Will my complaint do any good?

Image by Anthony Quintano via Flickr

This Hackensack sky suggests God is watching customers who touch fruit.

I called Costco Wholesale's Customer Service line on Tuesday and spent four or five minutes complaining about fellow shoppers at the Hackensack store who engage in a forensic examination of the fruit.


I passed along a suggestion from a reader of Do You Really Know What You're Eating? that the store supply rubber gloves to customers who want to touch, squeeze and get up close and personal with tomatoes, cherries, peaches, nectarines and other fruit.


I feel a visual examination is enough, especially when the fruit comes in a plastic, see-through container that allows you to examine the bottom, sides and so forth.


The woman at Customer Service said maybe better packaging is needed. 


I replied even closed boxes wouldn't stop someone determined to examine every orb, every sphere and every globe in order to get perfect, ready-to-eat fruit.


She took my customer number and said she'd pass along my rubber-glove suggestion.


H Mart coupons


At the H Mart in Fort Lee today, I picked up a box of 16 champagne mangoes from Mexico for $9.99 -- three dollars less than the same box I saw at the Little Ferry store on Sunday.


I also bought the addictive sushi roll Koreans call kimbap -- made with seaweed, rice, vegetables, egg and crab for $4.99 (16 ounces, including a few Korean pickles). 


Two pounds of mussels from Maine were on sale for $1.89. Normally, they are $2.99, compared to $5.99 for the same amount of Canadian mussels at Whole Foods Market in Paramus.


When I got home, I found another H Mart coupon book in the mail. 


I started getting the coupons after I applied for a store card, which rebates 1% after you spend $1,000. 


These coupons are good from July 23 to Aug. 21, and on the back of the booklet, I see that a second, smaller store, called H Mart Fresh, has opened in Fort Lee at 1379 16th St. I'll have to check it out one day.


Update: When I cooked and ate the mussels, I found a few with sand in them, an unpleasant experience at the table. The Whole Food Market mussels were perfectly clean, so they might be worth the extra cost.

Shame on Hebrew National

Image via Wikipedia

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Have you seen the latest Hebrew National TV commercial, the one that calls its hotdogs "the best of the best of the best"?

I was watching morning TV on an exercise bicycle at the gym on Monday, not taking notes, so I might have missed another "best."

Later, this appears on the screen: "OMG, they're kosher."

More copy tells you the beef hotdogs contain nothing artificial, but there's no mention of preservatives or whether the cattle feed contains antibiotics, growth hormones and animal byproducts.

OMG, they're stuffed with antibiotics.

OMG, they're drowsy with growth hormones.

OMG, they're preserved to last forever.

Trader Joe's, Stop & Shop, Whole Foods Market and other stores sell uncured hotdogs made from beef raised without antibiotics, hormones or animal by-products.

H Mart coupons

I tried to use the H Mart coupons I got in the mail, but the produce at the Little Ferry store looked sort of forlorn today.

Gala apples, in the bag or loose, were bruised. The red-leaf lettuce was 99 cents, but I decided to continue eating the lettuce growing in my garden.

There were no coupons for the other items I was looking for: 

Fresh fish (Spanish mackerel was $3.49 a pound vs. $4.99 a pound at Whole Foods Market in Paramus); stewed tofu with red-pepper sauce and hot-pepper sauce in a squeeze bottle.

I also picked up Champagne mangoes, a box of 18 for $8.99, or about 50 cents each, compared to five for $5 at Whole Foods. Collard greens were 79 cents a pound.

I drink lactose-free milk and was surprised Lactaid conventional milk and Organic Valley milk were priced the same ($4.49 for a half-gallon).  

The Cheesecake Factory

Two friends asked me to meet them for lunch today at The Cheesecake Factory in Hackensack, where takeout slices of cheesecake are priced at around $7 each.          

I had a large salad with blue cheese and walnuts. 

One friend had a large bowl of pasta with meat sauce, and the other chose a soup-sandwich combo. I drank seltzer, they drank water, and each of us had coffee.

With a 15% tip, each of us paid $20. That seemed like a lot for lunch.

I was chagrined to see I was charged $13.95 for the salad, even though I asked the waiter to hold the chicken usually served with it.

Korean supermarket widens its appeal

Image by wallyg via Flickr

The Super H Mart in Ridgefield is the furthest from my home in Hackensack.

The H Mart in Fort Lee is the newest addition to a small chain of Korean supermarkets in North Jersey and, though it's not the closest to my home, it is becoming a favorite place to shop. 

Today, I picked up a box of 14 champagne mangoes from Mexico for $9.99 -- a better buy than the six I bought a week ago for $6.99 at Costco in Hackensack.

Fresh, wild-caught fluke was among more than a dozen kinds of whole fish fanned out on ice, including Spanish mackerel, pompano, red snapper and orata.

I couldn't resist the fluke's low price of $2.99 a pound, and I had my two-and-a-half-pound fish cut into steaks, which I'll cook with sake and other Asian flavors for dinner tonight.

Image by Sifu Renka via Flickr

Fluke is a flat fish that is also favored by sashimi lovers, and it provides welcome relief from the waves of artificially colored farmed salmon and high-mercury tuna served at sushi bars.

I met a Japanese woman who also was buying fluke, and she said her relatives back home were safe after the earthquake and tsunami.

To go with the fish, I bought stir-fried, translucent yam noodles called japchae ($4.49 for 16 ounces) and kimbap, a vegetable, fish and seaweed roll ($4.99 for 22 ounces).

A pound of Jinga-brand  firm tofu was 88 cents. 

The store also was selling fresh mozzarella for $5.99 a pound -- an item intended to lure American shoppers as well as first- and second-generation Koreans whose tastes go beyond their traditional diet.

Image via CrunchBase

I get coupons

Chipotle Mexican Grill sent me two gift cards, each of which will get me a free burrito and other food.

I had e-mailed the company with "reviews" from the yelp! site, most of which were critical and none of which acknowledged it is one of the few fast-food restaurants that serves antibiotic-free poultry, hormone-free beef and pork, and organic vegetables.

I also sent the company a post from this blog describing my own experience.

I also received coupons from Stonyfield Farms after I e-mailed the company about separation of solids and liquid in organic yogurt I bought at Costco.