Riding the price roller coaster at my Costco Wholesale warehouse

The price of Kirkland Signature Wild Alaskan Smoked Sockeye Salmon rose by more than $3 -- to $18.89 for a 1-pound package -- but it wasn't the only recent increase at Costco Wholesale.

Editor's note: Today, I discuss the up-and-down prices at Costco Wholesale, a new frozen vegetable blend and an old Fort Lee diner that has gone upscale.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Another one of my favorite foods -- the 3-pound bag of raw almonds sold at Costco Wholesale -- is more expensive.

We stopped buying roasted almonds and other nuts with salt; roast raw, salt-free almonds at home and dust them with Saigon Ground Cinnamon from Costco.

They are a favorite snack.

But the 3-pound bag of U.S. No. 1 raw almonds was $14.49 on Jan. 23 at my Costco in Hackensack, compared to $12.99 on Dec. 3, 2013.

A little Kirkland Signature Basil Pesto goes a long way to boost the flavor of tofu in a takeout dinner salad, above, or two organic brown eggs from Costco Wholesale,  served with organic brown rice, below.

Up and down

Prices seem to go up and down at Costco, but at the far smaller Trader Joe's, prices stay flat.

For example, Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix at Costco is $4.49, $4.79 or $4.99 for a 1-pound tub, and the price fluctuates.

The price for other produce, such as Sunset-brand tomatoes, also varies, but 3 pounds of bananas at $1.39 is a constant and the lowest price I've found in North Jersey.

Three products with lower prices than before are Jarlsberg Lite Deli Thin Sliced Reduced Fat Swiss Cheese (2 pounds for $8.59), salted cod from Canada (2 pounds for $11.99) and fresh mahi-mahi fillets ($5.99 a pound).

On Tuesday, my wife bought 10 pounds of organic carrots at Costco for the usual price of $7.99, and 10 pounds of sweet potatoes for the same price.

Asian-style veggies

A new frozen product, Kirkland Signature Stir-Fry Vegetable Blend, is $7.59 for a 5.5-pound bag that is labeled product of "USA, Canada, China, Mexico and Thailand."

Costco charges only $6.79 for a 5-pound bag of organic mixed vegetables.

The stir-fry blend turns mushy if you cook it in a covered pan, and when I followed the instructions and stir-fried the broccoli, snap peas and other vegetables in a wok for 5 minutes, they were still cold and had to be heated up in the microwave.

A cup of organic coffee at Chillers Grill in Fort Lee is $1.99, plus tax, with at least one free refill. It doesn't measure up to a good cup of non-organic coffee. The upscale diner at 2191 Fletcher Ave. replaced the Red Oak Diner.

No-recipe home cooking in photos

Breakfast salad: Organic spring mix with beefsteak tomato, za'atar thyme mixture, and reduced fat cheese; cabbage kimchi, olives and canned-fish salad (yellowfin tuna, pink salmon and sardines).

Small mustard greens with a bottle of Mexican green salsa.

Mustard greens plated with half of a mahi-mahi fillet cooked in spicy green salsa or salsa verde and a sweet potato made in 6 minutes in a microwave (speed-cook setting).

An egg-white omelet with reduced-fat cheese, white anchovies and coarsely ground Aleppo pepper plated with leftover sugar pea shoots.

Fresh greens


I cook greens, fresh broccoli and French green beans the same way, and they are ready in under 5 minutes.


First, cut and wash your greens, then blanch in a covered pot with boiling water for 1 to 2 minutes.


Using the cover, drain the pot and put it back on the stove with no flame under it.


You can drizzle the greens with extra-virgin olive oil, sprinkle on a little salt and add seasonings such as powdered garlic and black pepper.


Or, you can add a little soy sauce and sesame oil, and no-salt organic seasoning. You're done.


Fish in green sauce


Pour half of a bottle of spicy Mexican salsa verde into a large, non-stick pot and warm it up. Add any kind of wild-caught fish fillets, including frozen mahi-mahi or Alaskan salmon.


