When it comes to food, green -- not greed -- is good

Garlicky sauteed water spinach delivered by Lotus Cafe in Hackensack and plated the next morning with a homemade cheese-and-smoked-wild-salmon frittata and organic brown rice. 

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

A new buffet restaurant opening soon in my hometown of Hackensack? That leaves me cold.

Eating as much as you can just to get a good deal seems like greed to me, and it can make you feel awful (see previous post).

Now, green is another story. In food, green is good -- even the mold added to blue cheese.

Spinach, bok choy, collard greens, kale -- it's all good.

H Mart and H&Y Marketplace, two chains of Korean supermarkets in Bergen County, are great places to find greens -- as many as 20 are offered in each store.

Baby bok choy and stewed tofu, both from H Mart, served with homemade organic quinoa. The bok choy was on sale for 68 cents a pound.

Chinese takeout is another way to add healthy greens to your diet.

We've switched to delivery from Lotus Cafe in Hackensack after the people who answer the phone at Zen Kitchen in Teaneck tried to add a ubiquitous brown sauce to nearly every dish.

The Lotus Cafe order of sauteed water spinach delivered along with a few other dishes on Friday night was filled with slices of fresh garlic -- one of our favorite preparations.

I brought home fresh baby spinach from a salad bar in the cafe at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center, blanched it in boiling water, drained the pan, and added sesame oil and garlic powder. Here, I served it with leftover wild-caught haddock fillets from Costco Wholesale ($8.99 a pound) prepared in coconut milk with sweet pepper, garlic and onion.

Baby bok choy from H Mart with organic brown eggs from Costco Wholesale, above, and haddock in coconut milk over organic quinoa, below. The eggs are from cage-free hens that do not receive hormones or antibiotics.

There is nothing like fresh, leafy collaloo, a spinach-like green, served as a side dish with many a Jamaican meal on that sunny island, but here in New Jersey we have to make do with chopped and canned callaloo in brine (salted water).

This morning, we had callaloo prepared with salted cod fish, sweet pepper, onion and garlic.

Collaloo with salted cod fish, fresh tomato, sweet pepper, onion and garlic, left.

The 100% guaranteed weight-loss diet

Image by DJ Lein via Flickr

Pizza from Costco Wholesale.

You'll feel nauseous. When you try to eat, familiar foods will taste funny -- for days or weeks -- and you'll shed pounds without even trying.


I call this the Major Operation Diet. The doctors will put you to sleep and you'll wake up a new, slimmer you, with more weight loss ahead.


Nearly 14 days after I had open-heart surgery, my weight continues to fall. I weighed around 193 pounds today, compared with about 200 pounds on Sept. 20, the day I was released from the hospital.


My last food was at 10 p.m. the night before the operation, on Sept. 16, and I didn't have solid food again until more than 48 hours later in the recovery room -- a couple of cups of diet lemon ices.


Later, all the meals I was served at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center in Englewood were suitable for a diabetic, even though I'm not one. They were low-fat and bland, without salt or sugar.


My heart murmur wasn't related to my diet -- and my coronaries were clean and required no bypasses -- so why couldn't I resume my normal diet right away, and have something celebratory in the hospital -- like a gooey slice of pizza and a glass of red wine?


After all, I had survived an open-heart operation -- a major invasion of my body. But I never received any special recognition of that accomplishment -- not in food, not in any other way.


When I got home on Sept. 20, I returned to my normal diet right away -- with no adverse affects. 


That meant real, caffeinated coffee in the morning; salt to season my food, low- and full-fat cheeses; lots of wild-caught fish, salads and sauteeed greens; and a generous glass of Bordeaux with dinner once or twice in the past 10 days.


My blood pressure today was 121 over 67. 


I resumed eating Korean food almost immediately, including spicy cabbage kimchi. On Saturday night, we tried a new Mexican restaurant in Englewood.


After visiting my cardiologist on Wednesday, we drove over to H Mart in Englwood looking for a dinner of prepared items: a sliced rice-and-seaweed roll with fish cake called kimbap and seafood-and-chive pancakes or pajun.


I also picked up a pound and a half of collard greens. At home, I cut them up, and washed and blanched them in boiling water for several minutes before transferring them to another pan with olive oil, and seasoning them.


