When my iPhone freezes, I land a great deal on a new one at Costco

Atlantic cod is the fish that fed the world for centuries until limits were placed on its catch. Costco Wholesale in Teterboro offers fillets from a sustainable fishery in Iceland, where the cod are long-line caught. The fish turns snowy white and flakes beautifully when poached in roasted green salsa, above.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

I planned to shop for food at Trader Joe's and Costco Wholesale on Tuesday, but my iPhone started giving me trouble right away.

When I tried to use the phone's camera at the Paramus Trader Joe's on Route 17, the screen was black.

I knew I was eligible for an upgrade in late January, so I drove to the Verizon store in the southbound lanes.

But before going inside, I called the wireless kiosk at Costco Wholesale in Teterboro.

I learned I could get a new, bigger iPhone, a free portable battery with flashlight, and a $100 cash card.

I then went inside the Verizon store, where the salesman said he couldn't match the offer.

At Costco, I paid the tax, $59.50, and agreed to pay $10 a month for two years for an iPhone 6s Plus with a lot more memory than my old iPhone 5s.

I got to the Teterboro Costco around 2:30 in the afternoon, and had my choice of parking spots near or far away from the entrance (Teterboro Landing shopping center off of Route 46).

Inside the store, only one other customer was ahead of me at the wireless kiosk.

After my phone was activated, I did my planned food shopping.

Icelandic cod

Costco sells one of my favorites, fresh wild-caught Atlantic Cod from Iceland for $7.99 a pound.

At home, in a large covered pan, I heated up 365 Everyday Value Roasted Salsa Verde from Whole Foods Market, adding fresh juice from one lime.

I cut up the skinless and boneless fillet into serving pieces, and seasoned them with sea salt and crushed Aleppo pepper.

When the salsa began to boil, I put the pieces in the pan in a single layer and covered them. 

Depending on the thickness, the pieces were ready in 5 minutes to 7 minutes, and continued cooking in the covered pan when I turned off the fire.

I ate my first portion over leftover organic quinoa with organic diced tomatoes, both from Costco; organic chickpeas and whole garlic cloves.

I also had a salad of Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix ($4.29 a pound at Costco), dressed with Kirkland Signature Organic Extra-Virgin Olive Oil and balsamic vinegar.

Fresh Atlantic Cod poached in Roasted Salsa Verde over organic quinoa with organic chickpeas, organic diced tomatoes and whole garlic cloves.

Free-range organic eggs

At the Teterboro Costco, you can find free-range brown eggs, but the only organic ones are sold under the Kirkland Signature house label (two dozen for $6.99).

I've looked for large brown organic eggs at that price ($3.50 a dozen) in ShopRite and H Mart without success. 

I also picked up a 2-liter container of Kirkland Signature Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil for $13.29 with a $1.50 instant coupon or about $6.65 a liter.

Two organic eggs from Costco Wholesale with organic quinoa and sauteed spinach.

Oatmeal with blueberries and organic bananas from Costco Wholesale. Blueberries from Chile were $4.99 for 18 ounces and 3 pounds of organic bananas were $1.99.

Trader Joe's 100% juices

Earlier at Trader Joe's on Route 17 north in Paramus, I picked up a 3-pound bag of Organic Sweet Potatoes for $4.49 or about $1.50 a pound.

A 5-pound bag of the same Organic Sweet Potatoes was available during the holidays for about $1 a pound, but that has been discontinued.

I also picked up 64-ounce bottles of several 100% juice blends with no added sugar:

Trader Joe's Green Plant, Low Sodium Garden Patch, Heart of Darkness Mango Passionfruit and Carrot Tropical Blend.

Each was $3.49 or $3.99.

A 32-ounce container of Trader Joe's 3-in-1 Shampoo, Conditioner and Body Wash was $7.99.

When you buy an Italian takeout dinner at Jerry's, appetizers are free

At Jerry's Gourmet & More in Englewood on Friday afternoon, there were free samples at stations throughout the store, including hard and soft cheeses, bread, crackers and focaccia, above and below.

At other stations on Friday, customers could sample farm-fresh milk, extra-virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar. On Fridays and Saturdays, you can try Italian wines. 

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

When I'm in Englewood once or twice a week, I always try to stop at Jerry's Gourmet & More for a delicious Italian takeout dinner at an unbeatable price.

I usually don't get to the specialty food store until late in the afternoon, so I make a beeline for the refrigerated case holding the complete dinners, called Meals To Go, which are marked down to $5.99 from $7.99 after 4 p.m., if there are any left.