Pour the rest of the sauce over the fish and squeeze the juice of one or two limes into the pot. Cover and cook for 15 to 30 minutes, depending on whether the fish is fresh of frozen.


You also can cook a whole fish this way. Slash each side in three places with a sharp knife to help you judge when the fish is done.


You can serve fish in green sauce with a sweet potato, organic brown rice with lentils, made in an electric rice cooker; or whole-wheat pasta with bottled sauce.


I reserve the green sauce for use with omelets or eggs fried sunny side up.


Canned fish salad


Empty canned fish and oil or water into a plastic container, add chopped celery or sweet pepper and then flavor with Dijon mustard, fresh lime or lemon juice and powdered cumin to taste.


Cover and refrigerate.


Sources


H Mart or other Asian supermarkets are great sources for a wide variety of fresh greens, including spinach, collard, mustard, bok choy and Chinese broccoli.


Costco Wholesale usually has fresh wild-caught haddock, flounder and Pacific cod, but when it doesn't, I buy frozen mahi-mahi or salmon in the freezer section.


Costco also sells Kirkland Signature Organic No Salt Seasoning, a blend of 21 spices and other ingredients.


ShopRite and Hackensack Market carry Mexican green salsa from Goya and La Costena. A 16-ounce bottle is enough to prepare as much as 2 pounds of fish.

Related article

• Costco's food and prices are the best revenge

Where dinner and a movie are a snap

Image via Wikipedia

Spend your money on a good dinner, not the junk peddled by AMC.

A 16-screen theater and a spacious restaurant with an eclectic menu make it easy to enjoy dinner and a movie, especially when they are next to each other.


We had never eaten at Grand Lux Cafe, which has been open for more than three years at Westfield Garden State Plaza in Paramus, just steps from the AMC theater.


The crowds make just seeing a movie hard enough. Parking at the mall is frustrating, as are long waits on line to buy tickets.


On Friday night, we counted on the holiday weekend to thin out patrons, and we were right. We got a space after only a few minutes and were seated right away in the restaurant a little after 5 in the afternoon.


Grand Lux Cafe has more than 700 seats, if you include a terrace overlooking the parking lot, so it's probably the largest restaurant in North Jersey.


The elaborate decor includes lots of black granite; soaring, Egyptian-style columns; and in the lounge, a floor-to-ceiling back bar.


How do they retrieve bottles of French champagne on the top shelf, probably more than 20 feet high?


The menu is huge, ranging across many ethnic cuisines, and made-to-order desserts require a 30-minute notice.


The hostess offered me and my wife a table in the dining room or a booth in the lounge. We took the latter, and pressed for time, ordered two entrees and a glass of wine.


My wife's shrimp scampi ($19.95) were actually a half-dozen big prawns prepared with white wine, lemon and garlic, and linguine. She took home leftovers for our son.


I ordered wood-grilled mahi-mahi with mashed sweet potatoes and sauteed fresh spinach ($22.95).


The portion was generous, with two small fillets, rosy inside, as requested, plus lots of creamy sweet potatoes and wilted spinach. 


The fish was moist, but the fillets and side dishes could have been hotter.


I drank a glass of cabernet sauvignon ($6.95) and finished with black coffee ($2.95). 


One turnoff was the granite wall of our booth. It was dirty and there were a couple of particles stuck to it. Were they food or worse? 


When I pointed this out, the waiter offered to clean it on the spot, but we wanted to make a 6 p.m. movie, so declined.


If you have leftovers, as we did, the movie ticket taker will send you back to the restaurant, which will store your food in a refrigerator until you come by for it on the way home.


The first Grand Lux Cafe opened in Las Vegas, from the founder of The Cheesecake Factory restaurants.


This was the third and best of the chain restaurants we have tried recently. Others were The Cheesecake Factory in Hackensack and Joe's Crab Shack in Clifton.


Grand Lux Cafe, One Garden State Plaza, 
Paramus; 201-909-0399. 
Web site

Party atmosphere, disappointing food

Image by TheRogue via Flickr

At Joe's Crab Shack, the fish and shrimp are a lot more satisfying.

