Don't wait for holiday to make meals a riot of flavor and color

For dinner on Sunday, we had wild-caught shrimp from Mexico -- $16.99 a pound at H Mart in Englewood -- over a moist side dish of organic quinoa prepared in an electric cooker with organic chicken stock, organic diced tomatoes, organic lentils and peeled whole California garlic cloves, all from Costco Wholesale. The shrimp were marinated in chopped garlic and fresh lime juice.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

I can't get into Thanksgiving this year. Too much traffic. Too many people in the food stores.

This morning, I made my final holiday shopping trip -- to Whole Foods Market in Paramus for two small naturally raised hams for the meat eaters in the family ($7.99 a pound).

We also have four turkey legs from Goffle Road Poultry Farm in Wyckoff stored in the freezer, and my wife also plans to serve curry goat and rice with pigeon peas.

I'm planning to have a whole red snapper prepared by a family friend, a crab cake and, possibly, a wild-salmon burger. 

The last two are from Costco Wholesale in Hackensack, and already in the freezer.

A sweet Thanksgiving

I bought conventional sweet potatoes from Trader Joe's last week, and today, I picked up organic purple sweet potatoes at Whole Foods.

I'll boil them with whole garlic cloves, drain them and mash them with extra-virgin olive oil, sea salt, cinnamon, curry powder and other seasonings.

We'll also serve a big organic spring mix salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, pomegranate seeds and Grana Padano Cheese, all dressed in EVOO and balsamic vinegar. 

My wife went to Costco Wholesale in Hackensack on Monday right after it opened and reported it was "mobbed."

She bought pomegranates ($14.99), a 9-inch apple pie ($9.99), Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix ($4.79) and 3 pounds of organic bananas ($1.99).

I also went holiday shopping on Monday morning on the way home from the gym, stopping at ShopRite in Paramus for two sale items, a 5-pound box of Spanish Clementines ($4.99) and Turkey Hill Ice Cream ($1.99).

My wife steamed whole wild-caught porgy last week -- $2.49 a pound at H Mart in Englewood -- with fresh okra, onions and sweet peppers.

Quinoa with creamy garlic cloves stood in for bread at breakfast with two organic eggs, non-fat Greek yogurt with cucumbers and mint, and pomegranate seeds. I sprinkled za'atar thyme mixture over the quinoa before I reheated it.

A half-dozen jumbo California Pomegranates were $14.99 at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack. Though they are more expensive, the seeds from them are far superior to those from smaller and cheaper pomegranates, such as those I bought for 99 cents each at ShopRite in Paramus.

A 5-pound box of Spanish Clementines were $4.99 at the Paramus ShopRite. The store also had 5-pound boxes of sweet potatoes for $2.49.

A beautiful display of sweet potatoes and yams greeted shoppers this morning at Whole Foods Market in Paramus. I bought about 2 pounds of organic Purple Stokes Sweet Potatoes on sale for $1.49 a pound to mash with conventional sweet potatoes from Trader Joe's.

Costco: Our Amazon Connection is good for you

Two 1-liter bottles of 100% juice are $8.59 at Costco Wholesale.

 Editor's note: Fonts available on Google's Blogger are ill-suited to a discussion of food, because they don't contain the accents needed to write acai, sautee and so many other words commonly used in kitchens. Today, I also discuss Costco Wholesale, Trader Joe's, and a sauce for fish and pasta.

 
As much calcium as cow's milk. The same Omega-3, -6 and -9 fatty acids found in fish and other seafood. And oleic acid, a monounsaturated fat that may reduce high blood pressure.

Those are just three of the reasons The Costco Connection magazine is promoting a new juice on the shelves of the warehouse store: Sambazon Organic Acai (AH-SIGH-EE).

The thick, tart, antioxidant-rich juice is being hailed as a superfood -- direct from the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest.

My wife first saw refrigerated 1-liter bottles of the juice on the shelf at the Hackensack Costco last week, and I brought home two more this week.

But I couldn't find the Sambazon frozen acai pulp mentioned in the February 2013 edition of the magazine.  

The pulp can be used in smoothies, and it's served in bowls topped with granola and bananas at beach snack shacks in Brazil. 

The acai beverage sold at Costco contains other organic juices and organic agave syrup as a sweetener.

Two pounds of Jarlsberg Lite Swiss Cheese would cost about $16 at Trader Joe's in Paramus, above, compared to $9.99 at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack.

  

Costco trip costs 17 cents

In addition to acai juice, I picked up Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix, fresh cod fillets, 4 pounds of frozen wild blueberries and another bag of frozen blueberries, blackberries and raspberries.

The total was $50.17, but I used a $50 Costco gift card sent to me when Costco.com couldn't fulfill our order for a digital camera in December.

Wild-caught cod from Costco was cooked in a sauce of sweet peppers, onion, tomato, garlic and olive oil, above, and served with mashed sweet potatoes, below.

One sauce, three meals

For the cod, I used a food-processor attachment on my blender to puree sweet peppers, tomato, onion, garlic cloves, tomato sauce and lime juice, then poured the mixture into a non-stick pan with a cover.

I added extra-virgin olive oil, dried Italian seasonings, some red-pepper flakes and black pepper before turning up the heat.

I cut up the fillets, squeezed more lime juice over them and sprinkled on Costco's Organic No-Salt Seasoning.

They cooked in the bubbling sauce in about 10 to 12  minutes.

A breakfast of fish, egg and sweet potatoes.

For breakfast today, I had the last piece of fish, some mashed sweet potato and a simple egg-white omelet with grated cheese.