On Friday afternoon, I  could choose between dinners with grilled branzino or tilapia, along with vegetable dumplings, cooked carrots with garlic; and two salads, snap peas and fava beans with walnuts.

I grabbed a branzino dinner, and then set out to have a few appetizers, courtesy of Jerry's, before paying and driving home.

I tried a half-dozen cheeses, three or four slivers of focaccia, farm milk and crackers.

If it's from Italy and you can eat it or drink it, you usually can find it at Jerry's, 410 S. Dean St., Englewood (201-871-7108).

Jerry's Meals To Go also are available on weekends.

One of the samples was a spicy Wasabi Gouda ($4.99 a pound), a different take on green cheese.

 

Jerry's own Neapolitan-style Pizza Margherita was $5.99.

After 4 on Friday afternoon, the remaining Meals To Go were marked down with a $5.99 sticker. The restaurant-quality dinners are said to be prepared from Jerry's family recipes.

At home, I plated the Grilled Branzino with Balsamico and Cherry Tomatoes; vegetable dumplings, snap peas and carrots, and reheated them for 2 minutes in a microwave. I also poured a glass of red wine.

My takeout dinner also included a Fava Bean Salad with fresh fava, walnuts, arugula, fennel, radish and radicchio, and I ate that cold from a separate plate. This is a great salad, but I've never seen it on a restaurant menu.

I also purchased a 20-ounce container of pitted olives for only $3.99.

At H Mart, first sighting of Perdue chicken raised without antibiotics

Perdue, which has been selling low-quality chicken for decades, says its Harvestland birds are raised on all-vegetarian diet free of harmful antibiotics and animal by-products, such as kitchen scraps and bits of dead animals.

At H Mart in Englewood, boneless Harvestland thighs or what Perdue calls "filets" were a pricey $4.99 a pound. Chicken drumsticks, at $2.99 a pound, are more competitive. 

Editor's note: On a trip to pick up organic eggs and prepared Korean food, I noticed a new brand of Perdue Chicken. 

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

I was heading for the fish counter at H Mart in Englewood the other day when packages of chicken caught my eye.

The Korean supermarket is the first store I've seen that stocks Perdue chicken raised without any kind of antibiotics.

This after decades of selling birds pumped up on harmful antibiotics, and spending millions on deceptive advertising to make the public think Perdue chickens were naturally raised.

Even the Perdue tractor-trailers I've seen on the turnpike had a farmhouse painted on their sides to counter the reality of chickens raised in crowded conditions and growing so large they sometimes fell over and could not get up again. 

We've been buying other antibiotic-free brands, including Coleman and Readington Farms, at Costco Wholesale and ShopRite, and probably won't change to Harvestland.

Perdue's Harvestland brand doesn't replace the cheaper chicken Perdue raises conventionally with harmful antibiotics.

Whole Harvestland Chickens were $2.88 a pound.

Jumbo Brown Organic Eggs were on sale for $3.99 at the H Mart in Englewood, the closest I could get to the $3.50 a dozen Costco Wholesale charges for Large Brown Organic Eggs.

Cage-free, non-organic eggs also were $3.99 at H Mart.

The H Mart at 25 Lafayette Ave. in Englewood has a large selection of prepared food, including panchan, the traditional side dishes served with every Korean meal, above and below.

The H Mart store makes its own items, but also sells food from Jinga and other outside caterers. Prices went up sharply last year.

The package of Jinga Whole Roll or Kimbap I bought for $6.79 was labeled 16 ounces, but weighed more than that on my kitchen scale, lessening the sting.

Jinga's Whole Roll is meatless. Ingredients include seaweed, rice, egg, pollock and crunchy julienned vegetables, and the package includes hot jalapeno slices and Korean pickles. This serving made a light dinner followed by a big salad.

Missing signs and products can make ShopRite in Paramus a hassle

At the ShopRite in Paramus this morning, I found a sign for an 18-ounce package of blueberries from Chile, but not for the smaller container below it.

The smaller container was marked 1 dry pint and weighed 12 ounces.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Missing price signs make shopping a hassle, but maybe food stores want you to take the item to the register and buy it no matter what it costs.

I stop at the ShopRite in Paramus, because it is on the way home from the gym. 

This morning, I went there to use a super coupon for three 24-bottle packs of Poland Spring Water ($9) as long as you spent $10 on other items, and used a store card.

An 18-ounce package of blueberries from Chile, a so-called Manager's Special, was marked down to $5.99 from $8.99.