Eat at Joe's for the shore vibe, festive atmosphere and dancing servers, but don't expect much from the signature crab dishes.

If you like noise and loud music, you'll find plenty of both at Joe's Crab Shack in Clifton, where dozens of the young, enthusiastic servers drop everything and dance every 45 minutes as disco lights revolve overhead.

Maybe the dancing and the servers' colorful T-shirts are designed to distract you from the ultimately disappointing crab buckets and steam pots at this chain restaurant. 

We started with cups of lobster bisque ($3.69 each) and I had a side Cesar salad ($3.19) before we shared two entrees, the Caribbean Feast ($19.89) and the Crab Daddy Feast ($29.99). 

The Sea Turtle Sundae was $7.49, and a cup of weak black coffee was $2.49. I declined a free refill.

With iced tea and lemonade, and a $12 tip, I ended up spending nearly $100.

My wife and son liked the lobster bisque and lemonade, but I thought the thick soup tasted more of corn than of crab.

Joe's calls some of its entrees "feasts," but take that with a grain of salt. 

     

I found the Caribbean Feast the most satisfying, with its juicy fillet of mahi-mahi, shrimp prepared two ways, and rice with pineapple and big chunks of carrot and other vegetables.

The Crab Daddy Feast combines Dungeness, Snow and King Crabs in a bucket with an ear of sweet corn and two boiled, skin-on potatoes.

All of the crab legs (not claws, as I wrote earlier) had one thing in common: They were soft and hard to crack, so it was a struggle to get the crab meat out of them. I ended up eating only slightly more crab than shell.

And the crab I did eat wasn't that tasty -- it bordered on being dry --  despite the spicy boil we ordered. 

I had asked the waitress if she knew the weight of the crab in the bucket, and she said each of two crab clusters weighed 18 ounces and there were two King Crab legs. 

Of course, I didn't have a scale at the table, but there seemed to be less crab than that.

We plan to return to Joe's for the twin-lobster steam pot, and to try more of the fish and shrimp. But we'll steer clear of those pesky crabs.

There are other nearby food options as well, including Zinburger and It's Greek to Me.

Joe's Crab Shack, 405 Allwood Road,

in The Promenade Shops at Clifton shopping center, 

Clifton; 973-777-5114. No reservations taken.

Web site: www.joescrabshack.com

Dinner out is snowed out

Image by taivasalla via Flickr

There were only a few inches of snow on the ground when we set out around 4 this afternoon for Sanducci's Trattoria, which has moved to a new location in River Edge. There were lights out front, but when I drove down into the rear parking lot and took an elevator up one floor, the place was dark.

We wanted to try the new Sanducci's, because it is a BYO that offers lots of choice: an all-you-can eat dinner buffet for $16.95, a three-course, early bird special, with tea or coffee, also for $16.95; a long a la carte menu and pizza. 

We ate at the original location a few years ago and I was impressed with a wonderful squid-ink pasta.

Costco to the rescue

Rather than try to find a restaurant that was open, we returned home and I dove into the freezer, unearthing frozen mahi-mahi loins and Dr. Praeger's spinach-and-potato cakes, both from Costco in Hackensack.

I steamed the meaty fish with sake, sesame oil, citrus marinade and soy sauce, and put the spinach cakes in the oven for 20 minutes. It was a quick, filling dinner.

More frozen seafood

I was delighted with the king crab legs, farmed prawns and sea scallops I picked up at Costco on Friday and served for Christmas dinner the next day. All were previously frozen, but they were as tender as could be after we prepared them.

I cut up the crab legs, which are cooked and more than a foot long, and steamed them for less than 10 minutes. My wife shelled the shrimp, which are deveined, and I cooked them quickly with stewed tomatoes, extra-virgin olive oil and Italian seasoning. I just sauteed the scallops in olive oil and seasoned them. 

