Dark Roast at Dunkin' Donuts, sodium in roasted seaweed and more

With a little whole milk, the new Dark Roast from Dunkin' Donuts makes a terrific cup of coffee. A medium cup (14 ounces) was only 99 cents, plus tax, today at the store on Hackensack Avenue and University Plaza Drive in Hackensack, compared to the usual price of $1.94.

At Joe Coffee at 405 W. 23rd St. in Manhattan on Saturday, a 12-ounce cup of drip coffee was $2.30, plus tax. I prefer the smoothness of the Dunkin' Donuts Dark Roast.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

I had some time to kill today while the Firestone store in Hackensack checked out a slow-leaking tire on my Toyota Prius, so I walked across the street to try the new Dark Roast at Dunkin' Donuts.

I'm a loyal fan of Starbucks, but have to admit this is a nice cup of coffee, especially for the special price of 99 cents for a 14-ounce cup.

Costco Wholesale's Kirkland Signature Roasted Seasoned Seaweed, imported from South Korea, has less sodium that the brands I've purchased at Korean supermarkets. The quantity of addictive seaweed in each Costco package is about three times what you get with other brands.

For a snack, I wrapped seaweed, smoked wild salmon and homemade canned fish salad in a slice of reduced-fat Swiss cheese. Most of the ingredients came from Costco.

A display of roasted seaweed packages at the H Mart in Little Ferry.

This brand of roasted seaweed or laver I saw at H Mart on Sunday comes in .17-ounce packages, compared to the .6-ounce packages sold at Costco. The nutrition labels of the two brands list different serving sizes, making it difficult to compare sodium, but Costco's seasoned seaweed tastes less salty and its label lists less sodium and a lower percentage of the recommended daily maximum allowance.

When I combined organic quinoa and organic brown rice with organic diced tomatoes, black beans and whole peeled garlic cloves and prepared them in an electric cooker, I found the resulting dish a little drier than when made with quinoa alone. Use two cups of liquid for each cup of quinoa and rice -- plus olive oil and a little salt. Here, I had the side dish with fresh wild Atlantic cod from Costco that I had coated in a homemade Super Spice Mixture and baked in the oven. The fish, long-line caught in Iceland, was $7.99 a pound.

I took a break from eggs this morning and had the organic quinoa-brown rice dish with a curry sauce I prepared for a tofu recipe last week, and leftover sauteed cabbage and sweet peppers.