Not only was that a dollar more than at Costco Wholesale, but I could see many of the blueberries were broken or bruised and unappetizing.

A smaller container had no price.

I looked and looked for a 3-pound bag of sweet potatoes I had purchased there regularly, but couldn't find any for the second week in a row. 

So, I bought three half-gallons of ShopRite Lactose Free Milk ($2.99 each), and a 1-pound package of Luigi Vitelli Organic Whole Wheat Fusilli ($1.25).

At the Paramus ShopRite, 224 Route 4 east, all varieties of ShopRite 100% Lactose Free Milk are grouped together.

But last week at the Rochelle Park ShopRite, 220 W. Passaic St., varieites of the store-brand of Lactose Free Milk were scattered. I was looking for 1% milk. However, this store had the 3-pound bag of sweet potatoes I couldn't find in Paramus.

Food warehouse

I've gotten some good buys on organic and non-organic extra-virgin olive oil for salads at the International Food Warehouse, 370 Essex St., Lodi.

But this afternoon, so many price signs were missing, I had to bring up to the register 3-liter and 2-liter containers of Iliada-brand Kalamata EVOO from Greece to find out they were priced too high.

I did buy a 5-ounce package of non-organic Spring Mix and another of Arugula for 99 cents each.

The Food Warehouse has a good selection of Middle Eastern pocket breads, and extra-virgin olive oils from Lebanon, but here again, price signs are missing or prices are higher than you'd find in Paterson.

And I saw a package of bread sticks made in Damascus, Syria.

We're loving Costco Wholesale more, but visiting the warehouse less

Triple-washed Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix is ready to go from the package to your plate, and Costco Wholesale's price is the best in northern New Jersey.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

The price of Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix, the world's best store-bought salad, hit a low of $4.29 a pound last week at Costco Wholesale.

And the Teterboro warehouse has added more organic products under the Kirkland Signature house label, including marinara sauce and pignoli nuts.

Still, we're cutting our visits to once every two weeks from once weekly, because the Teterboro Costco, like the smaller Hackensack warehouse it replaced, is just too popular.

The Teterboro Costco opened in mid-October in a Route 46 shopping center that is a work in progress, and parking is always tight.

And the store itself is far larger than the Hackensack warehouse, so we're still familiarizing ourselves with where everything is.

But even with all that extra room, the warehouse always seems to be crowded, and that may be because Costco signed up more than 1,000 new members in the days after the Teterboro warehouse opened. 

The one salvation is that check-out seems faster and more efficient than it was in Hackensack, and the receipt checkers at the door don't hold you up when the warehouse is busy.

Costco Wholesale sells smoked wild Alaskan sockeye salmon two ways, including this fully cooked fillet made with brown sugar that doesn't require refrigeration before it is opened. 

The slow-smoked salmon fillet from Trident Seafoods lists only 1 gram of sugar for a 2-ounce serving. The 1.5-pound fillet I bought in December was $15.97, and carried a use-by date of 2021.

Smoked salmon 2X

One must be kept refrigerated, and tastes like salted slices of raw fish -- good in omelets, salads and eaten out of hand.

The other, with a shelf-life of more than 5 years, is both sweet and salty, and tastes great on its own or in salads.

The Wild Alaskan Smoked Sockeye Salmon from Kirkland Signature and Trident Seafoods both use the same heart-healthy fish, but the resulting product couldn't be more different.

The thicker, skin-on sockeye salmon fillet from Trident Seafoods tastes closer to canned fish. Add it to a salad for a light dinner with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and extra-virgin olive oil.

Pitted olives, shaved Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese, Campari Tomatoes and cucumbers over Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix, all dressed in extra-virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

An organic spring-mix salad with organic pignoli or pine nuts.

Pine nuts are one of the ingredients in Costco's wonderful prepared Basil Pesto, so they make a terrific garnish for Organic Whole Wheat Shells with Pesto and Black Truffles. The small $10 bottle of truffles from the Teterboro warehouse didn't have much flavor, but that may because I didn't have enough for the pound of pasta I prepared. On a travel show I saw recently, a waiter in a restaurant in Italy shaved a couple of ounces of large black truffles over a single dish of pasta.

Snowy fillets of fresh wild-caught flounder after they were poached in pre-heated Roasted Poblano Salsa made creamy with no-fat Greek yogurt. The fish was $7.99 a pound at Costco Wholesale, and the salsa came from Whole Foods Market, where the 365 Everyday Value brand contains no added sugar.

