Bad weather can mean pleasant shopping at Costco Wholesale

Some Costco Wholesale members expend so much energy pushing carts overflowing with food and other merchandise they don't bother returning unwanted items to where they found them, such as this gallon of milk left opposite the registers in Hackensack. In other words, they're just lazy.

Media warnings of icy roads apparently kept many shoppers away from the Hackensack warehouse store on Tuesday afternoon.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

When you're a member of Costco Wholesale in Hackensack, you hope for bad weather to thin the bargain-hunting crowd inside the cavernous warehouse store.

On Tuesday afternoon, I walked casually through the aisles looking for items on my list, and didn't have to fight others for free food samples.

I liked one of them enough -- prepared Organic Quinoa &Kale with seasonings, rosemary, lime juice and extra-virgin olive oil -- to purchase it.

In the freezer, I found a package containing four 10-ounce pouches -- a total of 2.5 pounds -- for $9.99.

I also purchased a 6.5-pound net bag of large sweet potatoes for $5.79, three half-gallons of low-fat Organic Milk for $10.99 and six 32-ounce cartons of Organic Chicken Broth for $11.59 -- not four liters, as I wrote earlier.

Also, 3 pounds of raw, salt-free U.S. almonds for roasting at home were $15.99 and a wedge of aged Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese from Italy was $10.59 a pound.

Honeycrisp Apples from Washington State were $13.99 for 5.5 pounds, compared to $10.99 in early December and less for the same apples from New York State.

Organic Quinoa & Kale is made with the elusive red quinoa.

I passed on Olive Garden Italian Dressing after I saw that the second ingredient listed is high-fructose corn syrup. Yuck.

In the Hackensack store's Kosher aisle, I found Mon Cuisine Turkey Breasts stuffed with quinoa, pine nuts and carrots in mushroom gravy. The poultry is naturally raised and free of antibiotics. 

Some of the kosher offerings in Hackensack.

Cello-brand Grated Pecorino Romano, a sheep's milk cheese imported from Italy, is wonderful sprinkled over pasta, soup or salads, and it adds a distinctive flavor to egg-white omelets. The cheese also is available in wedges, but the Hackensack store has stopped carrying wedges of Grana Padano, a cow's milk cheese from Italy.

An omelet with grated Pecorino Romano and Aleppo pepper made with Kirkland Signature 100% Egg Whites from Costco. I served it with a homemade combination of organic quinoa and organic brown rice, and Sunbelt Organic Fresh Salsa, which I picked up last week when I shopped at Costco for a Super Bowl Party.

Grated Pecorino Romano over two organic brown eggs from Costco.

Five 3.75-ounce cans of Season-brand Skinless and Boneless Sardines were $5.99 at Costco on Tuesday with an instant $2.50 rebate, available through Feb. 22. At home, I prepared 1 pound of organic 100% whole wheat linguine in Victoria Vodka Sauce, one of the few made without heavy cream. To the 40 ounces of sauce, I added red wine, drained anchovies, three cans of sardines, extra-virgin olive oil, red-pepper flakes and other seasonings.

An oval pan accommodates the full length of the linguine and allows me to use less water. I never add salt to the water; there is plenty of sodium in the sauce, sardines and so forth. The linguine was cooked al dente in 7 minutes.

A watermelon called 'Sweet Mama'

A seedless watermelon from Costco Wholesale.

"SWEET MAMA!"

I didn't expect to see that phrase on a watermelon, but there it was on the label of one of the seedless melons we bought at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack.

I don't know where the melon was grown in the United States, but from those words, you might think it came from the South.

It sounds like something you'd hear in a bar, filled with smoke and the blues, doesn't it?

In the photo above, the words "Sweet Mama Produce LLC" appear around the edge of the label.

The watermelon, like all of those we bought at Costco in the past few weeks, was sweet indeed, and cost $5.99.

Today, I went back to Costco for another watermelon, but saw none labeled "SWEET MAMA!"

One watermelon label carried the word, "Revolution." 

Go figure.

This tofu tastes good hot or cold.

I have been buying Stewed Tofu from H Mart for years. It's great as a snack or plated with eggs, fish and other food.

The prepared item is an easy way to add soy to your diet, especially if you like mildly spicy food.

A fistful of mint from the garden gives ShopRite's Pure Instant Tea a special flavor. A small wooden tool, below, allows me to get as much fresh juice as possible from limes.

I made my first pitcher of instant tea from a jar of ShopRite's Pure Instant Tea left over from last summer.

The powdered black tea dissolves completely in cold water. I add fresh mint leaves from the garden and freshly squeezed lime juice.

Costco Wholesale sells two of Italy's oldest and greatest cheeses.

Kirkland Signature Parmigiano Reggiano is $11.69 a pound.

Kirkland Signature Grana Padano is $8.99 a pound.

Two of Italy's greatest cheeses are made with part-skimmed cow's milk, so they don't have as much fat as many other cheeses.

Costco Wholesale sells both Parmigiano Reggiano, which has been made since before the Renaissance, and Grana Padano, which has been around since Roman times.

They are both aged -- Parmigiano Reggiano for more than 24 months and Grana Padano for more than 18 months.

