ShopRite in Englewood pulls a fast one during sale on live lobsters

The ShopRite flier doesn't say anything about a limit on live lobsters, which are on sale for $6.99 a pound with a store card.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Live lobsters for Father's Day sounded like a great idea, especially when ShopRite supermarkets in North Jersey put them on sale for $6.99 a pound.

My wife went to ShopRite in Englewood, where we once lived, and purchased four small lobsters (1 pound to 1.25 pounds) for $8.99 a pound.

Their total weight was 6.73 pounds, and the total price was $60.50.

But when I looked at the receipt she brought home, I saw the store gave her a total discount of $8 or $2 on only 4 pounds of the 6.73 pounds of lobster.

She went back on Monday, but was told there is a 4-pound limit on the sale lobsters.

Of course, no such limit is mentioned in the ShopRite flier you can see online or the one that came with the Sunday paper.

The sale on live lobsters continues through Saturday.

I've e-mailed Wakefern Food Corp., the retailer cooperative that oversees ShopRite supermarkets, which are independently owned.

The Englewood store is operated by Glass Gardens Inc., a second-generation company that owns nine ShopRites, all but one of them in New Jersey.

In Consumer Reports survey, Costco prices for organics are best

Organic eggs from Costco Wholesale in Hackensack, served here with organic quinoa prepared in an electric rice cooker, are $6.99 for two dozen, cheaper than at other supermarkets shopped by Consumer Reports.

A hearty breakfast: A Costco organic egg with leftover Whole Foods Market organic whole-wheat shells, prepared in vodka sauce with added red wine, sardines and anchovies.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Consumer Reports shopped at eight grocers for organics -- including bananas, extra-virgin olive oil, milk and eggs -- but didn't price those items at Costco Wholesale.

In a May 2015 cover story, "The Best Supermarkets in America," some of those organic foods are cheaper at Costco than at Price Chopper, Walmart, Whole Foods Market, Fresh Direct or the other stores listed by the magazine.

At $3.99, a dozen organic large brown eggs were cheapest at Whole Foods Market, but Costco sells 24 for $6.99 or $3.50 a dozen.

None of the stores listed by Consumer Reports could match Costco's price for organic bananas, $1.99 for three pounds or about 66 cents a pound.

A half-gallon of organic milk is $3.66 at Costco when you buy three, compared to $3.49 at Safeway (no stores in New Jersey), and $3.58 at Amazon Fresh.

Though I haven't purchased organic quinoa, whole organic chickens or organic extra-virgin olive oil recently at my Hackensack Costco, I believe those items also are cheaper than at the stores listed in the magazine.

Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix is $4.79 to $4.99 a pound at Costco, and Organic Carrots are $6.99 for a 10-pound bag or 69 cents a pound.

Consumer Reports didn't compare organic spring mix prices, and the cheapest organic baby carrots listed were $1.69 a pound at Harris Tweeter (none in New Jersey).

I prepared organic quinoa with chopped fresh garlic, organic diced tomatoes and organic extra-virgin olive oil, all from Costco Wholesale, in an electric rice cooker and served it for breakfast with a Jamaican specialty, ackee and salt fish.

A baked sweet potato with  Mateo's Gourmet Salsa from Costco Wholesale, along with roasted sweet peppers and organic carrots, also from Costco, go great with ackee and salt fish.

A 5-pound box of sweet potatoes -- a great bread substitute -- was on sale for $2.99 on Tuesday at ShopRite in Englewoood. I boiled them with whole California garlic cloves from Costco Wholesale and mashed them with extra-virgin olive oil, salt and other seasonings, including cinnamon and curry powder.

Boycott Vitacost.com for its wasteful packaging

Vitacost.com shipped six 100-bag boxes of Newman's Own Organic Black Tea in two cartons, above. The smaller carton contained only one of the boxes of tea, below, cushioned by about 5 feet of "inflatable" plastic packaging.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

As if the $4.99 shipping charge wasn't bad enough, an online retailer used two large cardboard cartons and a dozen or more feet of "inflatable" plastic packaging to send me six boxes of organic black tea.

On the bottom of one of the cartons, Vitacost.com urged me to read about the company's "commitment to the planet."

Which planet? Saturn?

I've been a fan of mail order for decades to buy clothing from Lands' End and other retailers -- almost always with free shipping -- but in recent years, I have been going online to purchase food I can't find in stores.

I first found Newman's Own Royal Tea, an organic black tea, at the ShopRite in Englewood. 

