Would you pay $40 for one ostrich egg?

At Whole Foods Market in Paramus on Thursday, shoppers were offered samples of scrambled ostrich egg.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

I do a lot of gawking when I'm in Whole Foods Market in Paramus -- and not just at the prices.

On Thursday, I saw a California-raised ostrich egg for sale in the produce department.

I wouldn't pay $39.99 for such a huge egg. Would you?

I loved the big-yolk duck eggs sold at Goffle Road Poultry Farm in Wyckoff, but stopped buying them when the price shot up to about $2 an egg. 

At Whole Foods, a cook offered samples of scrambled ostrich egg. He said the yolk was bigger than his fist.

Guess what? It tasted like a chicken egg.

It's a fish-eat-fish world.

At the fish counter, I gawked at the heads of a grouper and a monkfish displayed on a bed of ice.

The monkfish (at right in the photo) came from Barnegat Light, one of New Jersey's premier fishing ports.

Fresh, wild-caught coho salmon fillet was $16.99, compared to the $10.99 a pound my wife paid on Wednesday at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack.

I bought frozen, antibiotic-free chicken backs and necks for $1.29 a pound and frozen, organic chicken feet for $3.99 a pound (all for soup).

A $5 lunch comes with a catch

Bowl of Sushi by Hiroshige. (Credit: Wikipedia)

Editor's note: Today's buffet includes a visit to a restaurant in Hazlet, the Jamaican national dish, how to make an open-face omelet, shopping at Trader Joe's, another Korean meal and a brief discussion of 'road food.'

Around midday at Park East, a restaurant and sushi bar in Hazlet, you'll be handed a card listing more than a dozen $5 lunches.

But if you don't eat meat, you'll be disappointed that most of them include beef, pork or chicken. All come with a side of potato chips.

Fish and chips

I asked the waiter to name the "catch" in one non-meat offering, Corona Battered Fish Sandwich, and whether I could substitute something for the potato chips.

He said the fish was cod, but that if I wanted salad, coleslaw or anything else, I would have to pay a $3 supplement, as listed on the back of the card.  

I go vegetarian

I then asked about the a la carte vegetables ($4 each), and whether the kitchen used butter -- another artery clogger I try to avoid. He said he believed they were steamed.

I ordered the Chef's Vegetables and Sauteed Spinach, a cup of black coffee and water (a total of $10.34 -- $2.34 for coffee).

An acquaintance came in 10 minutes later, sat down at my table and ordered the Chicken Parmigiana Sandwich with potato chips ($5). The hero was the standard size.

Is that butter?

The sauteed spinach tasted wonderful. Was that "buttery taste" from butter?

At the bottom of my small bowl of zucchini, carrots and string beans was a puddle of ... butter? 

However, the place seems serious about sushi. I saw an employee ducking into the back of the sushi bar with a plastic tub holding two or three whole fish.

Park East, 3352 Route 35, Hazlet; 1-732-739-2002.

Web site: Go for the sushi

 

In my home, a pan of Jamaican Ackee and Saltfish goes quickly.

When we said we would buy 24 cans, ShopRite cut the price further.

We used salted Alaskan pollock from Costco Wholesale, instead of more expensive cod.

Many Jamaican-Americans rely on visiting relatives to bring them an odd tree fruit called ackee.

Though it is called a fruit, ackee isn't sweet. 

But its blandness is a perfect foil to the salted fish and sweet and hot peppers in Ackee and Saltfish, a Jamaican breakfast served with boiled, soft green bananas.

We usually buy our ackee in a can, but quality varies and so does the price -- $8.99 to $14.99 for 19 ounces of the fruit in salt water, what you'd use to make a pan of Ackee and Saltfish, the national dish.

We got a discount on a case of 24 cans at Hackensack Market on Passaic Street, but recently, my wife was told the discount is no longer available.

Ackee on sale

The other day, she called from the Rochelle Park  ShopRite and said 19-ounce cans of Grace-brand Ackees were on sale for $9.99 each. 

She saw the same brand for more than $14 a can at Hackensack Market.

I suggested she ask ShopRite's manager if she could get a discount on 24 cans, and he agreed. We paid $9 a can -- a savings of $59.76 on the case, according to the receipt.

(Originally, I wrote she got the deal at the Englewood store, where she shops most of the time.)
 

Open-face omelet

Heat up a couple of ounces of extra-virgin olive oil and add liquid egg whites.

Add slices of smoked wild Alaskan sockeye salmon.

Add a slice of cheese, such as yogurt cheese with jalapenos.

