Keeping it healthy: Seafood doesn't need butter, bacon or brown sugar

This month, The Costco Connection, a magazine sent to Costco Wholesale members, is recommending a totally unnecessary addition to a luxurious meal of Red King Crab Legs and Dungeness Crab -- a half-cup of butter.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Fresh lime or lemon juice is all I need to enjoy lobster, king crab or plump sea scallops.

In the past few years, I've made a wonderful Red King Crab Leg salad with Dijon mustard, fresh lime juice, cumin and other seasonings.

But retailers like Costco Wholesale and Trader Joe's seem to think premium seafood shouldn't be served without butter, brown sugar or bacon.

Experts say lobster, crab and other shellfish contain levels of cholesterol comparable to land animals.

Where they have the edge is much lower levels of saturated fat, which is found in butter, bacon and other food.

Replacing saturated fats in your diet with sources of polyunsaturated fats -- such as ocean fish with omega-3 fatty acids -- can lower your risk of cardiovascular disease, according to the American Heart Association.

When I emailed a photo of my Red King Crab Salad to Tim Talevich, editorial director of The Costco Connection, he replied the dish looked delicious and the magazine would consider "healthier options" next time.

Trader Joe's Fearless Flyer, which is sent to customers' homes, raves about Scallops Wrapped in Uncured Bacon with Brown Sugar Glaze.

The Costco Connection's Recipe for Shrimp Fettuccine (misspelled in the magazine with one "c") includes two tablespoons of butter.

Trader Joe's Crab Cakes, right, are made with both a Mayo Dressing and Worcestershire Sauce, according to the ingredients label, below. They also are more expensive than the Phillips Seafood Restaurants' 3-ounce crab cakes sold at Costco Wholesale.

A good buy at Trader Joe's in Paramus on Saturday was a large stalk of Brussels Sprouts for $3.99. Ignore the recipe on the tag for roasting the whole stalk with 3/4 cup of maple syrup. Another problem is the recommended wrapping of the stalk in plastic wrap, and heating it in a microwave on high for 4 minutes or 5 minutes. That could lead to the transfer of chemicals to the Brussels Sprouts from the cling wrap.

I found a recipe online for oven roasting the Brussels Sprouts with olive oil, salt and pepper, though I used a lower temperature to avoid burning the outer leaves. I should have followed the recipe and trimmed the hard, fibrous stem after removing the sprouts from the stalk and washing them. I also recommend cutting the larger sprouts in half.

Trader Joe's most flavorful pasta sauce, Puttanesca, contains no added sugar. Ingredients include Italian tomatoes, capers, olives and anchovies.

I boost the flavor of skinless-and-boneless Icelandic Haddock ($8.99 a pound at Costco Wholesale in Teterboro) by coating serving pieces in Asian-Indian Spices from a box of Fish Masala, which you find in an Indian grocery.

I start with fresh spinach drizzled with extra-virgin olive oil, above, then add spice-coated fish, chopped pitted olives, fresh tomato slices and reduced-fat grated cheese, below.

The haddock was ready after about 12 minutes in a preheated 400-degree oven.

On Thanksgiving, I served a Red King Crab Salad with chopped celery, carrot, onion, and sweet pepper dressed in Dijon mustard, fresh lime juice, cumin and other spices.

Kirkland Signature Basil Pesto from Costco is as rich as butter, but made with extra-virgin olive oil and reduced-fat grated cheese. Pesto nicely complemented two Maryland-style jumbo lump crab cakes sold at Costco under the Phillips Seafood Restaurants label.

When you're retired, losing and keeping off weight becomes full-time job

We bake, roast or grill a variety of fish fillets from Costco Wholesale, but inexpensive whole whiting seems to taste best when it is pan fried in olive oil, and served simply with fresh lime or lemon juice. Side dishes here are string beans with fresh garlic and black pepper, and sweet plantains. An organic spring mix salad completes the meal.

Editor's note: I am the head of a family of four who go through an enormous amount of food, much of it organic and naturally raised or grown. We are divided among meat eaters and non-meat eaters (3 to 1), and on many days, prepare two different breakfasts and dinners. Since I retired, I've also struggled to lose and keep off weight. 

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

When I retired, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to fill my time.

But I faced a bigger challenge: 

I not only was less active, but I wanted to lose close to 40 pounds I had put on from the stress of a sedentary copy editing job at a daily newspaper in northern New Jersey.

I got a big boost from a trainer at my gym: 

He told me that if I really wanted to lose weight, I should cut out bread and pizza, and substitute such filling foods as sweet potatoes, whole wheat pasta and brown rice.

I also was ahead, because I rarely ate dessert, and satisfied my sweet tooth with fruit.

Stopped eating meat

I had already lost about 5 pounds from giving up meat and poultry, and eating only seafood, so my starting point was 223 pounds.

Bread was my real weakness, even though I had long ago stopped eating one of those enormous Jersey bagels for breakfast every day. 

