Easy mango peeling, $17.99 Costco dress shirts, sweet potato 'liquor'

At the ShopRite in Paramus this morning, on the second day of the new year, I saw this Toyota Corolla with handicapped license plates, above and below. Inside the car, there is room only for the driver.

 Editor's note: Today, I discuss food and food-related topics that don't fit into a neat category, including why men should buy their dress shirts at Costco Wholesale.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Mangoes are among the foods that don't give up their goodness easily.

On the box of small mangoes from Ecuador I picked up at H Mart in Little Ferry this week, three photos show how to extract the sweet flesh.

We also have a Mango Splitter made by Oxo.

Neither the mango-box tutorial nor the kitchen tool deal with how to enjoy the flesh around the seed. (Oxo even advises you to discard the seed.)  

1. Slice each side along the seed. 2. Slice flesh without breaking skin. 3. Scoop out and enjoy.

Using Oxo's Mango Splitter can result in a lot of waste.

When baked sweet potatoes are cooled and then placed in a container for storage in the refrigerator, the condensation yields a sweet, dark "liquor" you can enjoy when you reheat them.

Sweet-potato disks can be boiled for about 20 minutes for use in a 10-inch frittata with reduced-fat Swiss cheese, above and below. The egg mixture can be made of whites, whole eggs, a little low-fat milk and grated cheese.

You pour the egg mixture into a pre-heated pan with olive oil, place the sweet potato slices and Swiss cheese on top, and after the crust is set, you can finish the frittata under the broiler.

We used leftover Cuban-style roast pork from La Pola, a Cuban-sandwich shop in West New York, and Swiss cheese in another frittata. A Cuban sandwich, made on a heated press, includes roast pork, ham, Swiss cheese, pickles and mustard.

The Kirkland Signature Men's Dress Shirt from Costco Wholesale is only $17.99 with a button-down or spread collar, but the price could probably be cut, if less plastic, cardboard and paper, not to mention a half-dozen pins, are used to package it. Two great features are how the 100% Extra-long Staple Cotton is woven for eye appeal and how the spread collar buttons beautifully for men who wear ties, putting to shame more expensive shirts. 

One item offered during the Can Can Sale at the Paramus ShopRite is a 2-pound bag of individually wrapped tilapia fillets for only $7.49. Even if you eat farmed fish, you should avoid these fillets, which are from China, a country with a poor food-safety record.

Where to find straight talk about mercury in seafood

A monk fish at Whole Foods Market in Paramus. Monk fish are known for their succulent tails, which cook up with the consistency of lobster, but unfortunately, they are one of the ugliest creatures in the sea.

Editor's note: Today's stew includes mercury in fish, antibiotics in farmed salmon, another side dish that is a good bread substitute and more on dress shirts from Costco Wholesale.

In researching who rates fish, I came across Blue Ocean Institute, and signed up for its e-mails, including one I received recently on mercury in seafood.

Click on the following link to read more about mercury:

Fish size and your health

Here is an introduction:

"It’s this simple: seafood is good for you; mercury is bad for you. Some seafood contains a lot of mercury and some has very little. We’ve analyzed the research and explained the findings in a way that is relevant and makes sense. Our simple rules of thumb help you choose seafood that’s low in mercury."

The bigger the fish, the bigger the mercury dose. Bigger fish eat smaller fish, and absorb their mercury.

One- or 2-pound fish are safer than such big fish as grouper, Chilean sea bass and giant bluefin tuna.

That's one reason we eat a lot of sardines, anchovies, sea bass, porgies and whiting.

A pan-fried porgy with vinegared sweet pepper, onion and carrot, served with boiled sweet potatoes and carrots mashed with extra-virgin olive oil and a touch of cinnamon.

Stewed Alaskan pollock with translucent noodles, both from H Mart, the Korean supermarket in Englewood, Little Ferry, Fort Lee and Ridgefield.

A frittata with Costco Wholesale's smoked wild salmon, reduced-fat sliced cheese, fresh tomato slices and sun-dried tomato fluffs up under the broiler thanks to a little low-fat milk in the mixture of egg whites and whole eggs.

I ate the frittata with leftover sauteed cabbage, sweet pepper and tomato.

Fish antibiotics

The use of antibiotics to raise farmed fish is another concern, and Whole Foods Market is one of the few retailers that address it.

Fresh farmed salmon from Canada is on sale for $10.99 a pound at the Paramus store until April 23, and the flier notes:

"Raised according to our strict standards for aquaculture with no antibiotics or added hormones."

  
Another way to avoid bread


My wife came home with a package of bulgur or cracked wheat, and it couldn't be simpler to prepare. 

Most "recipes" call for you to add hot water to the bulgur, allow it to absorb the liquid and pour off any excess. 

My wife boiled 2 cups of nutty bulgur in 3 cups of water until all of it was absorbed.

Bulgur wheat, right, is another side dish with protein and dietary fiber that helps you avoid bread and lose weight. Here it is served with ackee and salted cod fish.

Before heating up leftover bulgur, I sprinkled on Hemp Hearts from Costco Wholesale, then ate them for breakfast with two organic brown eggs, also from Costco.

Dressing up, dressing down

Last week, I found two more Kirkland Signature all-cotton, spread-collar dress shirts at Costco in Hackensack at $17.99, a price that can't be beat.

But I'll bet Costco could slice a dollar off, if some of the packing material -- paper, cardboard, plastic, string, fabric and pins -- was eliminated.

Because of all the time it takes to "unpack" the shirt, I do it the day before I plan to wear it. 

The card on the right unfolds to reveal two spare collar stays, but the string is wound so tight around a button that it has to be cut with a scissor.

Costco dress shirt is a recycling challenge

Costco Wholesale sells cotton shirts in button-down and open-color styles, but you'll have to remove soft and hard plastic, cardboard, paper, pins and string before you wear one, below.

If you're in a rush, you might want to leave your new Costco Wholesale dress shirt for another occasion.

You'll need several minutes to remove all the plastic, cardboard, paper, string and pins apparently needed to keep the shirt folded and in shape during its long journey from Indonesia.

Without using a small scissor, I still haven't figured out how to remove a string attached to a folded, black cardboard tag that hides two spare collar stays.

The string is wrapped so tightly around a button, it can't be removed by hand.

The price can't be beat: only $17.99. 

But if I thought Costco's packaging of 2, 3 or 4 items -- such as milk, juice and catsup -- produced a lot of recycling, this dress shirt holds its own. 

Once you have the shirt on, what do you do with all the packing material?

One shirt produces a lot of waste.

The light cardboard and tissue paper goes into the recycling can with junk mail, paper bags and so forth.

The flexible, printed plastic and pliable plastic under the collar goes with recyclable plastic grocery bags, which likely will be blowing around after our civilization has been wiped out.

I keep the pins and add them to a divided container with safety pins and collar stays.

The Kirkland Signature fabric band around the shirt? The string? Beats me.

The black fabric band seems over the top.