But when the store discontinued the item, I went online and found it at Amazon.com, where I purchased six 100-bag boxes under the retailer's Subscribe & Save program.

The last order cost me $2.96 a box with free shipping.

I don't have a cat, don't do arts and crafts, and have no plans to move.

But now Amazon.com has discontinued the Newman's Own organic black tea. 

In an Internet search, I found Vitacost.com and ordered six boxes of individually wrapped tea bags, but couldn't get free shipping.

Each box was $4.42, including the shipping charge.

The shipping charge and the wasteful packaging are enough for me to make my first purchase from Vitacost.com my last.

The bottom of the Vitacost.com carton.

Food-shopping bargains, wild salmon, Costco Egg Whites

At H Mart, the Korean supermarket in Englewood.

Editor's note: Today, I go in search of food-shopping deals, discuss a meal in a bottle and continue to adapt to Costco Wholesale's new Kirkland Signature Egg Whites.

I cut out a few coupons from my H Mart summer savings booklet and tried my luck in Little Ferry, one of the Korean supermarket chain's bigger stores.

In contrast to the large, seedless watermelons I found at the Englewood H Mart, Little Ferry had small watermelons for $3.99 with a coupon, limit of 2.

Liter bottles of 100% Pomegranate Juice were 2 for $4 with a coupon, compared to the regular price of $3.99 each.

Liter bottles of Looza Apricot Juice and Looza Mango Nectar, made with sugar and imported from Belgium, were 2 for $5 (no coupon needed).

ShopRite

At the Englewood ShopRite, my wife found a loose fillet of boneless salted cod for $6.99 a pound, compared to the usual price of $8.99.

But a half-gallon of ShopRite Lactose Free Milk is now $3.49, a dime more than before. It also has a new cap, which uses less plastic.

I saw organic produce for the first time on Thursday at the International Food, Liquor and Wine Warehouse in Lodi. I go for the food, because I haven't seen any  wine, beer or liquor bargains.

On Thursday, at the International Food Warehouse in Lodi, I found organic produce for the first time.

A big stalk of Earthbound Farm Organic Celery was only 99 cents, compared to organic celery hearts I bought at Trader Joe's for $2.29.

A 12-ounce package of Earthbound Farm organic romaine lettuce (3 pieces) also was 99 cents.

Liter cartons of Dimes Peach Nectar and Mango Drink from Turkey, both from concentrate and made with sugar, were 2 for $3.

That works out to about 4.5 cents an ounce.

I saw 2-liter bottles of juice from Pakistan at a low price, but didn't buy any.

I also looked over the store's beer offerings, but had a hard time finding price signs.

When I got home, I made canned-fish salad, dicing some of the organic celery and leaves, and combined them with 2 cans of pink salmon, 2 cans of Moroccan sardines and 1 can of yellowfin tuna, including all of their oil or water.

I dressed them with Dijon mustard, ground cumin and fresh lime juice to taste.

Wild sockeye salmon from Costco Wholesale poached in bottled Mexican Green Salsa with fresh lime juice, and served with leftover organic brown rice and organic diced tomatoes prepared in an electric cooker.

Bring the salsa to a boil, add small pieces of skin-on fillet, cover and cook over a medium-high flame for 5 minutes (pink inside) to 7 or 8 minutes (cooked through). The fish will continue to cook in the covered pan after you turn the fire off.

The fillet comes with the pin bones removed.

Meal in a bottle

After an exhausting day in traffic, the last thing I wanted to do on Friday night was cook dinner.

But my wife had picked up a fillet of wild-caught sockeye salmon at Costco Wholesale for $10.99 a pound.

We also had a bottle of Mexican Green Salsa in
the cupboard, leftover organic brown rice in the refrigerator and for salad, plenty of red-leaf and green-leaf lettuce from the garden.

Dinner was on the table in under 10 minutes.

This is the second time my wife bought wild salmon at the Hackensack Costco on a Friday, and the second time she could find only fish packed the day before.

The fish packed the previous day has a faint, fishy smell, though that isn't evident in the taste.

The fillet she bought on Friday was labeled "Product of the USA," and was $3 a pound cheaper than the wild salmon from Alaska's famed Copper River we have been buying.

Next week, she'll buy wild salmon at Costco on Thursday. 

An omelet made with the new Kirkland Signature Egg Whites, which seems to have replaced Costco Wholesale's old Real Egg Product with thickening agents, spices and color.

I added too much ground tumeric to this Kirkland Signature Egg Whites omelet with sun-dried tomatoes, served with organic quinoa prepared in an electric rice cooker. I moistened the quinoa with a spicy green salsa from a Peruvian restaurant.