Sanducci's Trattoria, 620 Kinderkamack Road, 
River Edge; 201-599-0600.  Web site:

Sanducci's Trattoria

Mahi-mahi with penne in a tomato-yogurt sauce

Image via Wikipedia

Mahi-mahi is also called dolphin fish. This one was caught off the coast of Jamaica.

Preparing dinner on Sunday night, I was trying for a creamy sauce, like the one I saw on a cooking segment on morning TV, but I also wanted to substitute mahi-mahi for the chicken used and yogurt for light sour cream. This is what you'll need to feed three:


1. Three small mahi-mahi fillets or other wild-caught fish. (I used frozen fish sold at Costco under the Kirkland brand.)


2. A half-pound of penne. (I used leftover spinach penne from Italy I found at Whole Foods Market.)

3. Half a bottle of 32-ounce pasta sauce. (I used leftover Fairway Market sauce with roasted garlic.)


3. About four tablespoons of organic, low-fat yogurt. (I used Stonyfield Farm yogurt from ShopRite.)


The TV chef also added chicken stock to the sauce, but I found that made it too thin, and I won't use it next time.


Preparation is simple. Bring water to a boil and add the penne, which will take about 10 minutes for al dente.

After about three minutes, empty the pasta sauce into a second pan with dried Italian seasonings and dried garlic; add the four tablespoons of yogurt, mix well, cover and bring to a boil over medium heat.


I thawed the meaty fillets, which were less than two inches wide, and sliced them into half inch pieces. I sprinkled them with salt and black pepper. When I put them in the sauce, I turned up the heat. They turned white and firmed up in about five minutes.


Drain the penne and add to the fish and sauce, combining well. I served this with a salad and wine.

Enjoy.

Whole sea bass in Mexican salsa verde

Image by lorises via Flickr

Two ingredients in Mexican green salsa are tomatillos, bottom, and cilantro.

This wonderful main dish couldn't be simpler. All you need is:

1. Fresh fish.

2. A bottle of green salsa.

3. A  lemon. 

Preparation is minimal, two whole fish will cook in under 30 minutes and if you have leftover pasta or rice, all you need to do is make a salad to complete this nutritious meal.


I found fresh, wild-caught sea bass at H Mart, the Korean supermarket in Little Ferry (with branches in Englewood, Fort Lee and Ridgefield). I bought two fish -- to feed three -- that weighed about 2.5 pounds before cleaning at $5.99 a pound. 

Red snapper or other wild-caught whole fish is great, too, and of course, you could use fillets of wild-caught cod, flounder or other fresh or frozen fish.

All I did with the fish is sprinkle it with a little salt inside and out, stuff it with fresh parsley from garden (you can skip this step) and slit the body in three places. 

I used a 16.7-ounce bottle of La Costena Green Mexican Salsa, marked "Medium" spicy, available for $2.99 at Hackensack Market on Passaic Street and many ShopRites. Goya and other companies make a similar product. La Costena's red salsa is good, too.


I poured some of the salsa -- made from tomatillos and jalapeno peppers -- into the bottom of the pan, placed the fish on top and poured the remaining sauce in, plus the juice of one lemon, and covered it with the clear-glass top.

I cooked it over medium heat for about 20 minutes (in boiling salsa), but 30 minutes will ensure that it is cooked thoroughly. No need to turn over the fish. You'll have plenty of sauce for that leftover rice; we had organic brown rice left over.


I ate my meal in courses, as they do in Italy: leftover bow-tie pasta in tomato sauce, the meaty middle section of one of the sea bass and then a big salad with cucumber, tomato and organic spring mix. Easy, filling and delicious.

Quail eggs

Quail eggs showed up in the produce section recently at H Mart in Little Ferry -- 18 for $2.99. I fry four or five of the small eggs at a time, and their taste is similar to other eggs. I used a sharp knife to crack the black-spotted shells near the ends to avoid breaking the yolks and poured the contents into hot olive oil.

