Pesto so good you won't wait for the pasta

Kirkland Signature Basil Pesto accenting smoked wild salmon, reduced-fat Swiss cheese and Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix, all from Costco Wholesale. Roll it up and enjoy.

The refrigerated pesto makes an early appearance with two organic brown eggs and leftover organic quinoa, a whole grain from Bolivia that has fewer carbs than pasta or rice, and is a great source of protein. All the ingredients except the coarsely ground Aleppo red pepper on the eggs are from Costco Wholesale.

A couple of spoonfuls of pesto melting on an open-face omelet of egg whites and reduced-fat Swiss cheese. All but the sun-dried tomato and Aleppo pepper are from Costco Wholesale.

I almost forgot to use the pesto to dress organic whole-wheat spaghetti from Trader Joe's.

Editor's note: In 2018, five years after I wrote this, Kirkland Signature Basil Pesto remains among my favorite items from Costco Wholesale.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The refrigerated Kirkland Signature Basil Pesto that showed up at my Costco Wholesale in Hackensack a couple of months ago was an early sign of spring.

The bright color and flavor of the imported Italian basil and sheep's milk cheese that goes into it are perfect for lots of dishes besides pasta.

This pesto is good right out of the fridge with fish, smoked wild salmon and eggs, and it makes a great sandwich spread.

Since I'm on a no-bread, no-pizza diet, I deconstruct the sandwich and roll up the pesto-accented ingredients. 

A classic: organic whole-wheat spaghetti with pesto.

I used the last few ounces on Sunday night with a half-pound of Trader Joe's Organic Whole Wheat Spaghetti, which I drained and returned to the pot for dressing.

The pesto-kissed, al dente pasta filled my mouth with flavor, and there was plenty left over for breakfast this morning, along with a small wedge of fresh-tomato frittata.

Pesto sauce shouldn't be heated up before you use it to dress pasta, one reason it isn't as good when you plate and reheat leftovers in the microwave, so you should set a limit of about 2 minutes.

Weight-losing strategies that work for me

Mashed sweet potatoes stand in for fattening white potatoes at any meal.

Sweet potatoes instead of white potatoes. 

Brown rice, not white rice. 

No bread or toast at breakfast, but a bed of whole-wheat pasta for your eggs or egg-white omelet is perfectly fine and filling.

These are some of the strategies I've used to lose weight and keep it off since I gave up bread and pizza at the suggestion of a trainer at my old gym.

From a high of 228 pounds, I've reached a comfortable weight of under 185 pounds.

Organic eggs with manchego cheese and pesto over whole-wheat pasta.

It should go without saying that I don't eat dessert, unless it's ripe fruit with a great of piece cheese or an occasional sorbet.  

I've also stopped eating meat, meaning I can afford to eat a variety of full-fat, reduced-fat and skim-milk cheeses, and whole eggs. 

My overall cholesterol is about 140.

Seafood is a delight -- from Maine lobster to whole wild-caught fish to fillets flown here from Canada, Iceland and other countries.

I eat a lot of organic salad mix, tomatoes and cucumbers. I make canned fish salad with tuna, salmon and sardines, and eat it over salad, not in a sandwich. 

Kashi Trail Mix and and other bars allow me to skip lunch.

 

In the past, a snack would be cheese, smoked wild salmon, canned fish salad and other items, but I'd always eat them tucked inside Syrian pocket bread.

Now, I roll up slices of cheese and smoked salmon, dip them in mustard and eat them out of hand.

A spoonful of peanut or sodium-free almond butter is terrific followed by a spoonful of fig marmalade.

Fig marmalade goes beautifully with slices of manchego, a sheep's milk cheese from Spain. 

The almond butter is great over apple slices.
 

A spoonful of fig marmalade goes well with cheese.

Related article

• More wonderful things to eat

All-you-can-eat sushi and BBQ for $9.95

Image by ombrelle via Flickr

All the sushi, barbecued meat and salad you can eat are only $9.95 for lunch at Green Grill Rodizio, a Korean-owned Brazilian barbecue restaurant in Hackensack.

Lunch is served from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday to Friday, an employee said Tuesday. The price includes sushi, hot food, salad bar and barbecue, he said, but he was unable to give the total number of items.

The dinner price is $20.95. Green Grill is the largest restaurant in Hackensack.

Green Grill Rodizio, 450 Hackensack Ave., Hackensack, in the Home Depot Shopping Center; 201-488-2885.

Great noodle dish

The noodle dish I had for lunch Tuesday at Lotus Cafe in Hackensack was $9.95, but I wouldn't trade it for all the sushi I could eat at Green Grill, which is opposite the Chinese restaurant.

