m. on June 6, 2017, from people complaining  they had come down with severe diarrhea and nausea. In all, 17 people called or walked into the health department that day saying they had suddenly become ill with the same symptoms.

What did all these people have in common?

They had all attended the Rifle Rodeo on June 5 and eaten food supplied by the only vendor at the fairgrounds that day: Lauren Boebert, owner of Shooter’s Grill and Smokehouse 1776.

That’s according to a 10-page GCPH report titled Rifle Rodeo 06/05/17 Outbreak Report, which is publicly available on the internet (pdf).

The hero of City Market 24 Road

David at City Market 24 Road

Meet David, the best employee at City Market 24 Road.

Have you ever gone into a City Market, asked a store employee for help finding a product, had the employee march you all around the store for ten minutes looking for it, call the store manager who is also clueless, and then the employee finally shrugs, gives up and admits he or she doesn’t have a clue?

That’s not David.

David never fails to impress. He knows exactly where everything is in the store, he knows all about food, how to use all of the products in the store and lots more.

David works in the specialty cheese shop, but he also knows the rest of the store like the back of his hand. If you ever need a weird, obscure ingredient, like chopped gherkins, anchovy sauce or some kind of odd seasoning oil, David can take you right to it. If you are trying to figure out the difference between two different brands of garlic and herb spread, David not only knows all the differences, he knows which brand is better depending on whether you want to spread it on a cracker or crumble it into a salad or main dish. If want to make your beef Stroganoff really pop, David knows the secrets of how to do it.

David is a huge asset to City Market. He’s one of the reasons I shop at the 24 Road store more than any other store.

Before working at City Market, David managed the restaurant in the Doubletree Hotel on Horizon Drive for ten years, and before that, he was the manager of The Red Lobster, so the guy really knows food prep inside and out. He knows ingredients, he knows food.

Kroger Corporation, are you listening? You’re super-lucky to have this guy working for you, and if you read this, I want to nominate David to get a big, fat raise.

 

 

The Citrus Gypsies are Back!

The Citrus Gypsies’ booth at First Street and Patterson Road

The Citrus Gypsies are those wonderful people who for the past three years have been driving down to Arizona, picking up the sweetest, juiciest oranges, grapefruits, lemons and pomelos and other goodies from a long-established orchard in Arizona, driving it up to Grand Junction and selling it at two booths, one at the corner of First and Grand Ave., and the other at Patterson and First Street.

This is the best citrus around, folks, far better than what you get at the local grocery stores. The Citrus Gypsies make multiple trips back and forth to Arizona during the latter part of the winter and they get fruit from the same orchard each time, so with every trip they make, they bring back fruit that has been on the trees longer, and that is even riper and juicier. They make several trips throughout the season until the citrus harvest is done, and then these great folks disappear until next year.

An Answer to City Market’s Huge Amount of Food Waste


San Francisco has successfully addressed the problem of excessive food waste from restaurants and grocery stores — of the same type  that we are still seeing here in Grand Junction, specifically with City Market’s tremendous waste of food daily from its hot delis.

A nonprofit organization called Food Runners collects extra hot food from markets and restaurants left over at closing time, and brings it to local foster homes, food pantries and homeless shelters where it feeds hungry people and is greatly appreciated. It’s simple, and there is no liability for the providers of the food.

Why can’t this happen here?

The New Graff Dairy: A Shining New Addition to Town

Graff Dairy 2.0 - worth a trip across town

Graff Dairy 2.0 – worth a trip across town

Graff Dairy, a longtime fixture in town at 581 29 Road, has gotten a complete makeover and is now a fantastic place to stop to get your espresso and ice cream fix.

Graff Dairy 2.0 is clean, spacious and bright, with tables and umbrellas on a nice front lawn where you can sit to eat your ice cream. It also now has a very welcome more sophisticated edge that this town really needs. For example, they offer free water flavored with chunks of fresh watermelon and sprigs of rosemary — a nice flair. Some local stories have reported that their ice cream is the same as it used to be, but it really seems much better than that. The old Graff ice cream seemed little better than ice milk, but the new Graff ice cream seems richer and more flavorful, like it has a higher butterfat content than it used to.

District 3 Commissioner Candidates Discuss Deficiencies in County’s Administration of Food Assistance Program

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A June 27, 2016 article on this site discussed how Mesa County turns away almost half of eligible applicants who go to the local Department of Human Services to apply for food stamps. This unused assistance leaves millions of dollars on the table that not only could help more needy county residents buy food for their families, but that would also boost the local economy by pumping millions more dollars of revenue into local grocery stores.

