Boll weevils in rice, brown mangoes, moldy peaches

Lundberg Organic Brown Long Grain Rice is grown in California, but Della Organic from Costco Wholesale comes from Arkansas. Consumer Reports says some rice growers in the South use old cotton fields, where arsenic was applied to kill boll weevils, leaving traces of the poison in the rice crop.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

We're having a run of bad luck with spoiled food -- from boll weevils in organic brown rice to fruit not ripening or sprouting mold.

Most troublesome are the tiny beetles my wife found when she was preparing Della-brand Organic Long Grain Brown Rice from Costco Wholesale.

When she added chicken broth to the brown rice in an electric cooker, she saw live boll weevils floating to the top.

Old cotton fields?

I recall that when Della brown rice first appeared at my Hackensack Costco, I tried unsuccessfully to reach a company official to find out if it came from old cotton fields in Arkansas.

I stopped buying white rice grown in the South many years ago after Consumer Reports told readers about tests that found traces of arsenic from use of the poison to control boll weevils in cotton fields.

H Mart, the Korean supermarket chain, sells several brands of California-grown white rice, including the deeply discounted Kokuho Yellow Label.

Rice from Amazon

This year, I ordered California-grown Lundberg brown rice from Amazon.com when the Della brand disappeared from the shelves at Costco in Hackensack.

Then, when the Lundberg product finished, I bought another 12-pound bag of Della brown rice, and that's the one with the boll weevils.

This morning, I again ordered Lundberg Organic Brown Long Grain Rice from Amazon.com, even though it is more expensive (about $24 for six 2-pound bags).

Spoiling fruit

Last Sunday, I bought a box of eight jumbo mangoes from Brazil at H Mart in Little Ferry for $9.99.

When my wife cut open two of them, they were brown inside, and I plan to return the spoiled fruit for a full refund today.

A second batch of Jersey peaches from the Paramus ShopRite took days to ripen on the kitchen counter -- like the first -- and were mealy or not that sweet.

One got moldy and had to be thrown away.

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• Brown Rice helps Lower Blood Pressure

Wild salmon with ripe mango

Image via Wikipedia

Adding ripe mango to wild salmon makes for a sweet and savory meal.

The fresh, wild-caught fish came from the northwestern United States, but I found the other ingredients in my kitchen and garden.


I picked up another large fillet of wild sockeye salmon at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack on Monday ($7.99 a pound), and prepared it for dinner with lemon juice, coarsely ground Aleppo red pepper, chopped fresh herbs and slices of intensely sweet Champagne mango.


I took out two rare portions after about 10 minutes in a 375-degree oven and the rest cooked through in 15 minutes.


The sweet mango was delicious hot and contrasted nicely with the bite of the red pepper and the peppery chopped basil, oregano and rosemary.


The skin-on fillet weighed about 1.75 pounds and yielded seven portions, which I placed in a baking pan lined with aluminum foil that was coated with cooking spray. I placed the mango between the portions.


Image via Wikipedia
First, I squeezed on lemon juice, then added the ground red pepper, then topped the portions with the chopped herbs. I used mango, because I couldn't find ripe peaches at ShopRite or Costco.


I ate my fish with a big salad, and my wife and son had theirs with leftover yellow rice and sliced cucumber. 


I've been having a love affair with the wild salmon that has been available at Costco since late May. It makes a delicious, nutritious meal I can put on the table in 15  minutes or less.


On my trip to Costco, I also picked up 6 pounds of large white-flesh peaches from California ($8.99), 5.5 pounds of large Gala apples from Washington State ($6.99),  2 pounds of Roma hothouse tomatoes from Canada ($3.29), 1 pound of Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix ($4.79) and Manchego sheep's milk cheese from Spain ($8.29 a pound).