Costco: Our Amazon Connection is good for you

Two 1-liter bottles of 100% juice are $8.59 at Costco Wholesale.

 Editor's note: Fonts available on Google's Blogger are ill-suited to a discussion of food, because they don't contain the accents needed to write acai, sautee and so many other words commonly used in kitchens. Today, I also discuss Costco Wholesale, Trader Joe's, and a sauce for fish and pasta.

 
As much calcium as cow's milk. The same Omega-3, -6 and -9 fatty acids found in fish and other seafood. And oleic acid, a monounsaturated fat that may reduce high blood pressure.

Those are just three of the reasons The Costco Connection magazine is promoting a new juice on the shelves of the warehouse store: Sambazon Organic Acai (AH-SIGH-EE).

The thick, tart, antioxidant-rich juice is being hailed as a superfood -- direct from the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest.

My wife first saw refrigerated 1-liter bottles of the juice on the shelf at the Hackensack Costco last week, and I brought home two more this week.

But I couldn't find the Sambazon frozen acai pulp mentioned in the February 2013 edition of the magazine.  

The pulp can be used in smoothies, and it's served in bowls topped with granola and bananas at beach snack shacks in Brazil. 

The acai beverage sold at Costco contains other organic juices and organic agave syrup as a sweetener.

Two pounds of Jarlsberg Lite Swiss Cheese would cost about $16 at Trader Joe's in Paramus, above, compared to $9.99 at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack.

  

Costco trip costs 17 cents

In addition to acai juice, I picked up Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix, fresh cod fillets, 4 pounds of frozen wild blueberries and another bag of frozen blueberries, blackberries and raspberries.

The total was $50.17, but I used a $50 Costco gift card sent to me when Costco.com couldn't fulfill our order for a digital camera in December.

Wild-caught cod from Costco was cooked in a sauce of sweet peppers, onion, tomato, garlic and olive oil, above, and served with mashed sweet potatoes, below.

One sauce, three meals

For the cod, I used a food-processor attachment on my blender to puree sweet peppers, tomato, onion, garlic cloves, tomato sauce and lime juice, then poured the mixture into a non-stick pan with a cover.

I added extra-virgin olive oil, dried Italian seasonings, some red-pepper flakes and black pepper before turning up the heat.

I cut up the fillets, squeezed more lime juice over them and sprinkled on Costco's Organic No-Salt Seasoning.

They cooked in the bubbling sauce in about 10 to 12  minutes.

A breakfast of fish, egg and sweet potatoes.

For breakfast today, I had the last piece of fish, some mashed sweet potato and a simple egg-white omelet with grated cheese.

Tonight, I'll add leftover tomato sauce, heat up the sweet pepper mixture and use it to dress a pound of Trader Joe's Organic Whole Wheat Spaghetti.

Trader Joe's v. Costco

Although the Trader Joe's in Paramus is much smaller than the Hackensack Costco, it manages to carry a few items I can't find at the cavernous warehouse store.

A box of Spanish clementines was $5.99. Sliced yogurt cheese with jalapeno peppers was $4.79.

Uncured, antibiotic-free bacon and uncured hot dogs were $4.49 each.

And 1-pound packages of organic whole-wheat spaghetti and fusilli were $1.39 each.   

Sweet potatoes are a holiday item at Costco, but Trader Joe's has them year-round for 85 cents a pound.

A half-gallon of Joe's vanilla soy milk and 32 ounces of organic plain yogurt were $2.99 each.

New ways to prepare fish, Part II

Wild-caught cod in a sweet pepper-tomato sauce with mashed yams and squash.

My wife filled the blender with cut-up sweet peppers, whole garlic cloves, onion and a beefsteak tomato, then had to run out to do an errand.

I took over, squeezing juice from one and a half big lemons into the blender, and used the slow "Chop" setting to puree everything.

I poured the sauce into a non-stick pan, added a large can of organic tomato sauce from Costco Wholesale and about a half-cup of extra-virgin olive oil, and turned on the stove.

Meanwhile, I seasoned and cut up fresh wild-caught cod fillets -- $7.99 a pound at Costco -- and when the sauce was bubbling gently, put the pieces in a non-stick pan, covered it and turned up the flame.

I used lemon juice and Costco's Organic No-Salt Seasoning on the raw fish.

The fish turned white and was cooked through in 10 to 12 minutes.

   

We ate the cod with mashed Korean sweet yams, Kabocha squash and garlic cloves with butter substitute, olive oil and more no-salt seasoning.

 

We boil the yams with their skin and the squash with the dark-green exterior.

 

We didn't add tomato sauce to the lemony sweet-pepper sauce for fish the last time we made it.

But on Tuesday night, I re-heated 4 cups of leftover sweet pepper-tomato sauce, added a drained can of organic diced tomatoes and some red-pepper flakes, and used that to dress a half-pound of Trader Joe's Organic Whole Wheat Spaghetti.

Whole wheat spaghetti in a lemony sweet pepper-tomato sauce.

 

The cod and spaghetti dinners ended with bowls of Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix dressed simply in extra-virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Related article

• Two new ways to prepare fish

Two new ways to prepare fish

Roasted whole sea bass stuffed with lemon and garlic.

We use the roast/convection oven setting.

My wife dazzled me last week with a sweet-pepper, onion and garlic sauce for flounder fillets, and roasted whole sea bass stuffed with lemon and garlic.

The fillets were $7.99 a pound at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack, and the sea bass were $5.99 a pound at H Mart, the Korean supermarket in Englewood.

Sea bass seem to have fewer bones and more flesh than some other whole fish, including red snapper and striped bass.

For the sauce, my wife cut up 2 sweet peppers and an onion, and put them in a blender with bottled lemon juice.

Tastes better than it looks. Flounder with sweet-pepper sauce, right.

The purée went into a non-stick pan with a couple of ounces of olive oil, and they were heated to a gentle boil.

I seasoned the flounder with the juice from a Meyer Lemon and Organic No-Salt Seasoning from Costco, and placed the fillets in the sauce in two layers before covering the pan and turning up the heat to medium.

The fillets were ready in 20 minutes. The same sauce can be used with pasta, especially If you add a drained can of diced tomatoes or tomato sauce.

For the sea bass, my wife trimmed lemon slices and peeled garlic, stuffed them in the cavity, and seasoned the fish inside and out. She also scored the flesh in three places on each side.

She roasted the small fish in the oven at 375 degrees for 30 minutes.