Bring home the bacon, but don't forget to eat pasta with your eggs

An open-face egg-white omelet with smoked wild salmon from Costco Wholesale and sun-dried tomatoes, served for breakfast over leftover organic whole-wheat pasta corkscrews from Italy that are only $1.25 a pound at ShopRite.

Editor's note: Food prices in most stores usually go up periodically. At Costco Wholesale, they've been known to go up and down without explanation. Now, Trader Joe's, where prices have stayed the same for years, is starting to raise prices on some items, including bacon.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

I'm retired, but I still bring home the bacon for the meat eaters in my family from Trader Joe's, a reliable source of uncured, antibiotic-free pork.

For years, you could find Trader Joe's Uncured Bacon for $3.99 and $4.49, but on Friday and on a previous trip, I could not find that item in the Route 17 store in Paramus.

I did find a 12-ounce package of W-brand All Natural Uncured Bacon for $5.49.

Trader Joe's Uncured Beef Hot Dogs and Jumbo Uncured Franks are now $4.99 each, a hike of 50 cents.

Since I stopped eating meat and poultry more than five years ago, I eat pasta -- not bacon -- with my eggs, and enjoy plenty of wild-caught fish.

The pasta also is a good substitute for bread or a bagel at breakfast. 

An organic egg from Costco over leftover pasta made for a quick dinner with a salad and a glass of wine. I used 1 pound of pasta and a 24-ounce jar of Victoria Vodka Sauce, which gets its richness from cheese, not heavy cream. To the sauce, I added red wine, anchovies, extra-virgin olive oil and a can of organic diced tomatoes.

Fresh wild Atlantic Cod fillets from Costco Wholesale are boneless and skinless, and cost only $7.99 a pound. They poach in about 7 minutes in Whole Foods Market Roasted Chipotle Salsa, and can be served over sweet potatoes and peeled garlic cloves mashed with extra-virgin olive oil. 

Bring the sauce to a boil in a covered pan, then add the fish. The serving pieces, dusted with ground Turkish pepper, will firm up and turn snowy white in about 7 minutes in the covered pan. For a thicker sauce, omit the fresh lime juice I used, and add the lime at the table.

Fresh strawberries and 1% lactose-free milk over Bob's Red Mill Hot Cereal is a nice change of pace on mornings when I don't have eggs.