City Market Wastes Huge Amounts of Food While Thousands go Hungry in Mesa County

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Some of City Market’s hot deli items that get put in the trash at the end of each day (Photo credit: YouTube City Market Deli promotional video)

“I’ll give you six pieces of chicken for the price of four,” sighed an unnamed City Market deli clerk to a customer one evening around 8:30 p.m. “It’s all going in the trash in a few minutes, anyway,” the employee lamented.

All that food in the trash? What?

Yes, all of it. Every bit. Every day. In the trash.

“Citrus Gypsies” are Back in G.J.!

The Citrus Gypsies' fruit booth at First Street and Patterson Road

The Citrus Gypsies’ fruit booth at First Street and Patterson Road

They’re BACK!  They’re the Citrus Gypsies, and they have the best citrus fruit around! (When I asked them if they had a name, Ana at the First and Patterson booth told me they don’t really have a name for their business, but that’s what they call themselves informally).

These wonderful itinerant young fruit people come from a ranch in Montana and travel the southwest buying great citrus fruit at the height of the harvest and driving it to other places in the west that don’t have great fruit (at least right now). They have by far the best citrus you can get. It’s fresh-picked and doesn’t have any waxy coatings, stickers or other junk on it. They picked this last batch of navel oranges themselves from an orchard in California’s central valley, near Fresno, so they put a great deal of effort into it. Before coming back here, they took a haul to Salt Lake City and got sold out very quickly after someone posted about them on social media.

Slap Down! Mesa County Commissioner Scott Mcinnis Rebukes Ultra Right Wingnut, Defends All the Good the Federal Government Does

Mesa County Commissioner Scott McInnis verbally slapping down an ideologically pure ultra right wing nut who spoke before them multiple times on Monday, Feb. 8, 2016

Mesa County Commissioner Scott McInnis verbally dressed down an ideologically pure Mesa County ultra right wing nut who spoke before them on Monday, Feb. 8, 2016, who urged them not to accept federal funds to fix a dangerous flood area along I-70 where one person has already been killed

In a jaw-dropping political turnabout at Monday’s (2/8/16) Mesa County Commissioner meeting, the county’s farthest ultra-right wing nuts out-right winged the regular right wing nuts, resulting in arch conservative Commissioner Scott Mcinnis strongly defending — yes, defending — all the good the federal government does for Mesa County citizens and our quality of life.

The fireworks started with a discussion of whether Mesa County should accept a $2.1 million grant to build a detention pond in Bosley Wash at the bottom of the Bookcliffs. The wash has been the site of several flash floods in recent years resulting one person getting killed, several private properties being repeatedly covered in mud and silt and massive mudflows pouring over I-70.  Bosley Wash endangers a total of 200 properties near the base of the Bookcliffs between Clifton and Palisade.

When is Food Not Food?

Grocery stores charge customers over $13 a pound for water by putting it inside chickens instead of inside bottles. Trick or treat!

Grocery stores charge customers over $13 a pound for water by putting it inside chickens instead of inside bottles. Trick or treat!

Answer: When the package tells you exactly what portion of the contents isn’t food.

Chicken is a prime example.

Virtually all packaged grocery store chicken says the poultry “retains up to” three, five, seven or even fifteen percent water. It’s almost impossible to find grocery store chicken that does not announce this somewhere right on the label.

So how does the water get in there? Do you think some chickens are bred to be 97% chicken and 3% water, while others bred to be 85% chicken and 15% water?

Nope.

Chicken is always 100% chicken until it’s adulterated. The amount of water forced into chicken meat is a function of just two things: 1) the manner in which it’s processed and 2) how greedy the producers and grocery stores are.

Chicken producers intentionally add water during processing to make the chicken look juicier, weigh more and fool consumers into putting a whole lot more moola in their pockets.

The strategy appears to be working great, and our friendly neighborhood grocery stores gladly go along with the scheme and sell you adulterated chicken, every day.

When stores charge $1.49 a pound for chicken that contains “retained water” from processing, you are paying them $1.49/pound not just for chicken, but for the water they pump into it, too. If the store charged you the same price for bottled water, you’d be paying $13.41 per gallon.

If fact, you ARE paying them that amount for water. The only difference is, it’s water in a chicken and not in a bottle.

What's inside YOUR chicken?

What’s inside YOUR chicken?

So City Market, Albertsons, Safeway and, yes, even Sprouts Farmers Market are all playing a particularly nasty trick or treat on their loyal customers (although Sprouts does offer a brand of unadulterated chicken for a much higher price while the other markets don’t offer any options). Oh, sure, the markets distract you by putting lots of other feel-good things on the label, like “100% Natural” (of course water is “natural), “Hatched, Raised and Harvested in the U.S.,” “No added hormones,” and other comforting phraseology that serves to distract people from the fact that they pump chicken full of water.

