Why the traditional turkey dinner every Thanksgiving is so last century

A generous salad of Red King Crab with diced celery, sweet pepper, onion and carrot -- dressed with Dijon mustard, fresh lime juice, cumin and other spices -- was the starter at our non-traditional Thanksgiving Day dinner on Thursday.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Numerous news outlets report an estimated 46 million turkeys were killed for Thanksgiving, but no one has explained how Americans could possibly stomach all of that white meat.

The white or breast meat of the domesticated turkey is the least flavorful and the easiest to overcook.

Even before I stopped eating meat or poultry in favor of seafood, I always insisted on getting the drumstick, thigh or wing -- and preferably all three.

On Thursday, I prepared a luscious Red King Crab Salad for an appetizer, and my wife cooked turkey legs and thighs for herself and the other meat eaters in the family.

Like the Red King Crab, our second course came from Costco Wholesale in Teterboro -- Phillips Seafood Restaurants' Maryland-style Jumbo Lump Crab Cakes.

I served them with Costco's Kirkland Signature Basil Pesto.

After a big crab salad and two crab cakes, washed down with prosecco, a sparkling white wine from Italy, I was stuffed.

I didn't have room for sweet potatoes mashed with extra-virgin olive or an organic spring mix salad, as planned.

Later, I did have cheese, fruit, nuts, coffee and tea.

Pumpkin pie? Yuck!

My second course: Two golden crab cakes with pesto.

My wife prepared turkey parts from the Goffle Road Poultry Farm in Wyckoff in barbecue sauce. She seasoned and roasted other thighs and legs in the oven, and prepared rice with peas.

Three Red King Crab Legs and Claws, on an 18-inch-long cutting board, produced a large bowl of crab meat, below. The joints were easy to cut through with a large chef's knife, as were the soft shells with a seafood scissor, but I missed several small pieces of cartilage.

Here is food that goes from market to table in just minutes

Taylor Farms' Sweet Kale Chopped Salad is ready to go from bag to bowl with dried cranberries, roasted pumpkin seeds and even dressing.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Pop a frozen jumbo lump crab cake into the oven, grab a big fistful of pre-washed salad and pour yourself a glass of wine.

Dinner is served.

Convenience doesn't always have to mean food that is processed to death.

At Costco Wholesale and other stores, you can find quality food that goes from market to table easily, with a minimum of preparation.

One of the best seafood items at Costco are frozen Maryland Style Crab Cakes, which the package says are handmade with jumbo lump crab meat. 

For $21.99, you get six 3-ounce crab cakes (about $4 each). The first ingredient is crab meat and the last is bread crumbs.

Pair them with a Sweet Kale Chopped Salad, also from Costco, complete with dried cranberries, roasted pumpkin seeds and dressing ($4.99 for 28 ounces).

The ready-to-eat salad includes broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, kale and chicory.

Maryland Style Crab Cakes from Phillips Seafood Restaurants can be baked from frozen for 13 minutes to 16 minutes, turned once.

An open-face egg-white omelet with slices of reduced-fat Swiss cheese and smoked wild Alaskan salmon can be assembled and cooked in minutes. All the ingredients are available at Costco Wholesale.

Sweet Kale Chopped Salad with Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix, tomato and Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese, all from Costco.

A Sweet Kale Chopped Salad with added pear, tomato and Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese in a creamy Italian dressing.

Holiday hits and misses at Costco

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Costco now sells Niman Ranch hams.

The vast majority of meat being sold at Costco Wholesale is raised conventionally -- huge hunks of pork, thick steaks and whole chickens with labels that tell you nothing about how the animals lived.


Today, I dropped into the warehouse store in Hackensack to take a closer look at Costco's Kirkland Signature holiday ham and was pleasantly surprised to see a second ham -- this one from the Niman Ranch, a highly respected source of naturally raised meat.


Both half hams are bone-in, spiral sliced and fully cooked, but the Niman Ranch markets meat from hogs that are raised on vegetarian feed, and never receive antibiotics and growth hormones.