The hard, crumbly cheeses go well with ripe pears, crisp apples, grapes and other fruit.

The Costco wedges have rinds on only two of the four sides.

A tale of one sauce and two dinners

Fresh fish at Costco Wholesale in South San Francisco, Calif. The warehouse store carries wild-caught fish from the Pacific that New Jersey shoppers never see at their Costco.

Editor's note: Today's bill of fare includes how to turn one sauce into two dinners, reduced-fat cheeses and a few sales items I found at Whole Foods Market and H Mart.

We love the wild-caught fish fillets available at Costco Wholesale, and cooking them with tomatoes ensures good eating for at least two home-cooked dinners.

No recipe is required. Anyone who can open cans and boil pasta can turn out two satisfying meals.

I started with fresh Pacific cod fillets from the Hackensack Costco for $7.99 a pound and two cans of tomatoes I had in the cupboard -- a large can of whole peeled tomatoes and a smaller can of diced organic tomatoes with sea salt.

I emptied the cans into a deep, 12-inch non-stick pan with a glass cover, added a few ounces of olive oil and seasonings, including powdered garlic, red pepper flakes, and dried Italian herbs, and the juice from two limes from the refrigerator.

I covered the pan and brought the tomatoes to a boil over a medium-high heat.

I cut the large, long fillets into pieces of roughly 4 ounces to 6 ounces, added a little salt and put them into the tomatoes, lowering the heat to medium and covering the pan.The flaky fish was ready in about 15 minutes.

Rice and pasta

I used a rice cooker to prepare organic long-grain brown rice with lentils. I started the rice first, because that took about 30 minutes. I spooned the fish with the tomatoes over the rice and added a salad, wine and seltzer for a wonderful dinner.

There was plenty of sauce left, so the next night, I heated it up in a smaller sautee pan with a cover and used a separate pan to boil about one-third of a pound of Colavita whole-wheat capellini, which took 4 minutes.

I drained the pasta, added it to the sauce, mixed them together, covered the pan and cooked the pasta for another 2 minutes, then turned off the heat to allow the pasta to soak up the sauce.

I ate this pasta in the fish-flavored sauce with leftover cod, another salad and grated cheese. 

Other fish

Fish and tomatoes go together well, so this preparation is terrific for any of the other fillets found at Costco, such as wild-caught flounder and haddock, and farmed catfish, or the many whole fish sold at H Mart, the Korean supermarket chain.

Alternately, you can use a 32-ounce bottle of pasta sauce, plus a small can of tomato sauce, to prepare the fish on the first night, yielding a thicker sauce for the pasta on the second night.

I also like to add a can of anchovies and their oil to the sauce for a more robust flavor, though I didn't do so this time. 

When boiling pasta, it's not necessary to use the 4 to 6 quarts of water called for on the package nor to salt the water, especially if your sauce and fish have added salt.

The capellini, which is like angel hairs, cooked in 2 to 3 inches of water.

Old cheese

Grana Padano from Italy once was called "caseus vetus" or "old cheese," according to the small print on the package I bought at the Hackensack Costco for $9.49 a pound.

The wedge of grainy cheese, made with part-skimmed cow's milk and aged over 18 months, is sold under Costco's Kirkland Signature label.

The cheese and fresh fruit make a great dessert.

Other reduced-fat cheeses available at Costco include thin-sliced Jarlsberg Swiss Cheese at $9.99 for 2 pounds and sliced Finlandia Swiss, Cheddar. Havarti and Colby Jack, also $9.99 for 2 pounds.

The Jarlsberg has 50% less fat than regular cheese, the Finlandia 25% less fat than full-fat cheese.

I use the Jalrsberg Swiss in omelets, eat it with fruit or roll it up with Kirkland Signature smoked wild salmon for a snack.

Sale items

On Monday at H Mart in Little Ferry, I picked up a box of 16 Champagne mangoes from Mexico for $9.99, a savings of $3.

Fresh collard greens were 99 cents a pound. Two prepared items -- stir-fried japchae or translucent yam-flour noodles and kimbap or a roll with seaweed, rice, vegetables and imitation crab -- were $4.99 each for a 1-pound package.

On Tuesday at Whole Foods Market in Paramus, 59-ounce bottles of Indian River Select 100% Florida Orange Juice (not from concentrate) were 2 for $5 -- about the same price per ounce as Tropicana in the 64-ounce cartons at Costco.

A wedge of fig cake with Marcona almonds from Valencia, Spain, was $7.99 a pound -- $2 a pound less than at Fairway Market in Paramus, the only other store where I've seen this product.

Wondee's

We had a terrific meal at Wondee's on Saturday evening, seated at a table near the front plate-glass windows, and we got the Thai soups and salad we ordered in only about 5 minutes.

I especially like the tofu salad with its sweet-sour-spicy dressing, fruit and lettuce leaves. We chose a whole fresh red snapper steamed with garlic and chili, and served on a fish-shaped metal plate over a burner ($18).

The rest of the family had won ton soup with pork, and steamed shrimp-and-pork dumplings. 

Wondee's, 296 Main St., Hackensack; 201-883-1700.

BYO. Free parking in rear lot.

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