ShopRite, H Mart supermarkets ask customers to jump through hoops

At ShopRite's Can Can Sale, 8-ounce cans of Glade Spray are 99 cents each, compared to 19-ounce cans of Lysol Disinfectant Spray for $3.99, below.

The Can Can Sale price for Lysol matches the $15.99 Costco Wholesale charges for a 4-pack, but this week Costco is offering an instant coupon of $4, lowering the price to $11.99.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

ShopRite has a great deal on 15.5-ounce cans of organic beans for 77 cents each, but you'll have to buy 10 to get that low price.

The organic beans, which are made with water and a little sea salt, normally are $1 each. 

Welcome to ShopRite's Can Can Sale, which I shopped at the Paramus store on Wednesday, picking up Organic Black, Pinto, Kidney, Garbanzo and Cannellini Beans.

For a one-dish meal, I add organic beans, organic diced tomatoes, and water or chicken broth to organic brown rice or organic quinoa, and prepare them in an electric cooker.

Progresso Soups are $1.08 in 18.5-ounce cans, a discount of 97 cents, but you can't lower the price by buying 10 cans.

At the Can Can Sale, Adirondack Seltzer is a better buy by the ounce in liter bottles, above, than in cans, below, but you'll need a calculator to figure that out.

Botticelli Pasta Sauces from Italy in 24-ounce jars are half-price at the Paramus ShopRite ($1.99), including a meatless Bolognese Sauce, left. The vodka sauce is one of the few without heavy cream.

I prepared a pound of Luigi Vitelli-brand Organic Whole Wheat Fusilli ($1.25 at ShopRite) in the Vegan Friendly Bolognese Sauce, which substitutes soy for meat. Next time, I'll add a little red wine while heating up the sauce and use a half-pound of pasta.

A addictive Korean seaweed roll known as kimbap was $6.79 at H Mart in Englewood, where the price of such prepared side dishes and snacks has risen dramatically in the past year.

H Mart rebates are not cash

The Korean supermarket chain known as H Mart offers customers a Smart Savings Card similar to ShopRite's Price Plus Club Card.

To qualify for sales and specials at both stores, customers must use their loyalty cards.

But, unlike the ShopRite card, the Smart Savings Card also is a rebate card, entitling the customers to 1% back on their purchases.

There's a big hoop to jump through, however.

You don't get the rebate until you spend $1,000, and when you receive the $10 certificate, you have to use all of it to buy more food at H Mart.

On Saturday, at the Fort Lee H Mart, I picked up two $10 rebate certificates, then purchased fresh whole whiting ($4.99 a pound), and a head of red leaf lettuce ($1.29) for a total of $18.26.

When I gave the cashier the two $10 certificates, she informed me she couldn't give me change. 

I had to use one $10 certificate and a credit card for the $8.26 balance.

At the Englewood H Mart on Tuesday, I bought fresh Chinese Broccoli and Chinese Eggplant, both on sale; and a Seaweed Roll for a total of $9.94, and paid with the second $10 certificate.

Again, the cashier said she couldn't give me the change. I ate the 6 cents difference.

I added a little sea salt and brushed Chinese Eggplant slices with sesame oil as they grilled on the stove top until the flesh turned creamy.

I washed and seasoned, then cooked Chinese Broccoli in chicken broth and sake in a covered pot. I brought the liquid to a boil first, then cooked the broccoli for less than 5 minutes, softening the thick stems.

H Mart eggplant and broccoli over organic quinoa prepared with organic diced tomatoes, whole garlic cloves and olive oil in an electric rice cooker. The organic quinoa, diced tomatoes and California garlic were from Costco Wholesale.

Details

The Paramus ShopRite is at 224 Route 4 east, but also is accessible from Spring Valley Avenue.

The Fort Lee H Mart is in the Linwood Plaza shopping center on Fletcher Avenue, and the Englewood H Mart is at 25 Lafayette Ave.

Other H Marts are in Little Ferry and Ridgefield. All of the Korean markets have counters offering fresh fish and other seafood at low prices. 

Fish dinners in under 30 minutes

Fresh Canadian flounder in a tomato-white wine sauce.

Fresh Pacific cod with Mexican green salsa and tomatoes over brown rice.

With Costco Wholesale's fresh, wild-caught fillets and a few bottles and cans in your cupboard, you can turn out fish dinners in under 30 minutes.

No need for a recipe. A can opener and a large pan with a glass cover is all the equipment you need.

My Costco in Hackensack usually offers wild-caught fillets of haddock from Iceland and flounder from Canada, as well as meaty cod from the Pacific, all for $6.99 or $7.99 a pound. 

I try to buy fish that is packed the same day, as indicated on the Costco label, and I usually can buy a package with under 2 pounds of fillets for 4 people.

Flounder fillets with leftover brown rice and prepared tofu.

For any fresh fish fillet, you can open cans of Kirkland Signature Organic Tomato Sauce and Organic Diced Tomatoes, empty them into the pan and add white wine, lime or lemon juice, garlic powder, red-pepper flakes and dried Italian seasonings.