The Niman Ranch ham was $3.99 a pound, compared to $6.99 and $7.99 a pound -- depending on size -- for Niman Ranch hams at Whole Foods Market in Paramus. 


I believe the ones at Whole Foods are uncured, while the Costco version is cured and contains sodium nitrite as a preservative. 


The Niman Ranch Web site (Niman Ranch FAQs) had this to say about preservatives:

"Nitrates occur naturally in many foods; in fact, you might be surprised to discover that nitrates occur naturally in all plants. The amount of nitrates and nitrites you ingest when eating cured products is negligible and does not pose any health risk. Some consumers prefer cured meats, while others prefer to avoid added sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite, so Niman Ranch offers both alternatives in our product line. The idea to cure meat began with a need to keep meat from spoiling." 

The only other naturally raised meat at Costco is grass-fed lamb from Australia, available in legs, racks and osso bucco, and organic ground beef from Oregon (3 pounds for $13.99).


Holiday seafood


The fresh fish case in Hackensack is filled with several new items for the holiday, including salted, wild-caught Pacific cod ($8.99 a pound) and previously frozen octopus from the Philippines ($3.99 a pound).


Large, wild-caught lobster tails from Colombia are $19.99 a pound, but they're treated with sodium bisulfite as a preservative. We once tried the fully cooked Dungeness Crab ($5.99 a pound), but didn't care for it.


Today, I picked up fresh, wild caught Pacific cod fillets for $7.99 a pound. Costco usually also carries wild-caught haddock and flounder fillets; everything else is farmed.


Kirkland Signature's preservative-free, smoked wild sockeye salmon from Alaska made a reappearance in Hackensack after an absence of about a week, still at the terrific price of $15.39 a pound.


All the other smoked salmon and steel-head trout in the case is artificially colored.


Salad days


When Earthbound Farms' Organic Spring Mix has a use-by date of less than a week, I usually pick up Grand Parisian Complete Salad.  


You get 16 ounces of both, but the latter isn't organic, and the weight listed on the bag includes toppings (feta cheese, dried cranberries and frosted almonds) and a white balsamic dressing.


There appears to be about 10 ounces or less of pre-washed romaine lettuce and other ingredients in the Grand Parisian bag for a total price of $3.79, compared with Earthbound Farms' price of $4.79 to $4.99. 


Sparkling cider


Costco also has Martinelli's Sparkling Apple Cider at four bottles for $7.99 or about $2 each, compared with $2.99 a bottle elsewhere.


Two 32-ounce containers of Kirkland Signature non-fat Greek-style yogurt are $7.99 or about $3.50 each, compared to $4.99 for a single, 35.3-ounce container of Fage Greek Yogurt.


This week, I saw a new item: Della-brand Organic Brown Rice. A 12-pound bag of the long grain rice was $12.99. The cooking instructions say nothing about soaking the rice before you prepare it on the stove top or in a rice cooker -- a real time saver. 


I've passed up Phillips Maryland-Style Crab Cakes, which have risen in price to $14.89 for six. They taste terrific, because the first ingredient listed is crab. On Dec. 3, an instant coupon knocked off $3.90. I should have bought two packages instead of one.

Doing the arithmetic at Costco

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When Costco Wholesale in Hackensack is crowded, as it was on Saturday afternoon, I just grab what I need and pay little attention to signs, even though prices fluctuate a good deal.


I do find time to try some free samples -- cheese, nuts and guacamole -- if for no other reason than to quell hunger pains that could drive me to buy more than I need, and overspend.


I picked up seven items on Saturday, all at prices I would have a hard time matching elsewhere, especially in view of the quality Costco is known for. The warehouse store is close to my home, and I go there at least twice a week.


Best of all, cash rebates from the no-fee American Express-Costco credit card more than cover the annual membership fee, and you also get 2% or 3% cash back on gas, restaurant and travel purchases.


Let's look at my receipt.


I bought four half-gallons of Tropicana OJ at $2.84 each, and these are a full 64 ounces, not the stunted 59-ounce containers you see elsewhere.


Three half-gallons of organic, 1% milk were $3.16 each. 