Kimbap, pajun and collard greens were a filling dinner, washed down with seltzer. The rest of the family had chicken in coconut milk and steamed white rice.


Tonight, I plan to blow the diet I've been following for more than a year with a slice of Costco Wholesale combination veggie pizza with anchovies (I have to add those at home). An 18-inch pie is $9.95.


I was told not to drive, so my wife is going for the pizza and while at the Hackensack warehouse store, she'll pick up a pound of organic spring mix, so I can make a big salad to have with my first pizza in a year.


Another glass of Bordeaux seems in order. L'chaim. 

Are there bad-produce days?

Image by wallyg via Flickr

If humans have bad-hair days, do supermarkets have bad-produce days? I certainly thought so yesterday when I stopped at H Mart in Little Ferry to pick up some greens for dinner (photo shows Ridgefield store).

I have purchased collard greens from this large Korean market several times, but yesterday, the leaves were blemished. As I strolled along the aisle, looking at the large selection of leafy greens and Chinese vegetables, nothing looked very appealing -- wilted, shriveled and so forth.

Another shopper, an American woman, came over and asked the produce stocker if there were more eggplants in the back, explaining the ones she saw were soft. Same for the red peppers. He said no. She went back and managed to find some firm eggplant. I spoke to her and she suggested Thursday wasn't a good day to shop there for produce.

Finally, I saw two heads of fresh spinach at $1.29 each that looked as if they had been put out that day, and grabbed them.  I had already picked up a 5-pound box of large Spanish clementines for $6.99, rejecting smaller Spanish clementines nearby that had seen better days and were priced $1 higher. That was odd -- two prices for the same item.

The selection of delicious prepared food was as good as ever: stewed tofu seasoned with a red-pepper sauce ($3.99) and stewed Alaskan pollack with onions and hot peppers ($4.99).

For dinner, I cut, rinsed and blanched the spinach leaves, then sauteed them in a little extra-virgin olive oil and seasoned them with salt, black pepper and mixed organic spices (Costco).

I served them with an imported vegetarian Indian dinner for two of basmati rice, coconut curry sauce and spiced chickpeas ($3.99 at Target in Paramus) and home-made baked crab cakes, using a pound of lump crab meat from Costco.

Fourth H Mart opens in Bergen County

 I visited the new H Mart in Fort Lee yesterday, the fourth supermarket opened by the Lyndhurst-based Korean chain in Bergen County. The company, which used to be known as Han Ah Reum, has stores in more than a dozen states.

The Fort Lee store appears to be bigger than the one in Englewood, where I shopped for years, but smaller than the Little Ferry supermarket, which is closer to my Hackensack home.

Fort Lee has the usual, great selection of fresh fish at relatively low prices. It's also the first H Mart I've seen that carries Coleman organic chicken and a second brand that says the birds are raised on a vegetarian diet without antibiotics. But I didn't see any beef  that was raised naturally, despite the importance of meat to the Korean diet.

There is also a terrific selection of greens, including Chinese broccoli, choy sum, regular and baby bok choy, and collard, plus others I'm not familiar with. I took home some leafy Chinese broccoli, but overcooked it. There is no food counter, as in other stores, but a French-Asian bakery called Tous Les Jours has a few tables for coffee and pastry.

The store, which has been open about three weeks in the old Kings Super Market space, didn't seem to have any real bargains, though it's possible it hasn't staged a grand opening yet. I also bought two prepared items: soft, sweet rice cakes with pumpkin and japchae, the translucent noodle dish made from sweet potatoes.

The company motto is: Better Food Better Living (no punctuation) and there is a cute video on its Web site showing a pregnant Korean woman sitting at home, reading and sipping tea, while her husband approaches on foot with two bulging plastic bags of H Mart food. When she opens the door and sees the food, she is "happy."

But what I've seen in more than a decade of shopping in H Mart is an army of Korean and other Asian women -- but few men -- filing their carts with enormous quantities of  beef and other food and then loading up their minivans or SUVs to rush home and start preparing dinner.
 

H Mart, 112-130 Linwood Plaza, Fort Lee; 201-947-7800


http://www.hmart.com/