Bright spots on the road to recovery

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The good news is that my weight has dipped below 190 pounds (bathrobe off). But the bad news is  I still don't have my old appetite back and medication continues to affect my taste buds.


My other vital signs this morning were blood pressure, 117 over 71; heart rate, 75; oxygen saturation, 97%; and temperature, 96.6 degrees. I am 5 feet 9 inches.


I'm more or less following the diet I stuck to for about a year before my Sept. 16, 2011, open-heart surgery -- losing about 30 pounds -- but straying occasionally with a slice of pizza or toast with peanut butter, jelly, and thinly sliced cucumber as a reward for surviving.


This morning, I had an egg-white omelet filled with small, egg-like seaweed topping from Ikea and oozing with marinated fresh mozzarella cheese from Costco Wholesale.


On the side, I has two plumb tomatoes, sprinkled with za'atar thyme mixture from Fattal's Bakery, and mixed Italian olives from Jerry's Gourmet & More. I drank hot organic black tea (Newman's Own from Amazon.com). 


For dinner Monday night, I had leftovers from Sunday night: Fresh wild Alaskan coho salmon fillet from Costco, with lemon juice, chopped garden herbs and Aleppo red pepper (Fattal's); baked yams and a salad of organic spring mix, plus a glass of wine.


Recent breakfasts have included leftover imported whole-wheat spaghetti from Trader Joe's with codfish, onion and sweet peppers -- with an egg-white omelet oozing that fresh mozzarella.


Jerry's Gourmet and More, 410 S. Dean St., Englewood; 201-871-7108.

Lobster ravioli, crab cakes and other delights at Costco Wholesale

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You don't have to go to a seafood restaurant to dine on premium lobster ravioli, crab cakes, lobster bisque and other briny delights. All are available at Costco Wholesale, along with fresh, wild-caught fish and farmed prawns, and frozen sockeye salmon and mahi-mahi.


The wide selection at the Hackensack, N.J., warehouse store has helped me stick with a non-meat diet for the past eight months.


The lobster ravioli with parmesan and ricotta cheese from Pasta Prima are outstanding ($11.99). They actually taste of lobster, which is the first ingredient listed. 

When thawed, they take only five minutes to prepare and need only a drizzle of olive oil, cracked black pepper and grated cheese. You get two portions, each enough for three people.

The Maryland-style crab cakes from Phillips Seafood Restaurants list crab as the first ingredient and contain no breadcrumbs. You get six crab cakes for $13.69 at Costco, and $11.99 at BJ's Wholesale Club.

Blount Lobster Bisque ($10.89) and Legal Sea Foods Sweet Corn and Crab Chowder ($9.79) are two of the great seafood soups available.

Four pounds of prawns from Vietnam were $37.99 (U-15 or 15 to the pound). 

They have been cleaned, so all you have to do is shell them, marinate them in the juice of two or three lemons, along with dried or powdered garlic, red-pepper flakes and other seasoning, then sautee them in olive oil until they turn pink and curl up.

Between the bread

Besides giving up meat, I am trying to cut down on pizza and bread -- one of my favorite foods -- to lose weight, and it seems to be working. I lost weight in Italy and I've lost more weight since I returned Sept. 20.

So, it isn't unusual for me to have salad with reduced-fat cheese and smoked wild salmon or enjoy leftover ravioli or fried fish for breakfast.


This morning, I ate leftover haddock from Costco that my wife fried for dinner last night, along with cabbage and salted cod, and boiled green banana -- all doused with Valentina hot sauce. 

Yesterday, I had leftover lobster ravioli and spinach and cheese ravioli, both from Costco.


Leftover spaghetti with sardines made a good side dish for the fried haddock we had for dinner the following night.

UPDATE: So many fish in the seven seas

-- VICTOR E. SASSON

Should Costco offer anchovies on its pizza?

If you live in Hackensack, as I do, any debate about great pizza begins and ends with Brooklyn's, the coal-oven place on Hackensack Avenue that doesn't charge extra for the attitude baked into every pie: no slices, no delivery, no credit cards.

But there's no denying the appeal of the massive, 18-inch pie made fresh at Costco less than a mile away -- and at $9.95, it's a comparative steal. You can get slices at Costco, but you can't get anchovies as one of the toppings. And if you ask for it well done, they just humor you, because the pie is baked on a moving belt whose speed can't be varied.

I topped the pie I brought home this evening for dinner with anchovies, olive oil from the can, and slices of the wild lox I buy at Costco. To get some crisp into the crust after the pie had cooled, I baked my slices for about 20 minutes in a 350-degree oven. The Costco pie is doughy, but has lots of full-fat cheese. Each pie has 12 slices.

In my youth, I ate my first slices of pizza at Spumoni Gardens, near Lafayette High School, in Brooklyn. You could hold a well-done slice at the thick end and it wouldn't droop at the point. You can't do that with either a Brooklyn's or a Costco slice.

I can't resist all that luxurious-tasting cheese on the Costco pie. I'm ashamed to say I ate 5 of the 12 slices for dinner, plus a big salad, but I assure you the slices were smaller than in a typical pizza. The rest went into the freezer. (This post has been revised.)