At Costco Wholesale in Hackensack, a customer behaves badly

At Costco Wholesale, unsalted raw almonds were $9.89 on May 7 and $10.99 on May 29. To put some crunch in these nuts, I roast them in the oven at 275 degrees for 1 hour.

Editor's note: Today, I discuss food shopping at Costco Wholesale, ShopRite and H Mart.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

My wife couldn't believe her eyes as she stood in line to return Fuji apples at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack.

A woman in front of her was seeking a refund for a 1-pound container of Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix, which she apparently didn't finish before its expiration date; three 1-pound packages of Black Tiger shrimp, and a bag filled with Romaine lettuce.

My wife said the Organic Spring Mix was rotting.

Costco has a liberal return policy, giving customers a full refund for any item they don't like.

Executive Members of the warehouse club don't even need a receipt.

But if this woman and others abuse the policy, Costco may change it, hurting honest customers.

We were returning the Washington State Extra Fancy apples because two of three we cut into were brown inside. The week before, we returned pears from Chile because they were mealy.

We've asked for refunds for Organic Spring Mix that rotted before its use-by date on the package, but never after.

A 1-pound package of the best-tasting salad mix in the world is only $4.99 at Costco.

Free-range beef

ShopRite has knocked $3 off a pound of Nature's Reserve free-range, grass-fed beef from Australia -- perfect for Korean barbecue.

A whole tenderloin for filet mignon is $5.99 a pound with the store's PricePlus card through Saturday.

In the Paramus store, I bought a tenderloin weighing about 6 pounds, and my wife trimmed it and sliced it thinly, dividing it into three portions and adding Korean bulgogi marinade.

We put two portions in the freezer. 

She grilled the remaining beef on a stove-top grill, serving it with red-leaf lettuce, white rice, red-pepper paste and Korean side dishes.

I ate wild salmon with pesto.

ShopRite also had a sale on seedless watermelons for $4.99 each. I bought one, but it was smaller than Costco's $5.99 melons.

Neither store has a scale that allows you to weight the melons

I bought 2 pints of Jersey blueberries for $5 after comparing their weight to an 18-ounce package of Jersey blues for $4.99.

The pints weighed a couple of ounces more.

You roll up beef, rice, red-pepper paste and seasoned radish in red-leaf lettuce, and pop the package into your mouth. Below, Korean side dishes are seasoned radish, stewed tofu and pan-fried fish cake with carrot and jalapeno pepper.

Mexican mangoes

In addition to buying prepared Korean side dishes at H Mart in Little Ferry, I picked up Champagne mangoes on sale-- a box of 20 for $9.99, a discount of $4.

These Mexican mangoes are intensely sweet and not at all stringy.

Dinner for four comes in under $20

Image via Wikipedia
Live fluke from Jeju Island in Korea are sold in Fort Lee.

Editor's note: Today's bill of fare includes an inexpensive meal at home, good buys in Target's grocery section and a sale on free-range, grass-fed beef at ShopRite.

The cost difference between dining in and dining out is dramatic, and when you eat at home, you have a lot more control over the quality of the ingredients.


This afternoon, I stopped at the H Mart Fresh in Fort Lee and purchased fresh and prepared items that will feed four at dinner for only $17.35. 


The fresh fish at this small Korean market is always displayed on plenty of ice, so the wild-caught porgy at $1.99 a pound caught my eye. The fish monger said they came in earlier in the day. 


I asked him to clean five porgy, leaving the heads and tails on. The total was $7.22. 


A tank held live fluke from Jeju Island in Korea -- at $17.99 a pound. But this flat fish is wonderful raw as sushi or sashimi, allowing you to avoid all the mercury you'd consume with tuna. Maybe next time.


Fresh Chinese broccoli was on sale for 58 cents a pound, so for $1.13 I bought just under 2 pounds to blanch, drain and drizzle with sesame oil and a little soy sauce. 


I also picked up two prepared items -- a seaweed, rice and vegetable roll called kimbap or gimbap ($4.99 for 20 ounces) and a trio of pan-fried kimchi pancakes ($3.99).

Image via Wikipedia
Kimbap and kimchi.

How do you say, "Dinner's ready," in Korean?


H Mart's discount coupon book hasn't been issued for about two months, but there are plenty of in-store sales. Employees say they don't know why the supermarket chain stopped issuing its own coupons.


H Mart Fresh, 1379 16th St.,Fort Lee; 201-944-9009.
Metered spaces in front of store are free after 12 p.m.


Target's stealth discounts


I drove to the Target in Hackensack on Saturday to pick up lactose-free milk and eggs, and they rang up for much less than the shelf price. I didn't see anything about a sale.


A half-gallon of Market Pantry lactose-free milk usually is $3.19 -- about 20 cents less than at ShopRite. I bought two half-gallons of 2% lactose-free milk, and they rang up at $2.89 each.


A dozen large white Nearby Eggs from Pennsylvania were on a shelf with a price of $1.49, but I paid only 79 cents for them. I saved another 5% or 33 cents by charging the items to a Target credit card.


Sale on free-range beef


Nature's Reserve Whole Beef Tenderloin for Filet Mignon is on sale again at ShopRite for $7.99 a pound or $5.99 a pound with a store card through Feb. 4.


This beef, from Australian cattle, is described as grass fed and free range. You usually have to buy 4 to 6 pounds of beef.


When you get it home and trim it, you can cut it into filet mignon steaks or slice it thin for Korean barbecue. 


The same cut of conventionally raised, USDA Select beef is on sale for $9.99 a pound or $7.99 with a store card. 


Two 59-ounce clear-plastic containers of Tropicana Pure Premium Orange Juice are on sale for $5 with a store card (limit of 4).

Free-range beef, a 140-pound fish and other tales

Image via Wikipedia

When told the opah fish is from Hawaii, shoppers asked to see its birth certificate.

ShopRite supermarkets are running a sale on two cuts of free-range, grass-fed beef from Australia for $4.99 a pound with a a store card, $6.99 a pound without.

Boneless steaks or boneless rib-eye roasts are available, sold under the Nature's Reserve label and free of antibiotics and growth hormones. There is a limit of one package, and the sale ends Saturday.

Wowing shoppers

At Whole Foods Market in Paramus today, shoppers enjoyed samples of pineapple, cheese, matzo and opah, a fish from Hawaiian waters.

A 140-pound opah rested on ice at the fish counter, and a woman who took a photo with her cellphone camera asked an employee if it was real.

Here is what About.com says about the fish, pronounced oh-pah:

"A rich, creamy moonfish, it is served both as a raw appetizer as well as baked. Hawaiians consider opah to be a good-luck fish, and often used to give it away as a gesture of goodwill, rather than sell it."

As I purchased two pounds of mussels at the Whole Foods fish counter, other employees were removing the fish, presumably to fillet it. I didn't catch the price.

The farmed mussels from Canada, harvested on April 11, are for my dinner tonight.

Dinners from Costco

My wife and son are having Cuisine Solutions lamb shanks in a mint and rosemary sauce from Costco Wholesale in Hackensack ($6.29 a pound, fully cooked). 

Also at Costco on Saturday, I bought nearly 2 pounds of fresh, wild-caught Pacific cod fillets for Monday's dinner ($6.99 a pound), a pound of organic spinach ($4.29) and two pounds of trimmed French green beans ($5.79).

Four, 64-ounce containers of Tropicana orange juice were $10.99 and three half-gallons of Kirkland Signature organic 1% milk were $8.99.