Kirkland Signature Egg Whites formed the basis of this fluffy Pesto Frittata, which I started on the stove and finished under a low broiler setting. In addition to about 8 ounces of Egg Whites (half a carton), I used 4 whole organic brown eggs, a couple of ounces of grated Italian cheese and low-fat milk.

Pesto Frittata, wild salmon in green salsa and organic brown rice made a filling breakfast today.




Costco Wholesale's new Kirkland Signature Egg Whites are egg whites and nothing but egg whites.

So they form a thin, almost clear liquid that isn't as thick as the Real Egg Product (99% egg whites) that Costco seems to have stopped selling, and that means home cooks will have to adjust.

My wife doesn't think the new product looks appetizing, and has stopped making scrambled eggs with it.

I've adjusted by adding more whole eggs to frittatas and reduced-fat grated or shredded cheese to simple omelets.

More hassles at H Mart

Image by wallyg via Flickr

At Super H Mart in Ridgefield.

With my H Mart coupons expiring in two days, I wanted to get over to the Korean supermarket to pick up two 1-liter bottles of 100% pomegranate juice for $4 (normally $7.98).


That H Mart coupon offers an unusually good discount -- about 50%. For example, a second unused coupon offered 10% off "oriental sweet potatoes" that sell for 99 cents a pound, reducing the price to 90 cents a pound.


So, this morning, after a workout in the cardiac-rehab unit of Englewood Hospital and Medical Center, I stopped first at ShopRite in Englewood before driving a short distance to H Mart.


I picked up what I thought was a sweet potato and brought it over to a cashier with my coupon, and asked her if this was the right item. She said yes, so I bagged four or five small ones.


At checkout with a different cashier, the coupon was rejected -- I had the wrong potatoes -- only one of the problems I encountered today.


I found the pomegranate juice down one of the aisles, and put two bottles, the limit, in my cart. I found some fresh collard greens for 99 cents a pound and two small heads of red-leaf lettuce for 99 cents.


Another coupon offered 10% off green seedless grapes, but they were priced at $1.79 a pound, compared to 99 cents a pound at ShopRite, where I bought red grapes for the lower price. No sale.


Also on sale with a coupon was a table-top electric hot pot for $34.99, compared to the regular price of $49.99, but I'm not sure I would use it more than once or twice. 


I did want to use a coupon for live blue crabs that cut the price of $1.99 to 99 cents, but in the fish department, I found an empty bin. An employee brought out maybe 15 crabs, saying more were due to be delivered around noon.


I was trying to call my wife to find out if she wanted crabs for dinner, when a woman walked over and said she had called about blue crabs, and wanted to buy the ones the man had just put out.


I gave up, and handed her my coupon for the crabs.


The cashier rang up the pomegranate juice for $3.99 each, but scanned the coupon once for $1.99. I pointed out the coupon said 2 for $4.


She took off 20 cents for my reusable bag, the most of any supermarket in North Jersey. Then, I remembered I had a $1.06 credit for spoiled fruit I returned to the store a couple of weeks ago.


She said the checkout "machine" was new and couldn't process the credit. I again asked for the proper discount on the pomegranate juice, and told two people waiting on line behind me to be patient.


Her solution was to give me a second $1.99 discount for the juice, then discount an additional $1.99 for my store credit, while taking back the 20 cents for the reusable bag.


My balance was $4.99.


This is the same H Mart that resisted giving me credit for a 12-inch stainless-steel steamer that rusted after less than a year of use. A cashier lectured me about drying it completely before I put it away.


H Mart, 25 Lafayette Ave., Englewood; 
201-871-8822. Food court is closed.


Applegate Farms


Organic and naturally raised cold cuts are sold under the Applegate Farms label. In addition to being raised without antibiotics and growth hormones, the meats are uncured and free of preservatives.


The ShopRite in Englewood is one of the few to carry Applegate Farms, but rarely puts the sliced ham, beef, turkey and other meat on sale.


Today, I looked over the price labels and saw some were selling for the equivalent of about $18 a pound and others for about $13.70 a pound.


Trader Joe's has Applegate Farms cold cuts at much better prices, but is not as convenient. 