A large, seedless watermelon was $4.99, the lowest price of the season.

Image by JasonUnbound via Flickr

A jar of Geshmak-brand half-sour pickles (48 ounces) was $3.99.


Two pounds of sliced Colby cheddar cheese from Vermont cost $7.49.


Those 12-inch-plus hothouse cucumbers, from Sunset, were $3.29 or about $1.09 each, and weigh 2 pounds.


Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix was $4.99 for a 1-pound container, about $2 less than in other stores.


I saw but didn't buy crab cakes from Phillips Seafood Restaurants, now about $1 more than the $13.69 I paid in October 2010.

Lobster ravioli, crab cakes and other delights at Costco Wholesale

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You don't have to go to a seafood restaurant to dine on premium lobster ravioli, crab cakes, lobster bisque and other briny delights. All are available at Costco Wholesale, along with fresh, wild-caught fish and farmed prawns, and frozen sockeye salmon and mahi-mahi.


The wide selection at the Hackensack, N.J., warehouse store has helped me stick with a non-meat diet for the past eight months.


The lobster ravioli with parmesan and ricotta cheese from Pasta Prima are outstanding ($11.99). They actually taste of lobster, which is the first ingredient listed. 

When thawed, they take only five minutes to prepare and need only a drizzle of olive oil, cracked black pepper and grated cheese. You get two portions, each enough for three people.

The Maryland-style crab cakes from Phillips Seafood Restaurants list crab as the first ingredient and contain no breadcrumbs. You get six crab cakes for $13.69 at Costco, and $11.99 at BJ's Wholesale Club.

Blount Lobster Bisque ($10.89) and Legal Sea Foods Sweet Corn and Crab Chowder ($9.79) are two of the great seafood soups available.

Four pounds of prawns from Vietnam were $37.99 (U-15 or 15 to the pound). 

They have been cleaned, so all you have to do is shell them, marinate them in the juice of two or three lemons, along with dried or powdered garlic, red-pepper flakes and other seasoning, then sautee them in olive oil until they turn pink and curl up.

Between the bread

Besides giving up meat, I am trying to cut down on pizza and bread -- one of my favorite foods -- to lose weight, and it seems to be working. I lost weight in Italy and I've lost more weight since I returned Sept. 20.

So, it isn't unusual for me to have salad with reduced-fat cheese and smoked wild salmon or enjoy leftover ravioli or fried fish for breakfast.


This morning, I ate leftover haddock from Costco that my wife fried for dinner last night, along with cabbage and salted cod, and boiled green banana -- all doused with Valentina hot sauce. 

Yesterday, I had leftover lobster ravioli and spinach and cheese ravioli, both from Costco.


Leftover spaghetti with sardines made a good side dish for the fried haddock we had for dinner the following night.

UPDATE: So many fish in the seven seas

-- VICTOR E. SASSON

Crab cakes that keep on giving

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Breakfast usually means an array of containers on my kitchen counter as I assemble a red-salmon-and-sardine salad sandwich for my son -- whole-grain toast spread with hummus and garnished with tomato, greens and cheese -- or plate leftovers for my own breakfast.


This morning, I continued to explore the seafood theme with leftover crab cakes from last night's dinner and a piece of beer-battered haddock from the night before. They just needed a few minutes in the microwave and a spritz or two of fresh lemon juice, plus tomato, organic salad greens and warm Syrian bread with more hummus to make a filling breakfast. 


The Maryland-style crab cakes are sold at Costco under the Phillips Seafood Restaurants name, and they are some of the best I have ever had. The first ingredient is crab meat, and the other components include sauce, white wine, Dijon mustard and egg whites. Surprisingly, the cakes contain high fructose corn syrup. Six crab cakes (3 ounces each) are $12.99, or about $2.15 a piece -- a bargain.

For dinner, I served the crab cakes with instant, red-skin mashed potatoes and steamed bok choy.


The wild-caught haddock came from a package of frozen Icelandic fish and chips I also found at Costco ($8.97 for two and a half pounds of fish and waffle fries, enough for three). Just add a salad to complete dinner.