It is a great marketing tactic, and it seems to be working extremely well, because customers never seem to ask the butchers or market managers why they are getting so much water in their chicken instead of getting just real, unadulterated 100% chicken when they buy chicken. Customers keep forking over huge prices to grocery stores for watered down chicken while putting less and less real food on their table.

And as long as the store tells you right up front there on the label what you’re really buying, they’re home free and can’t be accused of fraud.

Pope Toaster Marketed to Celebrate Pope Francis’ Upcoming U.S. Visit

Pope Toaster

The Pope Francis Toaster sells for $48.95

A Pennsylvania company called Fireworks is celebrating Pope Francis’ upcoming U.S. visit by marketing a specially-designed toaster that burns the image of Pope Francis onto your sliced bread. The Toaster comes with and an additional insert that toasts the words “Spread the Love” in English onto your toast. The toaster has seven shade settings and a removable crumb tray and sells for $48.95 online at ToastThePope.com.

Pope Francis is scheduled to arrive in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, September 22 from Cuba and will be in the U.S. until Sunday, September 27.

Wonderful Indian, Tibetan and Nepalese Restaurant on Orchard Mesa

Namaste Nepal, one of the terrific new restaurants in Grand Junction that add diversity to the cuisine available in town now

Namaste Nepal, one of the terrific new restaurants in Grand Junction that add diversity to the cuisine available in town now

Calling all local food lovers: If you haven’t tried this place yet, you should: Namaste Nepal is a new Indian, Tibetan and Nepalese cuisine place on Orchard Mesa, in the strip mall just west of the True Value Hardware. It just opened in early spring, 2015. The food is absolutely delicious, the prep extremely quick, and the owners are extremely gracious, kind and accommodating. They have a lunch buffet, too. Some of our favorite dishes so far include the lamb boti saag (lamb cubes in a creamed spinach sauce), the shrimp pakora appetizer (shrimp dipped in a garbanzo bean flour batter and deep fried), vegetable samosas (a savory pastry stuffed with lightly spiced peas and potatoes), and the onion kulcha (Indian tandoori oven bread stuffed with onions and fresh cilantro). Namaste Nepal is super-fast for take-out, invariably having orders ready in just 5-10 minutes. Easy parking right in front, too. They recently acquired some new patio furniture so you can eat outside. It’s very quick to get there from the east or west sides of town using the Riverside Parkway. To see their menu, click here. 

“El M7 Mariscos y Mas” is the New Hit of North Avenue

El M7 Mariscos y Mas food truck at 2856 North Ave., just east of Maxim Motors, is open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. - 9 p.m.

El M7 Mariscos y Mas food truck at 2856 North Ave., just east of Maxim Motors, is open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. – 9 p.m.

There’s a terrific new food truck in town, “El M7 Mariscos Y Mas” (“El M7 Seafood and More”) that’s camped out at 2856 North Ave., between Maxim Motors and the LeMaster Motel & Trailer Park. This terrific little place is the best thing to happen to North Avenue in a long time. El M7 specializes in mariscos, or seafood and offers deliciously different Mexican dishes like shrimp ceviche, fish tostadas, crab tostadas, fish tacos, shrimp quesadillas and burritos. They also have some larger and more awesome sounding dishes like Aguachile Camarones Ahogados (raw shrimp cooked in lime juice topped with onions and avocado slices, seasoned with salt and pepper). As a “barometer dish,” I ordered the shrimp ceviche to go. It cost $10 even. For that I got a big, 16-oz container of ceviche, a good supply of tortilla chips chips and crackers, one little container with fresh lime slices and another with a red, piquant-tasting spicy mariscos sauce, a napkin and some ketchup.

Take-out ceviche provided TWO of these bowls full of ceviche. It was delicious.

Take-out ceviche from El M7 provided TWO of these bowls full of ceviche. It was delicious.

The ceviche was truly perfect. PERFECT. Many times, especially in landlocked Grand Junction, if you can even find ceviche on a menu, it’s too fishy, or it’s made too salty, too tart or too vinegar-y. But not here. M7 really knows what they are doing and they absolutely NAILED this ceviche. It was truly delicious. The serving size was generous, too, enough for TWO of the bowls seen in the accompanying photo. They got the meal ready super-fast after ordering, too. This place really deserves your business. We are so lucky they are here!

G.J. Dining Review: Citrola’s Italian Grill ♦♦1/2

Citrola's Italian Grill's wonderful, warm ambiance makes it a comfy place for a meal

Citrola’s Italian Grill’s wonderful, warm ambiance makes it a comfy place for a meal

Citrola’s Italian Grill at 624 Rae Lynn St, Grand Junction, 81505, is located due west of the 24 Road City Market, next to the Cherry Berry frozen yogurt shop and the free-standing Starbucks on 24 Road, north of Patterson Road. There is plenty of easy parking next to the restaurant.