Noodles in Abalone Sauce is made with soft, house-made egg noodles sauteed with spinach, black mushrooms and leeks -- simple but delicious. The portion is enough for two.

 

$4.99 clementines

We found 5 pounds of clementines for $4.99 at ShopRite in Rochelle Park with a store card, but these are from Morocco. They are bigger than the Spanish ones I bought for $5.99 at Costco in Hackensack, easy to peel and, so far, all but one of them has been sweet.

Smoked wild salmon

Now, Costco is offering its Kirkland-brand of smoked, wild-caught Alaskan sockeye salmon in two 8-ounce packages for the same price as the pound package -- $14.99. This smoked salmon has no preservatives, and it's available year-round.

A spectacular breakfast sandwich

I can still recall the taste of the Egg McMuffins I ate for breakfast occasionally when I was a general assignment reporter for The Record in the 1980s, when coffee and cigarettes got me going in the morning. A lot has changed since then: I quit smoking in 1986, The Record's general assignment reporters now work out of an office building in West Paterson, the paper is no longer printed in Hackensack and I stopped eating Egg McMuffins 20 years ago.

For many years now, my breakfasts have usually included fish -- smoked, canned or fresh -- kimchi and tomatoes.

Today, I toasted two slices of 100% whole grain bread from Costco, slathered on Lebanese hummus I had prepared from a can I bought at Fattal's, and topped that with Earthbound Farms organic salad greens, also from Costco. Next came a slice of smoked wild salmon and a fillet of fresh wild salmon (both from Costco) I had baked with parsley, oregano and red pepper. On top of that was a slice of ripe tomato with the spice mixture called za'atar and shavings of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese (Costco).

The sandwich was at least an inch and a half thick, but revealed its layers of wonderful flavor every time I took a bite. I had some kimchi on the side and washed it all down with iced tea. I guess you could call this the Costco breakfast sandwich.

Smoked wild salmon comparison

Image via Wikipedia

If you're looking for an alternative to Costco's 1-pound package of smoked wild salmon, you might not find it at Trader Joe's. 


I bought a 4-ounce package of smoked wild coho salmon from Trader Joe's and found I didn't like its pale color and smoky taste. Neither has preservatives.

Costco uses sockeye salmon to Trader Joe's coho ($3.99 for 4 ounces). That obviously makes a difference in color if nothing else. You can also taste Costco's salmon, not just smoke. 


You'll pay $13.99 a pound for Costco's Alaskan salmon or the equivalent of nearly $16 a pound for Trader Joe's Pacific salmon.

Last year, I tried Trader Joe's smoked wild king salmon, which comes from much bigger fish, and found it way too salty.

In case you are wondering ...

I received several e-mails with comments from nog66 and wanted to publish them on this blog. But I think I hit the wrong button and they weren't published, so I'm going to address some of his/her comments here.

I can buy some of the quantities I do at Costco because those foods are part of my daily diet. I have no trouble finishing a pound or more of wild smoked salmon in a week or so. I simply have a wild salmon sandwich every morning. The sandwich usually has a slice or two of Parmigiano-Reggiano in it and some organic salad greens. I can't wait for the fresh wild salmon to arrive at Costco. The pieces are usually two pounds or more and yield six or seven nice fillets. I'll also eat that every day until it's gone.

I buy a pound of the Earthbound Farms salad mix every week and eat a salad every night with dinner. I cut the wedge of Parmigiano into three and put each into plastic wrap (as the label recommends). The cheese is always moist and crumbly, even if it takes me a month to finish it.

To be sure, I have bought food at Costco that spoiled before my family of three finished it or was simply awful. I tried the four pounds of cut fruit recently and most of it was either over-ripe or hard and not ripe. And, yes, I do have nearly a dozen reusable grocery bags, but I often forget them in the car.

As for Paterson's Middle Eastern food bazaar, I have been shopping there for nearly 30 years and have my favorites, including Fattal's for bread, canned goods, sweet or savory pastries and spices, and Assayad, a Syrian restaurant on the Clifton side of Crooks Avenue, the border between Clifton and Paterson. I don't think I'll try the Halal Chinese place that has opened at Crooks and Getty avenues. (My previous favorite restaurant, Vine Valley Lebanese Restaurant, is long closed and a great Turkish place, Kafe Teria, closed recently.) Yes, I have been to the farmers' market near the tracks and the big Turkish bakery and just about every other pastry shop and restaurant. The problem I have found over the years is restaurant sanitation, which does not seem to be a priority in many places. (This post was revised.)