Tip pan if liquid egg remains on top of omelet and cook it on the sides of the hot pan.

Making an open-face omelet allows you to add more ingredients than if you tried to make a folded omelet, and you never have to turn it over and risk ruining it.

Use a non-stick pan and a high flame to heat up a couple of ounces of extra-virgin olive oil, then turn down the heat to finish the omelet and produce a nicely browned bottom.

I use a generous pinch of Aleppo red pepper from Fattal's Syrian Bakery in Paterson on all of my egg dishes.

The liquid egg whites and smoked wild salmon, both from Costco Wholesale, already contain salt.

Trader Joe's

I bought sliced Yogurt Cheese with Jalapenos at Trader Joe's in Paramus ($4.79 for 12 ounces).

On the same trip, I picked up five 1-pound packages of Organic Whole Wheat Fusilli (spirals), Penne and Spaghetti ($1.39 each).

Liters of 100% Italian Extra-Virgin Olive Oil and 100% Spanish Extra-Virgin Olive Oil were $5.99 each.

I also bought antibiotic- and preservative-free bacon and hot dogs for $3.99 and $4.29, respectively.

A 64-ounce bottle of Organic Lemonade was $2.99, compared to two 96-ounce bottles of Organic Lemonade for $7.69 at Costco Wholesale.

Costco Wholesale Logo ( Wikipedia)

Food notes

We had another good meal at Muk Eun Ji, a Korean restaurant that matches or beats competitors' prices for barbecue, soft-tofu stew and other traditional dishes.

Barbecue portions are 8 ounces. The restaurant also is known for serving tangy, 1-year-old imported  kimchi ($3.99). 

My wife and son selected two meats for their barbecue meal -- sliced pork belly in wine ($12.99) and bulgogi or  marinated, thinly sliced beef ($16.99) -- and cooked them on a table-top grill.

They preferred the beef to the pork, which they said was dry.

I had tofu stew ($9.99) and we shared a stone-bowl vegetarian bibimbap, a rice-based dish ($11.99) that allows you to adjust spiciness with gojuchang, a red-pepper paste in a squeeze bottle.

We especially liked the soundtrack of American rock-and-roll songs.

Muk Eun Ji, 217 Broad Ave., Palisades Park; 

201-363-0600.

Organic chicken feet

Although I've stopped eating meat, I've been trying to get my wife to buy naturally raised pork, beef and other items from Whole Food Market in Paramus.

For years, she bought mystery chicken feet from ShopRite for one of the soups she makes.

Earlier this month, she found organic chicken feet at Whole Foods for $2.99 a pound and organic chicken necks for $3.99 a pound.

In the store's freezer, I've also found organic beef bones with marrow and organic goat meat on the bone.

'Road food' 

Recently, in the truck lanes of the New Jersey Turnpike, I saw a Costco Wholesale tractor-trailer being passed by a ShopRite 18-wheeler.

A tractor-trailer from Perdue lagged -- just as the antibiotic-filled chicken does in quality.

On Cedar Lane in Teaneck, I saw the driver of a red Coca-Cola truck lean out of his cab's open window and spit onto the pavement below.

A couple of blocks later, stopped in traffic again, he pinched his nostrils between his fingers and expelled the contents of his nose.

I'm glad I stopped drinking the teeth-rotting beverage in 1975.

Which scale is supposed to come first?

Image by Joe Lencioni via Flickr

Fairway Market in Paramus usually has a sale on a pound of coffee beans for $5.99.  Not too many months ago, the sale price of a pound of beans was $4.99.

I have been buying whole fish for years, but encountered a first the other day at Fairway Market in Paramus.

This branch of the New York-based supermarket company has a great fish counter, but prices also are among the highest. I saw one woman pay $11.99 or $12.99 a pound for flounder fillets.

However, whole whiting and whole porgy were being sold at a low $3.99 a pound on Monday. Knowing my wife and son were planning to eat beef for dinner, I asked the fish monger to clean one porgy for me, leaving the head and tail on.

Usually, the whole fish is weighed first, then scaled, gutted and cleaned. But he went straight to the cleaning counter. When he weighed it and packed it up, the sticker said $4.03.

So, here I am thinking I was getting away with not paying for a heavier, pre-cleaned and pre-gutted fish. But when I prepared my dinner, plated half the fish and began eating, I discovered that he had done a poor job of scaling, and I had to pick about a half-dozen scales out of my mouth. That's no bargain.

I guess you could call my dinner, "Porgy and Mess."

