Sample satisfaction

On my way home last night, I stopped into a couple of grocery stores for about $11 worth of important items — milk and yogurt for making yogurt, part-skim ricotta (because it was on sale), and broccoli (because I needed greens!). I also collected a few samples along the way to incorporate into dinner:

The plate includes a big ol’ pile of plain steamed broccoli, the rest of Myrna’s McDonald’s breakfast sandwich that she gave me yesterday when she got too full, and two little quiche samples — one sweet ham and one spinach — from Union Market.

I don’t think I’ve had a McDonald’s breakfast sandwich since I was 7. My dad and I used to go on weekend mornings because I was a crazy picky eater (what happened??!) but I loved those biscuits more than anything. I would get mine with only an egg on it because I didn’t like sausage or melted cheese. I’m still not crazy about sausage, but, even though it’s not something I ever crave, this sandwich was definitely tasty! The biscuit was as good as I remembered.

Dessert developed as I was getting the yogurt ready to go into the oven for overnight incubation. I’d picked up my two favorite brands to use as starters — Stonyfield and Ronnybrook — in fun flavors so I could play with the leftovers.

I reserved the plain yogurt parts for yogurt making but kept the flavored fun parts (cream top, coconut pieces, chocolate-on-the-bottom) for me:

I swirled in a bit of part-skim ricotta to make coconut-chocolate cheesecake yogurt and then dipped in a little sample sliver of peanut butter brownie from Union Market:

I surrounded my brownie cheesecake bowl with fruit salad and a sample piece of cherry lattice pie, also from the market:

Samples are so exciting!

For dessert #2 later, I had my leftover almond sunset tea from morning with two jasmine biscotti bites for dipping:

What’s the best free sample, food or non-food, you ever got?