Related articles

• H Mart coupons prove to be no big deal (doyoureallyknowwhatyoureeating.blogspot.com)
• Lousy fruit is just waiting for you (doyoureallyknowwhatyoureeating.blogspot.com)
• A diet guaranteed to take off weight (doyoureallyknowwhatyoureeating.blogspot.com)

Introducing the 50-cent lemon

Image via Wikipedia


My wife called from the ShopRite in Englewood, where she was picking up an Ace bandage and a painkiller for our son, who saw a doctor for his sprained foot. Did I need anything?


I also saw a doctor in Englewood on Thursday, and picked up 4.5 pounds of fresh king whiting at H Mart for a fried-fish dinner ($3.99 a pound). But we had run out of lemons, so I asked her to pick one up.


When she got home, I looked at the receipt and was shocked to see a single lemon cost 50 cents.


We usually buy them at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack, and today, I went there to pick up photos and get more lemons.


I bought a 5-pound bag of lemons from Chile for $6.79. That works out to about 57 cents for each of the dozen lemons in the net bag, although these are almost twice the size of the ShopRite lemon.


When did lemons get so expensive? 


H Mart credit


In an earlier post, I described how I returned a stainless-steel pot that started to rust to the H Mart in Little Ferry and how getting a $19.99 credit wasn't easy.


But I made sure to ask whether I could use the credit at other H Mart stores, including the ones in Englewood and Fort Lee. I was told I could.


I put the credit slip in my wallet and wanted to use it in the Englewood store on Thursday, when I bought the whole whiting, a 20-package box of spicy Shin Ramyun, green-leaf lettuce, a freshly made seaweed-rice-vegetable roll, white peaches and Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce. 


My total was $46.32. The cashier accepted a few H Mart coupons, but wouldn't take the credit slip, saying it wasn't good at that store.


She got on the phone, and another woman came over, but she said I couldn't use the slip, either. I protested, and said I was told it was good at any H Mart.


Finally, she called over another employee and he OK'd it.


There must be a lot of bureaucracy in Korea.

Hitting the jackpot at the Can Can Sale

Image by lu_lu via Flickr

You'll search in vain for can can dancers at ShopRite supermarkets.

After dropping my son off at a friend's house in Englewood on Sunday morning, I stopped at the ShopRite in pursuit of more bargains during the supermarket chain's 40th anniversary Can Can Sale.

Ten portions of Swiss Miss hot chocolate were only 88 cents. Even Readington Farms chicken -- raised on vegetarian feed and without antibiotics -- was on sale. I bought wings, leg quarters and drumsticks, saving $1.33, 99 cents and 76 cents, respectively.

I saw Laporta-brand artisanal pasta from Italy for $1.79, a discount of $1.29, and bought two different kinds, each in a 1.1-pound package. But looking at my receipt after I checked out, I saw each package rang up at the regular price of $2.99.

I went to the customer service counter and an employee took one package of the pasta and went to check the sign on the shelf. He returned and refunded me $5.98 on my credit card. So, I got the pasta for free. 

The Can Can Sale ends Jan. 15. 

ShopRite, 40 Nathaniel Place, Englewood; 201-816-8322.

Cooking lobster is no fun

Image via Wikipedia

We love lobster, but prepare it at home only occasionally. It's one of the only times you have to kill something that is alive to eat it. So we substitute lobster ravioli or splurge and eat it out once in a while.


My wife and son wanted to take me out to a restaurant in the city for Father's Day, but the couple of places I was interested in were booked solid. So I asked my wife to buy lobsters at ShopRite in Englewood for dinner last night.


She came home with two lobsters weighing a total of nearly 8 pounds ($5.99 a pound with a PriceClub card). In the past, we have had trouble finding pots large enough for big lobsters, but I knew that for Thanksgiving last year, I bought a big, rectangular turkey roaster with a cover that would swallow the large crustaceans.


The lobsters had been packed in a plastic bag, which I had to cut open. They seemed to be rearing away from my rubber-gloved hand, and the big claws on each were nearly as big as my hand. I had to lift them out by their claws -- I couldn't get my hand in the thick rubber glove around the bodies.

I've seen lobsters dispatched with the thrust of a knife; I can't stomach that. The water in the roaster was boiling, but wasn't deep enough for me to plunge the lobsters in head first, as the instructions on the bag recommend. I placed them inside in opposite directions, and quickly put on the cover. Thrashing went on for a few minutes and then all I noticed was steam escaping. 


I cooked them for 20 minutes.


We ate our lobsters with linguine in oil and garlic and crushed red pepper, with fresh, chopped parsley from the garden. There was lots of delicious lobster meat that needed only a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. I also dipped some in the pasta's garlicky oil. I drank wine. My wife and son were delighted. The kitchen was a mess.