Price checks

My wife made our last visit to the Teterboro Costco on Wednesday, about two weeks after her previous trip. 

She brought home: 2 pounds of Campari Tomatoes, the only way to get through a winter without Jersey tomatoes ($4.99); 10 pounds of California carrots ($6.49); 5.5 pounds of Gala Apples from Washington State ($9.99), and that 1-pound tub of Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix ($4.29).

The price of the organic salad mix fluctuates throughout the year, but the highest I've seen at Costco is $4.99, compared to $6.99 at ShopRite supermarkets.

Three large, long hothouse cucumbers were $3.49. They carried a label with a weight of 2 pounds, but were fatter than usual and on my kitchen scale hit 3.3 pounds.

A 2-pound bag of Organic Green Beans -- washed, snipped and ready to use -- was $5.99.

Raw, sodium-free California Almonds were $17.99 for a 3-pound bag. We roast them and dust them with cinnamon for snacking. 

A 5-pound bag of large limes from Mexico was $5.79. Six Hass Avocados from Chile were $3.99.

Two 3-liter bottles of Pure Olive Oil, a cooking blend that includes extra-virgin olive oil, was $27.99 or about $4.67 a liter.

Olive oil doesn't contain genetically modified ingredients (GMOs), unlike many others for cooking, including soy, canola and corn oils.

Organic Whole Wheat Fusilli from Whole Foods Market dressed with no-added-sugar Botticelli Marinara Sauce from ShopRite, and sardines and anchovies from Costco Wholesale. I also added a few ounces of red wine, extra-virgin olive oil, red-pepper flakes, granulated garlic and other seasonings to the sauce before I heated it up.

Rebates on way

In the next few weeks, I'm anticipating the arrival of rebate checks from American Express and Costco that more than cover my annual executive membership fee of $110.

A regular membership is $55 a year.

The American Express rebate is 2% for purchases at Costco, and we also earn cash back at restaurants, gas stations and other stores.

On top of that, we get a 1% rebate from Costco on everything we buy in the Teterboro warehouse.

NYC Restaurant Week: At Aureole, farmed salmon fillet is no bargain

The highlight of my $25 three-course lunch at Aureole in Manhattan on Thursday was a starter of Yellowfin Tuna Tartare with Jicama, Bonito Cream, Cucumber and Purple Basil.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

I've never met a farmed salmon fillet that packed the flavor and vibrant color of the wild-caught original.

So, you can imagine my disappointment at the pale-looking, artificially colored salmon I was served on Thursday, one of the three courses on the $25 Restaurant Week menu at Aureole in midtown Manhattan.

You'd expect more at a restaurant with the reputation of Aureole, which was fully booked for the bargain lunch on Thursday.

I was able to walk in and sit at a bar stool with a hard-leather seat, but there wasn't enough legroom to get as close as I wanted to the place setting and my food.

Unlucky 13

I counted the bar stools -- there were 13 -- and that didn't augur well. 

At least I enjoyed the Yellowfin Tuna Tartare starter, especially the pleasantly tart Bonito Cream and the contrast of the tender cubes of raw fish with crunchy jicama and cucumber.

With my main course, I liked the Herbed Couscous with Pomegranate seeds, but didn't touch a Citrus Hollandaise designed to give the bland salmon fillet some punch.

And the dessert, Vanilla Roasted Pineapple with Mango Lime Sorbet, was tasty, but I needed a knife to cut the fruit.

Aureole serves a small wooden bowl holding three kinds of bread, and on request, extra-virgin olive oil for dipping. 

All in all, a filling meal, and you can't beat the price.

Poached Salmon with Pomegranate Herbed Couscous (hold the Citrus Hollandaise, below). I wanted the farmed salmon medium rare, so the bartender said he'd ask the kitchen to grill the fillet. But it was served poached and medium.

Vanilla Roasted Pineapple with Coconut Macaroon and Mango Lime Sorbet.

Before lunch service started, the bartender cut lemons, above, and two servers methodically folded napkins, below.

Aureole is at 135 W. 42nd St., between Broadway and Sixth Avenue, Manhattan; 1-212-319-1660. Web site: 'Progressive American Cuisine'

Details

The Winter Restaurant Week promotion at more than 350 places in Manhattan runs through Feb. 5, with three-course lunches for $25 and three-course dinners for $38, plus tax and tip.

Lunches are a better value. If you pay for your meal with a registered American Express card, you will get a $5 statement credit (up to four times), and that covers a 20% tip at lunch.

Web site: $25 lunch in Manhattan