Good buys on imported food

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ShopRite in Hackensack is having a four-day "price break" and there are deals on a couple of imported items, including extra-virgin olive oil from Italy and sparkling 100% juice from Spain. The sale at this and other ShopRites ends Saturday.


The sparkling juice from Spain comes in 750 milliliter bottles for $1.79 each with the store card, compared to the regular price of $2.29. There is a limit of four. Flavors include red grape, white grape, peach and apple -- all 100% juice -- and pomegranate-apple, which is not all juice.


The sparkling red grape is so thick and robust, I sometimes dilute it with plain seltzer or the white grape juice.


The ShopRite extra-virgin olive oil is exclusively from Italian olives, unlike others that blend oil from Italy and other countries, including Spain and Tunisia. A 1-liter bottle is $4.99, compared to the regular price of $7.99.


This is a great everyday oil, especially for salads and to moisten leftover pasta, but I also fry eggs in it.

Not all of ShopRite's imported items are on sale. Two that are being sold at full price are bread sticks and oversize, bronze-cut pasta, both from Italy.

The imported side of ShopRite

I really enjoy some of  the ShopRite-brand food items imported from Italy and Spain. Two of my favorites are the oversized artisan pasta and the sparkling 100% juices.

On Friday, I bought three packages of specialty pasta formed on bronze dies: barchette, rigatoni giganti and fusilloni (corkscrews), which come in 17.6-ounce bags. The first is a large boat-shaped shell, and the others are two- to two-and-a-half-inches long. They were on sale at the Hackensack ShopRite for $2.79 each with a store card. (The cooking time listed on the package can be optimistic, so you may have to boil them longer and watch them carefully.)

The sparkling juices from Spain include 100% red or white grape, peach and apple, and they are absolutely delightful. This stuff is so much better than flavored seltzer. They will be on sale Oct. 14-17 for $1.77 a bottle (24.5 ounces), with a limit of four, meaning I'll have to go to more than one ShopRite to get the dozen bottles I want.

Two other ShopRite imported items I've liked are Italian breadsticks and the lemon-flavored lady fingers (great with tea or espresso). I recently tried the canned artichokes from Spain, but they were waterlogged and a far cry from fresh artichokes, such as those I've had in the Spanish dish alcachofas con jamon (ham).