I also found Clifford-brand Fusion tomatoes from Canada that are grown without chemical fertilizers. A one-pound package of small tomatoes --red, green, purple and yellow -- was $1.99, and they have been great in my salads.

Fresh wild salmon run ends

I believe I've seen the last of the fresh wild salmon fillets in the fish case at Costco in Hackensack -- they were available for about four months. This week, I bought Kirkland-brand frozen sockeye salmon and mahi-mahi fillets, both wild caught. 

Our son chickens out

Image via Wikipedia

Nearly three months ago, we pledged to stop eating meat -- chicken, pork, beef and lamb. I've lost a little weight and spend less time and money in food stores. But our 13-year-old son is tiring of fish and really misses meat.

Awakening from an afternoon nap Monday, I smelled something unfamiliar and couldn't imagine what my wife cooked for dinner. When I got downstairs, I found out: jerk chicken legs for our son and mahi-mahi with onion and tomato for us, along with rice and salad. The Readington Farms antibiotic-free chicken (ShopRite) didn't tempt me at all, but our son loved his meal, bones and all.


It was the third time he broke the pledge. When he was served a hamburger on a flight to Jamaica in March, he ate it instead of asking for something else. A couple of weekends ago, he ordered his favorite version of won ton soup with roast pork at Wondee's in Hackensack.

Tonight, I'll serve a "meatloaf" made from wheat gluten and soy in barbecue sauce and ask my wife to make potato salad with hard-boiled egg and mixed vegetables.

(Photo: Dolphin fish, or mahi-mahi, caught off the coast of Jamaica.)

Monotony is setting in

Image via Wikipedia

My 12-year-old son was the first to use the word "monotony" to describe the meatless, fish-heavy meals we have been preparing at home for the past two weeks. Today, that word echoed in my head as I made my weekly trip to Costco in search of more variety.

I picked up Boca-brand soy burgers and frozen Maryland crab cakes at the Hackensack store, but passed on frozen mahi-mahi fillets and frozen Icelandic fish and chips, because I still have lots of frozen Pacific flounder and frozen Alaskan sockeye salmon, which I steamed in an Asian sauce and served with instant mashed potatoes and salad last night.

I walked warily past the Australian lamb I used to love to see what was in the fresh fish case, and startled a woman with a warning about the farmed salmon she was looking at. Damn. No fresh, wild-caught haddock, thick, meaty fillets that would be great fried -- my son's favorite preparation.

So, it looks like Maryland crab cakes (without the garnish shown in the photo above) and lots of frozen vegetables for dinner tonight. I'm not proud. If you have an idea for a meatless dinner, please pass it along.

A celebratory meal in the city

Billie Holiday via last.fm

I'm celebrating my birthday this week with meals at restaurants familiar and new.

Last night, I had some terrific fish at Blue Ribbon Sushi Bar & Grill, across from the Time-Warner Center in Manhattan. Before dining there, I looked over the $275 tasting menus at Per Se. I was surprised that service (tip) is included.

At Blue Ribbon, I started with a crunchy seaweed salad ($7) and a trio of sushi rolls ($16.50) -- Spanish mackerel, California and tuna, which I eat only a few times a year because of its high mercury content. The rice in the rolls was warm and the tuna melted in my mouth.

My entree was juicy, pan-roasted mahi-mahi ($28), also known as dolphin fish. It was served on a thick bed of  julienned vegetables and crowned by a large tangle of  thread-like, fried carrot -- how did they do that? Unfortunately, the fish was bathed in a plum-butter sauce that had no plum taste and I blame the dim lighting for my not noticing that on the menu description (I try to avoid butter). If there is a next time, I'll ask for a soy-sake sauce.

I washed it all down with a 22-ounce bottle of Kirin Ichiban beer ($10). The restaurant is windowless and uses paper napkins. When you are led to your table, you'll hear shouted greetings from the five sushi chefs. The sound system has songs by Billie Holiday and Ray Charles, a fitting appetizer for the jazz concert I attended later.

For commentary on food coverage in The Record, see:

http://eyeontherecord.blogspot.com/