Bring to a boil under a partial cover. Meanwhile, season the fillets with Kirkland Signature Organic No-Salt Seasoning. 

Turn down the heat to medium, add the fish fillets and cover.

Through a glass cover, you can watch the fish turn white and firm up. The skinless fillets should be ready in about 20 minutes.

A second preparation uses a bottle of Goya or La Costena Mexican Green Salsa, a can of organic diced tomatoes and lime or lemon juice.

Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat to medium, add the fish fillets and cover. 

I like to make big batches of organic brown rice in an electric cooker -- with or without cooked black beans and organic diced tomatoes -- or mashed sweet potatoes and Kabocha squash with olive oil and seasonings, and keep them in the refrigerator to eat with the fish.

A salad of Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix completes the meal. 

Related post

• At Costco, one can yields several meal ideas

Another swing through BJ's Wholesale Club

Image by ~Twon~ via Flickr

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

I made a second visit to BJ's Wholesale Club in Paramus on Monday afternoon and got a better sense of how its fresh, prepared and frozen food compares to Costco's.

I have tried to compare prices, but each club store carries its own brand, as well as different outside brands for ravioli, chicken, yogurt and many other items. Package sizes also vary, but it appears BJ's has less variety than Costco's.

BJ's had five or six kinds of fresh fish fillets -- all but one of them farmed -- and frozen, wild-caught shrimp from Mexico and the United States at $11.99 a pound, but the latter did not indicate the state, and I wondered if they could have come from the BP-tainted Gulf of Mexico. 

Costco has more wild fish available, but no wild-caught shrimp. Both stores sell frozen farmed shrimp and prawns from Vietnam.

On my first visit, I saw Phillips Maryland-style crab cakes for $1.69 less than they are sold at Costco, but on Monday, there was only another brand, Mama Belle's Maryland-style crab cakes (made in Florida). 

Mama Belle's, like Phillips, lists crab as the first ingredient, but uses bread crumbs as a binder.  Mama Belle's is a better buy: 24 ounces for $9.99 compared with 18 ounces for $13.69.

I also picked up Fresh Express organic spring mix, 50 cents more than Costco's Earthbound Farm brand; three pounds of Sunset-brand, herbicide-free plum tomatoes, cheaper per pound than the two-pound package at Costco, but they don't taste as good for some reason. Maybe they need to ripen more.

BJ's also sells salmon burgers made from wild-caught, Pacific Ocean fish, 10 for $11.99 v. Costco's 12 for $12.99. Finally, I picked up an 80-ounce jar of Rosoff new half-sour pickles for $5.99.

BJ's has a good selection of gourmet ravioli, including those from Chef Mario Batali, but I didn't see any lobster ravioli, which are available at Costco.

BJ's also can't match Costco's smoked wild sockeye salmon.

Both Costco and BJ's issue their own coupons, but BJ's coupons are not available to me during my trial membership.

See:

Checking out the food at B.J.'s Wholesale Club

Fourth H Mart opens in Bergen County

 I visited the new H Mart in Fort Lee yesterday, the fourth supermarket opened by the Lyndhurst-based Korean chain in Bergen County. The company, which used to be known as Han Ah Reum, has stores in more than a dozen states.

The Fort Lee store appears to be bigger than the one in Englewood, where I shopped for years, but smaller than the Little Ferry supermarket, which is closer to my Hackensack home.

Fort Lee has the usual, great selection of fresh fish at relatively low prices. It's also the first H Mart I've seen that carries Coleman organic chicken and a second brand that says the birds are raised on a vegetarian diet without antibiotics. But I didn't see any beef  that was raised naturally, despite the importance of meat to the Korean diet.

There is also a terrific selection of greens, including Chinese broccoli, choy sum, regular and baby bok choy, and collard, plus others I'm not familiar with. I took home some leafy Chinese broccoli, but overcooked it. There is no food counter, as in other stores, but a French-Asian bakery called Tous Les Jours has a few tables for coffee and pastry.

The store, which has been open about three weeks in the old Kings Super Market space, didn't seem to have any real bargains, though it's possible it hasn't staged a grand opening yet. I also bought two prepared items: soft, sweet rice cakes with pumpkin and japchae, the translucent noodle dish made from sweet potatoes.

The company motto is: Better Food Better Living (no punctuation) and there is a cute video on its Web site showing a pregnant Korean woman sitting at home, reading and sipping tea, while her husband approaches on foot with two bulging plastic bags of H Mart food. When she opens the door and sees the food, she is "happy."

But what I've seen in more than a decade of shopping in H Mart is an army of Korean and other Asian women -- but few men -- filing their carts with enormous quantities of  beef and other food and then loading up their minivans or SUVs to rush home and start preparing dinner.
 

H Mart, 112-130 Linwood Plaza, Fort Lee; 201-947-7800


http://www.hmart.com/