Favorites were Middle Eastern pocket bread from Fattal's in Paterson, and baguettes from Balthazar Bakery in Englewood.

Part-time jobs

I picked up part-time work, including driving cars into Manhattan, walking and taking mass transit back to New Jersey.

I was eating only two meals a day -- substituting a snack bar for lunch -- and the pounds started to come off.

I lost more than 40 of my original 223 pounds in about a year, but when I gave up the part-time work and started volunteering more, I eventually put on about 10 pounds.

Eating at home

I never leave the house without eating a big breakfast, relying on leftover pasta, quinoa or brown rice to go with an egg-white omelet or a wedge of frittata.

Omelets can be stuffed with a little reduced-fat grated cheese and marinara sauce, salsa or slices of smoked wild salmon.

At most, we eat out once a week and order takeout another night.

But when I cook at home, I prepare large amounts -- 1 pound of pasta, 3 pounds of sweet potatoes or 2 pounds of fish, ensuring a variety of leftovers for breakfast or snacks.

I cook and dress salads with olive oil.

I never eat butter, cream or full-fat cheese or milk, and avoid buying pasta sauces and other prepared food with added sugar.

Bread, pizza

Instead of eating bread two or three times a day, I may have some once a week or when we eat out.

Pizza still is a guilty pleasure every six months or so, such as the 18-inch Veggie Combo I picked up recently at the Costco Wholesale Business Center in Hackensack.

The leftovers are in the freezer.

Now, I see men in the gym who work out week after week, but still are grossly overweight, because they don't follow a diet, such as the one that has worked for me in the past five years.

A 10-inch frittata uses 4 cups of whole eggs and whites, a little low-fat milk, scallions and garlic. Wedges can be served with a spoonful of pesto or organic salsa.

Baked or mashed sweet potatoes are a favorite side dish at breakfast. Here, an egg-white omelet is stuffed with slices of smoked wild salmon and Mexican-style salsa, both from Costco Wholesale.

I often saute organic spinach from Costco or conventional spinach from the salad bar at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center with olive oil, sake and seasonings. Here, I added reduced-fat grated cheese and ate the spinach over leftover organic quinoa with organic beans and diced tomatoes prepared in an electric cooker.

Easy to assemble Icelandic Haddock with Organic Diced Tomatoes, Spinach and Olives is ready after 15 minutes in a pre-heated 400-degree oven. Fresh wild haddock is $7.99 a pound at Costco. Photos below show four easy steps. 

1. Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. Line a large pan with parchment paper or aluminum foil, add fresh spinach and drizzle with plenty of extra-virgin olive oil. An option is to use sliced mushrooms with spinach.

2. Cut up about 2 pounds of fish fillet, season with Aleppo red pepper and a little sea salt, and place over spinach. Add whole or chopped pitted olives with or without pimientos.

3. Open a can of organic diced tomatoes and spoon over fish. Squeeze juice from whole lemon or lime over pan. An option is to add shredded or grated cheese. Put in oven and set timer to 15 minutes.

4. Plate fish, spinach and olives and spoon sauce over them.

For a pasta-and-eggs breakfast, poach two organic eggs in leftover Classico Tomato & Basil Pasta Sauce from ShopRite, and serve with leftover organic whole wheat fusilli. I added olive oil to the sauce, and shredded Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese over the eggs.  

Radish kimchi and other low-fat or no-fat Korean food, including prepared tofu, can be purchased at H Mart and other Korean supermarkets in northern New Jersey.

A 32-ounce jar of Radish or Kahkdoogi Kimchi can be purchased for $15 at Arirang, 1 Remsen Place, Ridgefield, in the H&Y Marketplace Shopping Center, below.

Let them eat bread -- while you maintain your hard-won weight loss

A 10-inch frittata with smoked wild salmon, sweet potatoes and fresh spinach (folded into the egg mixture) starts out on top of the stove and finishes under the broiler. After you remove it from the oven, add Kirkland Signature Basil Pesto from Costco Wholesale, where you can find most of the other ingredients.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Sweet potatoes, baked or mashed. Organic brown rice and organic quinoa prepared in an electric cooker. Organic whole-wheat pasta imported from Italy.

Let me count the substitutes I've enjoyed since embarking on a no-bread, no-pizza diet several years ago, and shedding 40 pounds.

I put back about 10 of those pounds after I gave up one of my two part-time jobs and became less active.

But the bread substitutes still work to help me maintain my weight loss, and they can be enjoyed at any meal where bread is served, even breakfast.

Of course, I don't drink soda, never touch dessert, eat reduced fat cheeses and try to avoid pasta sauces and other products made with added sugar, which is linked to the obesity epidemic.

A wedge of the frittata with baked and mashed sweet potatoes, the latter made with extra-virgin olive oil, cinnamon, curry powder and other seasonings.

Organic brown rice joins mashed sweet potatoes at another meal with a wedge of frittata.