I drove to Fairway to buy four liters of the store-brand extra-virgin olive oil from Italy at $4.99 each (regular $8.99). Unlike ShopRite's extra-virgin olive oil from Italy, this one isn't "first cold pressed," just "cold pressed."

I also picked up two pounds of French roast coffee beans and had them ground ($5.99 a pound).

Organic ground beef

My food purchases at Costco in Hackensack on Monday included a pound of organic spinach ($3.99); two pounds of herbicide-free, Sunset-brand Campari tomatoes ($5.49); and three, one-pound packages of Verde Farms organic ground beef, with 15% fat content ($12.99).

The Verde Farms package says "no added" antibiotics and growth hormones, so I've e-mailed the company for clarification. The beef comes from the U.S., Canada and Australia.

Two pounds of domestic pistachios -- shelled -- were $19.99. I couldn't find the ones in the shell I usually buy.

I also exchanged a pair of Sketchers exercise shoes my wife found too small ($49.99 for women, $46.99 for men).

Whole Foods' chicken feet

My wife prepares soup with chicken feet and has been relying for years on the mystery frozen chicken feet sold at ShopRite and Hackensack Market. But last year, we asked and found that the butcher's counter at Whole Foods Market in Paramus stocks frozen feet from organic chickens -- sometimes.

More times than not, unfortunately, the Paramus store is out of chicken feet, which also is a popular item in Chinese cuisine. I don't recall the price, but my wife and son say they notice the difference in taste between the organic and conventional feet.

Puzzling pricing

My wife picked up four, one-pound packages of Barilla thick spaghetti at ShopRite in Paramus for 77 cents each on Tuesday (limit of four) -- far less than during the recently concluded 40th anniversary Can Can Sale.

Bar Keepers Friend

I ordered a dozen cans of Bar Keepers Friend cleanser for the Calphalon stainless-steel pots that I've had trouble cleaning, but when they arrived on Tuesday, I told the UPS man to return them to the company. I felt buyer's remorse over the $11-plus shipping charge for about $18 in product.

My wife bought a 12-ounce can at ShopRite for $2.69, but couldn't find one marked "Cookware" that has a grease-cutting ingredient. Still, I cleaned one of my trouble pots this morning and, finally, it looks clean.

From chicken feet to oysters on the half shell

Image by Gudlyf via Flickr

Organic apples at Whole Foods Market look a lot better than these do.

I never know what I'll find at Whole Foods Market in Paramus. It's a wonderful store and a great experience to just roam around, especially if you shop carefully and look for sale items, and it's rarely so crowded that you feel rushed.


But as with most other food stores, it's hard to make sense of what goes on sale and when. I was in there one Tuesday, when wild Alaskan coho salmon fillets were on sale for one day at $7.99 a pound -- matching the price at Costco, which is as frenetic as Whole Foods is calm.


When a friend went looking for that salmon a few days later, the price was $10.99 a pound, also called a sale, and her husband complained the fish monger left the pin bones in. Next Tuesday, 6-ounce cups of Stonyfield Farm organic yogurt will be on sale, again for one day, at 10 for $4.


The Monday before last, I had a couple of hours to kill and drove over to the store, which is a little more than a mile from my home. My chief complaint about the store is the lack of free samples.


I bought a cup of black coffee ($1.71) and an 8-ounce container of vegetable soup ($2.99), which needed salt and pepper, and grabbed a bag of oyster crackers, as the woman in front of me did. I was charged 29 cents, but don't recall seeing a price sign; I thought they came with the soup.


I did better with oysters on the half shell. Over at the wonderful fish counter, "local," wild-caught Bluepoint oysters were selling for 99 cents each. I asked for six, and they were shucked and packed on ice in two plastic containers. At home, I squeezed on lemon and ate them right from the containers. (Some stores refuse to shuck oysters.)


One of my wife's specialties is chicken-foot soup, but I always recoil at what I imagine is the awful quality of the chicken feet she has purchased at ShopRite and Hackensack Market. After I nagged her mercilessly, she went to Whole Foods and found out it carries organic chicken feet for $3.49 a pound -- sometimes.


Last week, the Paramus store didn't have any, but the Whole Foods Market in Union Township did. It's called the Millburn-Union store, and we drove down for an unrelated reason. Besides the chicken feet, I bought organic Jona Gold apples for $1.49 a pound.


My other purchases in Paramus, along with the Bluepoint oysters, were organic red grapes, $1.99 a pound; a bottle of white zinfandel, $4.99; and organic green chard, $1.99.