Costco: Our Amazon Connection is good for you

Two 1-liter bottles of 100% juice are $8.59 at Costco Wholesale.

 Editor's note: Fonts available on Google's Blogger are ill-suited to a discussion of food, because they don't contain the accents needed to write acai, sautee and so many other words commonly used in kitchens. Today, I also discuss Costco Wholesale, Trader Joe's, and a sauce for fish and pasta.

 
As much calcium as cow's milk. The same Omega-3, -6 and -9 fatty acids found in fish and other seafood. And oleic acid, a monounsaturated fat that may reduce high blood pressure.

Those are just three of the reasons The Costco Connection magazine is promoting a new juice on the shelves of the warehouse store: Sambazon Organic Acai (AH-SIGH-EE).

The thick, tart, antioxidant-rich juice is being hailed as a superfood -- direct from the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest.

My wife first saw refrigerated 1-liter bottles of the juice on the shelf at the Hackensack Costco last week, and I brought home two more this week.

But I couldn't find the Sambazon frozen acai pulp mentioned in the February 2013 edition of the magazine.  

The pulp can be used in smoothies, and it's served in bowls topped with granola and bananas at beach snack shacks in Brazil. 

The acai beverage sold at Costco contains other organic juices and organic agave syrup as a sweetener.

Two pounds of Jarlsberg Lite Swiss Cheese would cost about $16 at Trader Joe's in Paramus, above, compared to $9.99 at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack.

  

Costco trip costs 17 cents

In addition to acai juice, I picked up Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix, fresh cod fillets, 4 pounds of frozen wild blueberries and another bag of frozen blueberries, blackberries and raspberries.

The total was $50.17, but I used a $50 Costco gift card sent to me when Costco.com couldn't fulfill our order for a digital camera in December.

Wild-caught cod from Costco was cooked in a sauce of sweet peppers, onion, tomato, garlic and olive oil, above, and served with mashed sweet potatoes, below.

One sauce, three meals

For the cod, I used a food-processor attachment on my blender to puree sweet peppers, tomato, onion, garlic cloves, tomato sauce and lime juice, then poured the mixture into a non-stick pan with a cover.

I added extra-virgin olive oil, dried Italian seasonings, some red-pepper flakes and black pepper before turning up the heat.

I cut up the fillets, squeezed more lime juice over them and sprinkled on Costco's Organic No-Salt Seasoning.

They cooked in the bubbling sauce in about 10 to 12  minutes.

A breakfast of fish, egg and sweet potatoes.

For breakfast today, I had the last piece of fish, some mashed sweet potato and a simple egg-white omelet with grated cheese.

Tonight, I'll add leftover tomato sauce, heat up the sweet pepper mixture and use it to dress a pound of Trader Joe's Organic Whole Wheat Spaghetti.

Trader Joe's v. Costco

Although the Trader Joe's in Paramus is much smaller than the Hackensack Costco, it manages to carry a few items I can't find at the cavernous warehouse store.

A box of Spanish clementines was $5.99. Sliced yogurt cheese with jalapeno peppers was $4.79.

Uncured, antibiotic-free bacon and uncured hot dogs were $4.49 each.

And 1-pound packages of organic whole-wheat spaghetti and fusilli were $1.39 each.   

Sweet potatoes are a holiday item at Costco, but Trader Joe's has them year-round for 85 cents a pound.

A half-gallon of Joe's vanilla soy milk and 32 ounces of organic plain yogurt were $2.99 each.