Tonight, I'll add leftover tomato sauce, heat up the sweet pepper mixture and use it to dress a pound of Trader Joe's Organic Whole Wheat Spaghetti.

Trader Joe's v. Costco

Although the Trader Joe's in Paramus is much smaller than the Hackensack Costco, it manages to carry a few items I can't find at the cavernous warehouse store.

A box of Spanish clementines was $5.99. Sliced yogurt cheese with jalapeno peppers was $4.79.

Uncured, antibiotic-free bacon and uncured hot dogs were $4.49 each.

And 1-pound packages of organic whole-wheat spaghetti and fusilli were $1.39 each.   

Sweet potatoes are a holiday item at Costco, but Trader Joe's has them year-round for 85 cents a pound.

A half-gallon of Joe's vanilla soy milk and 32 ounces of organic plain yogurt were $2.99 each.

Are there bad-produce days?

Image by wallyg via Flickr

If humans have bad-hair days, do supermarkets have bad-produce days? I certainly thought so yesterday when I stopped at H Mart in Little Ferry to pick up some greens for dinner (photo shows Ridgefield store).

I have purchased collard greens from this large Korean market several times, but yesterday, the leaves were blemished. As I strolled along the aisle, looking at the large selection of leafy greens and Chinese vegetables, nothing looked very appealing -- wilted, shriveled and so forth.

Another shopper, an American woman, came over and asked the produce stocker if there were more eggplants in the back, explaining the ones she saw were soft. Same for the red peppers. He said no. She went back and managed to find some firm eggplant. I spoke to her and she suggested Thursday wasn't a good day to shop there for produce.

Finally, I saw two heads of fresh spinach at $1.29 each that looked as if they had been put out that day, and grabbed them.  I had already picked up a 5-pound box of large Spanish clementines for $6.99, rejecting smaller Spanish clementines nearby that had seen better days and were priced $1 higher. That was odd -- two prices for the same item.

The selection of delicious prepared food was as good as ever: stewed tofu seasoned with a red-pepper sauce ($3.99) and stewed Alaskan pollack with onions and hot peppers ($4.99).

For dinner, I cut, rinsed and blanched the spinach leaves, then sauteed them in a little extra-virgin olive oil and seasoned them with salt, black pepper and mixed organic spices (Costco).

I served them with an imported vegetarian Indian dinner for two of basmati rice, coconut curry sauce and spiced chickpeas ($3.99 at Target in Paramus) and home-made baked crab cakes, using a pound of lump crab meat from Costco.

Why you can't shop in one food store

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

If, like me, you do most of the food shopping in your family, you dream of that one store where you can be assured of getting fresh, healthy food at great prices. Don't hold your breath.

Even a random sampling of how food prices are all over the place will discourage you. At Fairway Market in Paramus on Friday, a 3.5-pound bag of Spanish clementines was $5.99, compared to $3.49 at H Mart in Little Ferry. Fairway's price for one pound of Earthbound Farm organic spring mix was $6.99; at Costco in Hackensack, it's $4.49.

Costco sells three cans of wild sockeye red salmon from Alaska, but you get better value buying one can of Bumble Bee wild sockeye salmon at Fairway or ShopRite for $4.99 (just under 15 ounces). ShopRite no longer discounts this red salmon during its Can-Can Sale, when it has been as low as $2.99.

My wife just called to report the pomegranate she bought for 99 cents at H Mart in Englewood is $2 at ShopRite in Rochelle Park, where she is shopping today.

I'm not sure what you can conclude from these examples and others I am sure you have seen yourself. All I know is that a food shopper's work is never done.

Tasting and shopping notes

I sliced six or seven pieces of giant bluefin-tuna sashimi as part of my dinner last night and wasn't disappointed. Veined with fat, the raw fish just melted away in my mouth with a minimum

of chewing. Heavenly. I also had small, green obah leaves (wrap for the sashimi), seasoned fish eggs, cooked eel sushi and roll, and a triangle of seaweed-wrapped cooked rice stuffed with spicy cod roe, all from Mitsuwa Marketplace in Edgewater, where I bought the tuna Sunday ($62.99 a pound). See earlier posts.


Clementines from Spain and black figs grown in the U.S. have begun appearing in markets, but at higher prices than I remember from last year. I haven't seen clementines for less than $9.99 for a 5-pound box. My wife bought domestic clementines for half that at ShopRite in Englewood, but they are sour and full of pits. An employee of H Mart in Englewood said the price of the imported clementines will fall next month.


I bought a box of 24 black figs at H Mart in Little Ferry yesterday for $9.99. I saw then for 99 cents each at Mitsuwa Marketplace that morning as I gathered items for my sashimi and trimmings dinner. The figs I bought were ripe and sweet, and I'm storing them in the fridge. I want to try them with Manchego sheep milk's cheese and almonds for dessert one night or split open and drizzled with honey.

I have been buying California rice for two or three years now to avoid rice from the South, where it is sometimes grown on old cotton fields laced with arsenic, which was used to kill the boll weevil, a beetle, according to Consumer Reports. The problem is many bags of rice don't specify where it is grown. That's not the case at H Mart in Little Ferry, which has a large selection of California rice in all sizes, but it can be expensive, especially after a price spike last year.

Yesterday, I picked up a 20-pound bag of Kokuho yellow rice that was over a price sign of $19.99, one of the lowest I saw, and it rang up as $12.99 (it was on sale). The reference to yellow rice may have something to do with the yellow seal on the bag. The rice looked the same as other brands when we prepared it.