Luigi Vitelli-brand Organic Whole Wheat Capellini, an Italian import available for $1.25 a pound at ShopRite in Paramus, complements an egg-white omelet stuffed with spinach.

Mateo's Gourmet Salsa and Earthbound Farm Organic Baby Spinach, both from Costco Wholesale, are perfect for stuffing a 10-inch omelet made with Kirkland Signature Egg Whites.

Mateo's Gourmet Salsa has no added sugar. A 32-ounce jar was $4.97 at Costco in Hackensack.

Some Kirkland Signature spices now have a new top, above, replacing a top that would sometimes come off, below, dumping ounces of black pepper, red-pepper flakes and other seasoning into the food you were preparing.

Here, I was seasoning the frittata egg mixture (16 ounces of whites and three whole organic eggs) after folding in the fresh spinach with a spoon.

Here, organic brown rice makes a nice foundation for a light dinner of salted fish prepared with sweet peppers, all accented with Valentina Mexican Hot Sauce, below.

Organic quinoa (prepared in an electric cooker with organic black beans, organic diced tomatoes and olive oil), with Roasted Chipotle Salsa I used tonight to poach wild-caught Icelandic Haddock Fillets, below.

The fresh haddock was $8.99 a pound at Costco. A 16-ounce jar of the salsa was $2.69 at Whole Foods Market in Paramus. I used most of the jar to poach 1.8 pounds of the fish in under 10 minutes. Tonight, I added the fresh juice of a lime and a little red wine to the salsa, and brought them to a boil before adding the fish and covering the pot.

Icelandic fish and Mexican sauce -- dinner is served

Snowy, wild-caught haddock is a meaty fish from Iceland that I buy at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack. A bottle of Green Mexican Salsa serves as both the cooking medium and as a sauce for brown rice, above, or whole-wheat pasta. I served the fish with kale.

Editor's note: Fall means the end of the wild-salmon season at Costco Wholesale, and the return of fresh haddock from Iceland. Ripe pears, savory cheese and smoked wild salmon add substance to salads.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

Fresh fish fillets and a bottle of Green Mexican Salsa translate into a quick, delicious dinner that is ready in minutes.

Last night, we cooked portions of a 1.9-pound fillet of  fresh, wild-caught Icelandic haddock from Costco Wholesale in green salsa for under 10 minutes or until the fish turned snowy white and was firm to the touch.

I served it with leftover organic brown rice, covered with sauce from the fish, and kale, which I had blanched in hot water, drained and dressed with extra-virgin olive oil, powdered garlic and a little salt.

The haddock was $8.99 a pound and it served three with leftovers.

I emptied a 16.7-ounce bottle of La Costena-brand Green Mexican Salsa or Salsa Verde into a pot, added fresh juice from half of a lime, heated it to a low boil and then added portions of haddock fillet.

Jun's Wild Sesame Tofu with gochjang, a red-pepper sauce, is delicious for breakfast, especially when heated in the microwave for about a minute and a half. The non-GMO tofu is available at H&Y Marketplace, a Korean supermarket at 1 Remsen Place in Ridgefield

Whole sea bass from H Mart in Englewood was prepared in a sauce of organic diced tomatoes, olive oil and powdered ginger and garlic, and served with organic brown rice and steamed organic carrots. A bonus when eating whole fish are the tender "cheeks" right below the eyes.

Diced ripe Bosc pear and Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese turn a red-leaf lettuce salad into a sweet and savory side dish.

A light dinner salad includes smoked Alaskan wild salmon, ripe pear and cheese dressed in extra-virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and calls for a glass of red or white wine.

More great reasons to keep meat off the table

Leftover fresh wild Alaskan salmon straight from the refrigerator crowning a takeout salad of fresh spinach, tofu, sun-dried tomatoes, cucumbers and beans.

Wild-caught haddock fillets poached in chicken broth with garlic, ginger, onion, lime juice and thyme. I ate them with organic brown rice from Costco Wholesale, where we buy many of the ingredients for our home-cooked meals.  

A no-mayo salad made with canned yellow-fin tuna, pink salmon and Moroccan sardines; plus diced organic celery, is dressed with hummus, Dijon mustard, lime juice and ground cumin. I use canned hummus from Lebanon, adding olive oil, lime juice and ground garlic.

Trader Joe's Organic Whole Wheat Fusilli Pasta with sardines and salted cod fish in bottled Classico Tomato & Basil pasta sauce. For 1 pound of pasta, use a 32-ounce bottle of sauce.

A snack of canned-fish salad, olives, stewed tofu and hummus.

Jamaican Ackee and Salt Fish with sweet plantains.

Fresh wild Copper River Sockeye Salmon with Kirkland Signature Basil Pesto, both from Costco Wholesale.

I seasoned the salmon with a little Himalayan Pink Salt, Aleppo red pepper and lime juice before roasting them in the oven at 375 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes, depending on the size of the piece I cut from the larger fillet, below.

Veins of heart-healthy fat in the raw fillet of Copper River salmon.