Citrola's humble dinner salad was nothing special, but the home-made Italian dressing it came with made it shine

Citrola’s humble dinner salad was nothing special, but the home-made Italian dressing it came with made it shine

We arrived at 5:30 p.m. on a Saturday evening to find a restaurant with plenty of open tables. The place started filling up steadily after that. By the time we were left, most tables were filled.

Citrola’s has a warm and wonderful ambiance. The lowered faux ceiling, drop lights over the tables, polished, woodsy decor and interesting, fake electronic fire places give it a cozy, upscale feel reminiscent of restaurants in much bigger cities. There are lots of tall, north and east-facing windows dressed with wooden venetian blinds which, in our opinion, should have been opened a tad more to let in the remaining evening light and beautiful views of the Grand Mesa and Bookcliffs at sunset. The windows in the restaurant face north and east, so sun shining in people’s faces wouldn’t have been a problem. Why not maximize the wonderful evening views this place is so lucky to have?

Colorado Mountain College on Energy Expo: “We are not hosts of the event”

CMCRachel Pokrandt, Dean of the Rifle Campus of Colorado Mountain College (CMC), says she didn’t know anything about the Energy Expo’s speaker program and the school is not a host of the event, despite being listed as a host on the event’s promotional materials.

“We never agreed to be a host” of the event, Pokrandt said. She says the event organizers “Really did represent us quite horribly.”

Pokrandt says CMC just has a small booth at the event, which they have rented annually for the past 10 years, to educate people about their solar, biofuels and other programs.

“We don’t want to be connected with that type of speaker,” Pokrandt said, referring to Energy Expo speaker John L. Casey, who speaks on the topic of climate science despite having no degrees in climatology and never having published any peer-reviewed research on the subject. His talks typically start out with charts, statistics and scientific claims, but by the end of his talks, he devolves into fearmongering and racist statements.

Videos posted online of Casey’s talks show him speaking before tea party groups. He says anthropogenic climate change is a scientific fraud perpetrated by the U.S. government and the United Nations. He says global warming is over, that sun entered a period of “hibernation” in 2007 and the earth is now entering a prolonged period of cooling that will lead to an increase in earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Casey further says this cold phase will cause the world’s food supply to diminish and people will need to lay in a year’s supply of food and be ready to flee to the countryside and defend their food stores from urban minorities who, he says, will start beating and murdering people to get their food supplies — after government food stamp programs can no longer sustain them.

Pokrandt said that in the past, the Energy Expo and Forum has been “fairly level” in regard to balance in the types of speakers they’ve had, and between renewable and non-renewable types of energy, but that unfortunately due to the circumstances this year, CMC may have to withdraw its involvement from the event in the future.

 

Online Videos Reveal John L. Casey to be a Fearmonger and Racist

Online videos of talks by John L. Casey, the 2015 Energy Forum and Expo’s keynote speaker, reveal him stimulating fear and racism by telling audiences that in the coming cold era that will occur on Earth, minority groups in urban areas will rise up to become thieves and murderers who will try to steal your food.

In videos of his talks, mostly given to Florida tea party groups, Casey tells his audiences that anthropogenic global warming is a “widespread fraud of climate science.” He says carbon dioxide (CO2) has nothing to do with climate change, that changing climate is purely related to the sun. Casey says the sun is now in a period of “hibernation” that will lead to extreme cold that will devastate crops and result of massive food shortages globally.

One of Casey’s talks in reveals his fearmongering and cultivation of racism.

In a video published to YouTube on December 4, 2014, around minute 56, Casey tells his audience:

“After the first panic, when the shelves are cleared out…your neighbor is going to come across the street — maybe your neighbor’s wife — and say ‘sorry to come to your house’ and say there’s no bread and no milk, would you give me something because we know you have a one year food supply. What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? You’re gonna try and help of course. That’s the human thing. But at some point you’re gonna have enough neighbors lining up and at some point you’re going to have to say ‘I’m sorry we need to preserve our food for ourselves.’

Guess what happens after that point? They’ll beat you up and they’ll kill you. …Nothing is more driven than a starving person. They will do anything, especially if they have children who are starving….

Worst case, have a sanctuary away from urban areas…this may not apply too much here…but it absolutely applies if you live in Miami, New York City, or Atlanta, Georgia,…I mean, pick a major metropolitan area, especially those that are heavily minority and dependent on government food. That’s another reason we need to get rid of the food stamp program, ladies and gentlemen. We need people to be self reliant, not dependent. By making them independent and self-reliant, we give them a chance…”

“The death and destruction will be biblical in scale,” Casey tells the crowd.

See the clip here.